Fan service on the open seas!
Seven Pirates H was originally released on the PSVITA in Japan back in 2016, but surprisingly never found its official way overseas. While its current release is only on that of the Nintendo Switch, likely due to new content policies implemented by Sony, the game has still arrived in all its fan service glory. While a series like Senran Kagura is equally known for the same style of fan service, somehow, Seven Pirates H doubles down even more so, tailoring its entire progression and character stat structure upon the manipulation of your party’s breasts. Am I kidding? Well, I guess you will have to read on to find out.
Despite the vast seas that you’ll cross aboard your newly acquired pirate ship, the waters that this game treads are disappointingly shallow, with a great deal of repetition across its light narrative, gameplay, and character systems. Across its rough 15-20 hours, you’ll see largely an hour or so of gameplay recycled across its treasure-focused tale and while there are some decent encounters and plenty of fun character conversations, Seven Pirates H is simply not deep enough to really pull you in, despite the game doing everything it can to lure your focus into its central cast’s prime assets.
I’ve played my fair share of fan service games, from Senran Kagura’s massage experience in Reflexions to their take on Pinball or Water Gun hijinks. While Compile Heart have had their own Neptunia series cross with that of the Senran Kagura license with the recently released Ninja Wars, their games have often explored the more tamer side of fan service, especially in contrast to Senran Kagura and now with Seven Pirates H. While some games can often have their fan service as an addition to what its core design allows, Seven Pirates H has its fan service baked into its very foundation, and cannot be escaped. If these types of games don’t float your boat, well, this might be a pirate adventure you’ll want to sit out.
Seven Pirates H follows the story of Parute as she embarks on an adventure of treasure seeking. She’s focused and determined to track down a series of seven treasures across the Monsupi Sea. When she arrives, she discovers that she is the only human present and that everyone else she encounters is either a monster girl, a regular ol’ monster, or some sort of perverted creature named Otton, who is wearing a stray bikini top as an eye patch. He’s also obsessed with boobs, and will make that claim known a dozen or so times over, and is the overall mascot of the extended series. As she tracks down each various treasure, she’ll have her discovery threatened by a monster girl who will eventually join her side; however, she has to defeat them in battle first. Eventually, all the treasure hunting puts Parute and company in the crosshairs of several rivals as well as the self-proclaimed Booby King.
Parute’s adventure to collect these treasures puts her on the path to having six monster girls join her cause; Poron, Claret, Waffle, Saqra, Jewel, and Rindo. Each of the explorable areas you’ll travel to are home to where you’ll encounter them, each with their own little narrative regarding the treasure you’ll find and their place in the world. There is an open sea to sail, but only a few actual areas that you can freely explore. Each island, cave, or volcano you’ll travel to will be used several times across the story either as part of the main path or to grind away at the various quests you’ll undertake for a modest payday. These levels are very basic in their design with each enemy freely walking around, as opposed to most JRPG’s having random battles endlessly spring up. Since there can be a bit of a grind to even the most simple encounters, you can place the fight on auto-battle mode, but I was a bit disappointed there didn’t seem to be a way to speed up encounters.
The team you’ll put together is full of various personalities and monster traits that are hinted at in each of the girls. While Jewel is clearly a slime girl, the others have the most basic of monster features, such as Saqra’s tail or Rindo’s dragon horns. While Claret is supposed to be a squid, is it her clothing that has that appearance, and not so much her own form. While Eastasiasoft is handling the publishing duties on this release, Compile Heart has released many games that have had ensemble casts before, and the variable personalities they usually bring with them are all here. While there is no English voice-over, the Japanese cast is great in their performances, given the nature of what this game is and how its characters are meant to act. Nearly everything here is actually voiced, which adds to cementing the girls’ personalities even further.
As mentioned, Parute and company will attract the attention of other monster girls that have something of a rivalry with some of your team. There is Riviera who is the leader of this eventual band of villains, who makes it her life’s mission to take down Parute. Alongside Riviera, there’s Mimii the mimic monster girl, Doroa, and Garnet as well, who are additional monster girls that will join up with her, only so that future fights are not just your whole team against one boss. They are fine, mostly, but lack the depth given to Riviera and her own motives; which is a shame since Garnet looks the best among them. You’ll fight each of these monster girls numerous times and it’s a shame that each fight is the exact same moves and encounters every time you fight them, except with taking on a few of them at once.
Then there is the charming and adorable Neko, who was Rindo’s second in command and is left to manage Rindo’s old gang once she joins up with you. She’s adorable but is placed in a role where she is destined to fail and sees no improvement or change to her tactics during the half-dozen fights you’ll have with her. Had she come back to each subsequent fight with a new move or some new gimmick to show her development, then I think the whole plot built around her would have meant something.
The Monsupi sea itself is largely basic in what you can explore, but it hides a great deal of content and items when you know where to look. As you progress through the story and take on requests and side missions, you’ll discover maps that unlock segments of the ocean around you, removing the clouded areas and letting you roam free around the open sea. You’ll find hidden interactable parts of the map and discover Booby Kin natives that will aid you in your quest, who are small little creatures that are commonplace around these parts. They aid you in offering a store to shop at and a crafting component that is very basic in its design and feels largely tacked on. The more Booby Kin’s that you track down, the more they will offer. You’ll unlock helpful hints that may lead to treasure, and some requests must be completed to push the plot along, something that is not really explained that well at all.
The monsters that you’ll encounter feel largely out of place in regards to how great the humanoid characters look. There are a few enemies that I adore the designs of, such as the little otter holding his pillow, but some others are variations on mushrooms and other phallic imagery, including a spaceship that is surrounded by floating boobs, complete with nipples I might add. There are a few monster girls that you’ll encounter in the late game that are pretty much nightmare fuel, so be forewarned that some of their designs are “utterly” horrifying. While you’ll often get a new monster or two in each new area you explore, the game does go the lazy route and place existing monsters in those areas but splashes a new coat of paint on them, but not much else. All in all, there are less than two dozen unique enemies if you don’t take into account the monster girls themselves.
Combat is turned based and your turn order is based on your agility stat. Attacking and dealing damage is through either a standard attack or through the use of a few MP-powered skills. Each character is assigned a default color as the game uses the tried and true triangle system. This is through a combat initiative they call Pheromones. Red is strong against green, green is strong against blue, and blue is strong against Red. This system rarely feels fruitful as there isn’t much challenge here, especially when you activate all the bonus DLC that is included in the game’s options. However, you'll certainly see bosses fall a lot faster when you color-cordinate your team. Skills are used by consuming MP, which here stands for Mura-Mura Points. You’ll gain MP on each attack or when you take damage. If you hit 100 MP, your character will get excited and this boosts ATK, DEF, and AGI values. If you raise your MP to 200, they will get aroused, and this comes complete with an animation to show this to you, even if Rindo’s animation looks as if she is reaching out to someone, and is deeply saddened by this revelation.
While combat is a huge factor of the game, it’s how you’ll prep your team for the fight ahead where the game takes on a whole other level. Instead of earning experience and leveling the ol’ standard JRPG way, you’ll earn Extract in a few different formats. Extract is a training solution that is either unique to each monster girl or universal, such as Agility or Strength Extract. You’ll use this to increase one of a few stats: HP, Attack, Defense, and Agility. Now, how do you use Extract? How do you increase these stats? Well, you do what any normal person would do and pinch, grab, or poke anime breasts, because when in Rome, right?. Yup, the key to unlocking the power within each girl is based on a few factors pertaining to their chest; height, perkiness, firmness, size, softness, and the amount of cleavage they have. The larger their chest, the more HP, defense, and attack they have, whereas a smaller chest will see their agility increase and cause them to attack faster in the turn order. You can find a happy middle ground as I did and position them in the middle in a few cases. It also helps not going as big as you can as it gets pretty damn ridiculous in how big you can make their chest. The size also affects their hand detection, so when they are aroused, some animations can have their hands clipping through themselves.
This whole process is tackled under what is called Booby Training, and it is implied that Otton himself is performing this “massage” claiming to each of the ladies that it is the fastest and best way to unlock their true potential. While that may sound like a con job so that he can fondle some breasts, he is right on the money, and you will use the touch screen or analog sticks to massage, poke, grab, or pinch their chest and see those stats go up. Each stat you need has a movement either via the touchscreen or button controls to do so. Moving your fingers on their chest in a certain motion will increase or decrease their size, while pushing up, down, or into, will change other factors as well. The button layout for these touch controls is pretty much a mirror of what you’re doing with your controller’s buttons, which helps when you want to swap to a controller when docked. You’ll also find a series of eggs that you’ll break open with their chest, and while these can often hold more Extract or helpful items, a failed egg will splatter upon their chest, leaving a slimy coating on them. This game knows what it’s doing, I’ll give it that much.
During actual boss encounters, players will need to use a special finisher to actually defeat them. In battles where you’ll have multiple bosses, the main one will have a special health bar that when depleted, can only finally be toppled with the use of what is called the Otton Cannon. This is via a gauge in the top right corner that will occasionally fill up due to various actions in battle, but you can also sacrifice an attack and use any girl in your active party to have Otton rub their breasts until he builds up said cannon charge. In the original PSVITA version, this was done by shaking the console in a very suggestive manner, but thankfully here, you can use touch controls or the buttons to perform the act.
As mentioned, this game was originally released on the PSVITA back in 2016 and it shows. The game is still bright and colorful with pretty decent character models and environments, but the texture work here is very blurry and pixelated, especially on close-ups, which there are a lot of them given the game wants you to get real close to the girls. Some areas do feel cleaned up from checking out videos of the original release, but apart from including all the previous DLC, this seems like a pretty straightforward port to accommodate the Switch and its touchscreen functionality. The character art you can unlock is extremely well done, and the game’s overall look is great, it just lacks some visual improvements that could have benefitted the additional power the Switch has over the VITA.
Seven Pirates H is certainly a fun time due to its cast and lighthearted tone. However; its gameplay and combat systems feel more built around its flashy special attacks and showcasing its cast’s assets rather than contributing to an engaging gameplay experience built around those moments. The fan service stuff is implemented well enough for what the game is trying to do, but there just isn’t a solid game built around it and that is unfortunate. As it stands, Seven Pirates H is fun for what it is, but for a game built around treasure, this X doesn’t quite mark the spot.
Developer - Felistella, Idea Factory. Publisher - Eastasiasoft, Compile Heart. Released - May 12th, 2022. Available On - Nintendo Switch. Rated - (M) Partial Nudity, Violence, Sexual Themes. Platform Reviewed - Nintendo Switch. Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.