Seven Mansions: the Dreamcast survival horror released only in Japan
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- Опубликовано: 25 сен 2020
- Seven Mansions Ghastly Smile sounds like a game any classic survival horror fan would love; exploration, reading files, solving puzzles, limited health and ammo, weird monsters, and even the option for fixed camera angles! So join me on this mini-review to see if this game is really a survival horror hidden gem on the Dreamcast.
Originally titled Nanatsu no Hikan Senritsu no Bishou （七つの秘館戦慄の微笑）but dubbed as Seven Mansions Ghastly Smile in English, the game was released only in Japan on the Sega Dreamcast on January 20, 2000. There was a western released planned but it was cancelled. The game is now fully playable in English thanks to ArcaneAria and Mr. Nobody.
Development began on the Sega Saturn but was moved to the Dreamcast. Seven Mansions features 2 main characters each with their own campaign. Kei's campaign is more action oriented and Reina's is heavier on puzzles. There is also a co-op mode where two players must work together to solve puzzles. There's also a versus mode and some training missions. 
Игры
Both of the main characters look like Virtua Fighter characters in civilian clothes during some ending cutscene.
Haha you're right they do!
The third person camera and Reina's run cycle gives me Illbleed vibes.
Absolutely!
Buddy I just found your channel recently and I'm blown away by the content and quality. Keep killing it man, I'll be here for the ride.👍
the quality of this game scares me, it's amazing how it was made in 1996 and it has graphics ahead of its time
Great video! I've always wondered about this game but I had no idea there was an english translation!
Wow thank you!! The translation isn't perfect, but very impressive considering they added voice over. You should definitely play this!
You're doing amazing work btw! As a fan, this was really an unexpected way to start my day!
P.S. I'm totally down for a collab :D
Every time Reins attacks in first person mode, it looks like she's trying to use a tv remote.
😂 it does! Maybe she thinks she's in a tv show
@@raccooncitycinemahaha yes or saying “Ew change the channel!”
You and Kai at Ink Ribbon should make something together. Loving these RE based channels.
Thank you!! That would be amazing working with Kai. Seems like a real good person.
He just commented on my video! If you shared it with him, thank you!!
Man, I discover new survival horror Gems thanks to you .
P.s. Long time man , we missed your awesome content ..
Thank you! You made my day :D
I don't have much free time (I took a day off work to finish editing this lol)
But I've got a Seven Mansions playthrough ready and maybe I'll work on some Dreamcast or Switch survival horror games as my main project.
If there's something in particular you wanna see let me know!
Thanks for your support man!
How does this chan have less than 1k? Thank you YT for showing me this beautiful channel. I binged your stuff the other day x
Hey thanks so much!! I'm so glad and grateful to have awesome people like you aboard to help support me!
Hey there!
So; me and my friend just finished this today; finally and I have a lot to say. Considering it was your video that made me aware that this game existed I feel like it's apt that I leave a comment. (I didn't watch your video until now however, as I didn't want spoilers for the game).
OK, so now I have watched your review I am really surprised at your conclusion and I think I know why. Have you played this all the way through in Co-Op? Because me and my friend did (we haven't even touched single player) and whilst it feels very dated in parts (the combat is atrocious and the controls are archaic and clunky) but we were both kind of blown away by how forward thinking the Co-Op was. Maybe I am wrong and you have completed the game in Co-Op and your conclusion is the same but if you haven't you really need to. The puzzles you described in the single player are nowhere to be found in the multiplayer. All of the puzzles are created specifically for the Co-Op and considering how over-ambitious and under budget this game was, so much of it works that it's still impressive today.
Many of the puzzles have you working together and sometimes even splitting up and only being able to communicate via computer. There is an entire section that involves you having to send eachother messages via computer and working together to open doors etc. After completing the game I'm really shocked that there haven't been more Co-Op games like this; where you have to split up and go to different places, sending items to eachother etc (I haven't played RE:Zero yet but I heard thats actually a bad Co-Op game. I will try it one day). A lot of puzzles were actually quite clever as well, which I enjoyed considering a lot of survival horror games (barring Silent Hill) have simplistic puzzles that usually devolve into 'push this there'. There is even a part where you have to keep clicking an elevator switch to keep it from moving or your friend gets crushed. Really inventive and very impressive that they put so much effort into this considering how different I now know the single player was.
Now, the story is an entirely different matter... I am a huge advocate of 'We don't have a good idea for a good story so we will just write a mediocre one but fill it with bizarre ideas and crazy moments.'
I will take 'What the hell is going on?! Why did a brain in a jar have us play a rhythm game to help him hack a giant robot in the ocean' than 'Oh my god this is so boring I am going to jump in front of traffic' any day. Example, Sonic Adventure 2 may have a narrative that is overly serious and edgy but I will take that any day over Sonic Colors that is basically a kids cartoon.
Obviously Seven Mansions doesn't disappoint; my friend and I was one second wetting ourselves with laughter at tonal shifts as smooth as sandpaper and the next; shocked and utterly baffled by how batshit the plot was getting. In fact, SM:GS is a contender for the one of the most unapologetically confusing game narratives I've ever experienced. At the end of the game me and my friend had this conversation verbatim:
"Who the hell was Allen?! Who was Christy?!"
to which he replied "Who were we?!"
And if you are questioning the protagonists role in a narrative, you have made something truly unwieldy. But even though the plot made no fucking sense, the dialog was filled with misogyny and threats of molestation and the characters were as deep as piss on pavement; it was never boring or frustrating (or at least not frustrating in a bad way like a modern Square Enix game)
I am not sure if you have played The Third Birthday or not but the story in that game did the exact opposite of what Seven Mansions did. An overcomplicated, boring and painfully slow narrative with characters who are as likeable as stepping barefoot on a lego piece. I couldn't even finish it. What a disaster.
Anyway, I'm rambling as usual so I will end it here.
What the fuck happened to Tanya??? As you said in the review, she seemed to turn evil for a few seconds and then converted to good for 30 seconds; then disappeared. I am assuming they had a bigger role for her, where she was trying to convert Reina for some kind of deviant reason (considering all the lewd overtones the game already had) but once that scene ended she was gone! They didn't even say whether she died in the explosion or not!
OH that's great you finally got to experience this madness! And yes, you're right, I didn't have anyone to play this co-op with, so I didn't get to see what it has to offer. That elevator puzzle sounds really creative. In single player I think you have to play as one character and then email info to the other one, and playing it single player felt tedious. So yeah, maybe experiencing it in co-op for the first time would have made a better impression.
haha yeah the stories and characters are anything but boring. It really makes you wanna keep playing to see where its gonna go next. Maybe if you complete co-op and single player it makes a little more sense? BTW, if you do play single player, I found Reina's campaign far more enjoyable with interesting puzzles.
And good timing because earlier today I managed to order a copy of the Seven Mansion guide book online for 5 dollars! So looks like I will revisit this, and maybe I can get a friend to come over and I can finally play co-op fully.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, and feel free to ramble anytime, I quite enjoyed reading it haha
@@raccooncitycinema Oh my god! Can you do me a huge favour?! Once you have gone through the guide book can you tell me if it explains the whole Tanya thing? Me and my friend were frantically searching online but info on it but to no avail (which makes sense considering its small audience).
Maybe I should play the single player!
I think the most confusing thing is that the story has three factions and it's very poorly explained. The good guys, the evil scientists and the sublimiters. Obviously once you kill the evil doctor you expect to fight the 'grand evil' that the doctor was working for. But the game fails to tell you that Alan is actually a completely different narrative arc. To be honest I wouldn't be surprised if the game was meant to be told in 2 parts and they ended up just smashing them together.
Kind of how Code Veronica feels like 2 games they tried to stick together.
@@novelezra Absolutely! I'll let you know if it has anything. And yeah, hopefully it explains everything better than the game did haha.
Right, there's so little info about this game out there. At least I think I'll have a world exclusive on my hands if I can make a video about it. And hopefully more people than me, you and your friend will care.
good work mate, keep it up :D
Thank you!
This kind of janky games are right up my alley! It’s always good to find these oddities, thanks for reminding the world this exists. 😁
lol that's the perfect way to describe it!
Glad to hear people are still interested in games like this.
@@raccooncitycinema if you haven't already, you should check out Mizzurna Falls on PS1. It's not fully translated yet but it's worth checking out.
Thanks for the suggestion. I'd heard of it before but didn't know there was an English translation!
Just pile more on the backlog haha
I would´ve never heard of this game weren´t it for this video. Thank you for displaying the game and its translation!!!! (sorry for bad english, it´s my second language)
No worries your English is great 👍
I'm happy to hear that, thanks for watching!
I bought the Japanese guidebook for this game so I do plan on translating it some time in the future
Yo, wtf, a new survival horror game that I've never heard of
Yeah this one kinda slipped under the radar. Surprising because it's actually pretty interesting and hilarious. I bought the guidebook for this too, so I will revisit it some time
i love this video underrated asf
Thanks man, appreciate it!
Some enemies remind me of Heisenberg's experiments in Village!
Haha I can see it too!
Subscribed, hope more redditors sees your content. Good luck.
Awesome! Thanks so much, you really helped me out!
Take care man
whats frustrating is i cannot find ANY playthroughs of the original psx title on youtube, everything is related to this dreamcast game. you said its not similar at all to this game so im wondering what sort of gameplay it had
It's kinda like a visual novel, check it out here:
ruclips.net/user/livej_JcSG33dKY?feature=share
Or paste this into the search bar:
七つの秘館 ps
@@raccooncitycinema fantastic thanks for replying! I suppose they were trying to keep up with the popularity of the direction video games were headed being more of an interactive experience rather a passive one. As far as I know visual novels had no presence on popular consoles outside of Japan so it makes sense it would take a 180 to become survival horror if they were hoping to gain traction for the series. Perhaps the limited gameplay was due to technological restrictions since you mentioned it was originally for the Saturn. Though that’s speculation on my part. Too bad there isn’t much information on this series out there!
@@debutchi no prob! I think you're bang on there. And yeah, there's so little info about this. I bought the strategy guide for this game, something I haven't seen anywhere else, so once I get the time I'll go through all that and make a video or 2 sharing the contents. Maybe 12 people will wanna see that 😂
@@raccooncitycinema I could help with the translation if you want :0 Japanese was my major but I will say I’m far from fluent but my understanding of sentence structure etc is enough that I think we could translate a game guide
@@debutchi oh that's awesome, thanks! I usually just ask my wife or friends here when I don't understand something, but it never hurts to have some more input. Are you on Twitter?
LOL, that old guy at around the 8:50 mark, please don't tell me I'm the only guy who thinks that sound like Heihachi Mishima from Tekken 4 :)
Now we know what Heihachi has been doing to compensate for his lack of the Devil Gene!
Haha he does! Someone else just commented they look like Virtua Fighters characters. Guess they really went for a 90s fighting game look.
Btw, I've been working on the Biohazard 2 guidebook and I think there's a big misconception in the English world about Claire that came from this book. If translated directly it says "She has a lot of boyfriends but doesn't appear to be dating anyone."
However
I showed the line to half a dozen Japanese people and they all agreed, it actually means "She has a lot of guy friends, but doesn't appear to be dating anyone in particular." Which makes way more sense, especially considering her hobbies, and is much more innocent than the English direct translation would suggest.
I'll talk about it more in my video but I thought I'd let you know first. So please don't tell anyone yet.
@@raccooncitycinema LORD ALL MIGHY!!!
THANK YOU!!!
I thought I was THE ONLY HUMAN ON EARTH to figure this out, without knowing japanese. I'm still a bit pissed off that my Claire analysis video that I worked so hard on, has only 62 views of this writing :(
I finished the 2 music videos, but I'm holding off on publishing them, especially if I'm barely gonna get 20 views lol.
About Claire, the RE wiki would have you believe she is an EXTREMELY promiscuous girl, whereas I have shown the in-game evidence suggests she probably goes to church on Sundays, she's that much of a good girl. Not a nun by any means, but not a hoe at all! And a legally blind man had to figure this out the hard way! :)
Yes, you can have guy friends. Girls I went to high school and college with had several guy friends, as in friends who happen to be male. I have several friends who happen to be female. That does not mean at all that the girl is dating all of the guys, or I am dating all of the girls. That thinking is so juvenile!
Don't worry, I won't bring it up in any of my vids, until you release the vid. If it works, a shout out to my hard work would be nice, but that's up to you.
Anyways man, I'm planning to watching your playthough of 7 mansions, and now am REALLY looking forward to your next Biohazard 2 vid.
Keep up the amazing work!
@@TheBengalDragon haha yes you were right about that all along! There will still probably be people that won't accept it until they hear it from Kamiya himself.
It's hard to get clicks and sustained views. My CV video stayed around 100 views for months until randomly being picked up by the algorithm. Then it dropped right back down. At this point I'm just making the vids I wanna see, and doing it as a hobby. So I can't blame you for holding your vids back
Different play styles, a giant mech controlled by a woman's soul, and a nonsensical anime-esque plot? It's a shame this game has so many glaring flaws because it definitely sounds like it could be a hidden gem.
Also, I totally expected blood to gush out of that bald guy's nose.
hahaha missed opportunity on the bloody nose.
Right, it's got the elements but just so rough around the edges.
Dude whats up with the resolution here? Looks like a PS1 title this way
I suspect it started development as a Saturn game
I’m going to be honest, the woman’s fashion in this game feels more natural than most PS1 Resident Evil games woman’s fashion. On the other hand, the guy’s fashion in this game looks weird.
Well this looks so bad it's great xD
haha yeah the story definitely has a few wtf moments you can only laugh it. check it out!
LOL, it looks like scuffed RE5!
Haha, looks like a terrible game but it's still oddly charming.