Seven Pirates H by developers Compile Heart, Idea Factory, Felistella and publisher EastAsiaSoft Limited—Nintendo Switch review written by Richard with a copy provided by the publisher.
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Warning: Mature themes ahead
Well folks, it's time for another one of those titles that seems to always make its way into my "Guilty Pleasure" nomination for our game of the year selections. That's right, another title in the Genkai Tokki series, the same series that brought us Moero Chronicles (Hyper) and Moero Crystal H, now brings to us Seven Pirates H.
Seven Pirates H tells the tale of the pirate, Parute. One day on her ship, she gets rammed by an otter type creature, Otton, flying through the sky. She gets knocked overboard and ends up washing ashore in the Monsupi sea, a sea devoid of humans like her, but filled with "monster girls", H monsters, and Paizoku (Booby Pirates). Using a mystical compass that points towards treasure, Parute sets off to collect all the treasures of the Monsupi Sea, while filling her crew with as many people as she can get her hands on. On her adventure she will meet six others, making up the "Seven Pirates", as she sails around the sea.
Seven Pirates (or Oppairates, as I've taken to calling it) has a pretty textbook basis for gameplay, with a few interesting quirks thrown in to make it more interesting. If you've played any of the Moero titles, you should know that Seven Pirates is not the same type of dungeon crawler. Instead, Seven Pirates features sailing around an ocean to explore islands, 3D roaming around some of the larger islands, and that turn-based combat you're familiar with, just now in 3D and with a few twists.
Upon really starting the game, Parute will find herself washed up on an island, so we'll start with the 3D exploration. Annoyingly enough, I found this to be the weakest part of Seven Pirates. You can walk around, jump, open treasure chests, and pick up shinnies to get items that you can exchange later. You will see enemies meandering around the map. If you run "chest" first into their back, you start combat with advantage. If the enemies take you from behind, they get the advantage.
Later on you unlock the ability to ride Ottan automatically whenever you approach water or climbable walls. Pro tip: if you can't figure out where to go, you can open a map of the area with the 'Y' button. I only figured this out after getting the 100% completion while I was goofing around afterwards. If you're wondering why exploration is the weakest part, that's because each area is pretty dang small, and there aren't a whole lot of areas to explore.
Once you make contact with an enemy, or get into an event battle, it's time for combat! Similar to Moero Chronicle/Crystal, combat is a turn-based feature, where higher agility scores dictate turn order and frequency. Each character has both HP and MP, where MP is gained from attacking or being attacked. Each character has an element, and you play rock-paper-scissors with weakness to do more or less damage with each element, except here they're called pheromones. Now, here's where things get a little bit more interesting.
MP has a maximum value of 200, and above 100 your character will get "excited", and gain a stat boost. If they hit 200, then they enter a sort of "limit break" mode and get a bigger stat boost as well as access to a really high damaging skill. After five turns the MP will be reduced to 0 and they will exit the state. This is a bit more interesting for a battle feature because you need to balance conserving MP for healing and buffing or using it, and deciding if you want to remain between that 100 to 200 range, or if you want to hit 200 for the power moves.
Once you've finished hanging out on the island, you return to your ship to explore the expanse of the sea! Well, sort of. You actually have a very restricted area to work with when you start off. In order to unlock more of the sea, you need to find torn maps, which will open up more areas for you to explore. Exploring the sea allows you to do a few different things. As you're sailing around, you may encounter event points, which could either result in a battle, or some dialogue. You may also run over an exploration area, which could net you an item, a discovery, or a Booby Pirate. There will also be little islands that you can explore for the same results as the exploration points.
While you are on your ship, you can also make use of any Booby Pirates you've found. Basically, these little fellas can be found around the world, sometimes from side quests, sometimes from exploration points or chests, and sometimes from beating certain bosses. These Pirate kin come in three varieties: Pirate, Merchant, and Scholar. Each does something different for you, and will unlock different things for you. Pirate kin will unlock common skills, which are skills usable by any party member. These skills include buffs, heals, and even a skill to change your pheromone color (element). Merchants will increase what is available in the store, as well as unlock new options to "exchange" for, which allows you to hand over some materials and money for equipment. Scholars will unlock new info options and requests for you to complete.
Equipment is interesting, as it comes in two pieces: bras and panties. Bras will provide a skill to the character, and panties are where all your stat increases come from. As you progress through the game, you will either discover or unlock new equipment. Sometimes you may even be rewarded with it from completing a side quest. The side quests are fairly standard fare, asking you to beat up certain enemies, or to collect a certain type of item. Some side quests are mandatory to progress, and will be clearly noted. Some will unlock maps for increasing the range of your sailing, so it's a good idea to pay attention to these.
The last thing to do on the ship is to access the "Info" section. These are either tips or hints from the scholars, which can either unlock events, provide helpful gameplay tips, or allow you to find items/Booby pirates or optional battles. Just note that some Info may take a long while before it actually becomes relevant.
Alright, fine. It's time for what all you degenerates are probably here for: the Booby Training. Yeah, that's right, if you weren't aware, it's a thing. After finishing a battle, in addition to money and items, you will also acquire "pheromone points". Earn enough and you will get a character specific Training Extract. You can then use the training Extract in the Booby Training menu in order to "level" your character.
While training, you alter the characters' boobs a certain way in order to increase the breasts' qualities, such as: size, perkiness, height, cleavage, softness, and firmness. Upon making 10 adjustments, the training ends and you earn status points. In addition, you get a passive stat bonus depending on how you train the boobs. As an example, if you decide to max out all the options, you will get a 30% attack boost, and 10% to health, defense, and agility. The changes you make during training also affect your character model, which is a neat concept, if not for the form it's being implemented in.
You know, despite the somewhat… iffy substance of the game, I actually quite enjoyed the title. The battle system was pretty entertaining, and the music was pretty good too. You can swap characters out pretty much anytime outside of battle, and there are a lot of interesting ways to build your characters. On the other hand, the game is incredibly short. It only took me about 20 hours to complete everything the game had to offer. There aren't many areas to explore, and they're all really small too. One is even a rehash of an area you've already visited!
Summary
Overall, I have to say that Seven Pirates H has a lot of promise. There's a solid basis for sea based exploration, the battle system is pretty fun, and the music is pretty catchy. Unfortunately, this effort seems undermined by how short the game is and how small the explorable areas are.
If Seven Pirates H was more like the Moero titles in terms of dungeon length and bonus zones, I feel like Seven Pirates H would have fared much better. Even the upgrade system, where it allowed you to adjust your stat distribution, was an interesting idea, just falling flat against the backdrop of small areas with not much to them.
Score: 7 / 10
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