Seven Pirates H Review

Questing for Chests and Booty
By Jon Harvey
Reviewed on Nintendo Switch
Released on May 12th, 2022
​ Developed by: Idea Factory, Compile Heart, Felistella
Published by: EastAsiaSoft

 There was no doubt this one was coming to me for review. My particular weakness is well known among the team so there was no better choice really. I mean it's a traditional style JRPG, featuring nothing but scantily clad anime girls, AND it includes a mechanic known as "the booby training system". What more could I say but "Anime Girl Appreciation Society representative jonnydarkfang reporting for duty, SIR!" So let's get into it!
 
In this one we join Parute, a cute as heck female pirate, as she starts her quest to collect the special treasures of the world. She believes herself to be "The Chosen" after a mysterious compass fell from the sky and bonked her hard on the head. It doesn't point north however, spinning wildly for the most part, leading her crew to think she's a little bit crazy… Until one day, out of the blue, the compass points towards directly upwards into the sky. Rushing to the location, Parute is surprised to find a strange little creature that, just like her compass, has also crashed to earth from high in the sky. It's turns out this is a pervy, girl obsessed monster boy named Otton, and he not only holds the first of the legendary treasures, but is also the last practitioner of a very secret and very special technique known only to him… The booby training system.
 
Through a lengthy, thorough, careful and entirely-not-pervy-at-all-honest massage of a girls breasts, he can unlock their hidden power, slowly increasing her abilities till she becomes a warrior of untold skill. The fact that it also increases the size, perkiness, softness and more is just a bonus! Determined to make a name for herself Parute, along with Otton, set sail across the Monsupi sea on a raucous romp to find the remaining treasures. Along the way she recruits a team of cute monster girls, encounters rival pirates, takes on a host of weird creatures and ultimately uncovers a secret that could break the bonds of friendship our girls have struggled to create! Oh and it has a lot of boobie massaging too!
 
Now, what you actually get gameplay wise is, for the most part, a pretty straightforward JRPG but one that's packed with cute characters, great dialogue, entertaining mechanics and most importantly a whole LOAD of fan service!
 
But we'll get to that last part later. Let's get the moment to moment gameplay out of the way first. The action begins with Parute and Otton finding themselves stranded after a shipwreck. You're given control and can explore the island you are on from a 3rd person viewpoint. These areas are pretty small, so it is easy to track where you are, but you do have a map available just incase. You can explore the nooks and crannies, searching out treasure chests and collectable resources while heading in the direction of the compass arrow that points to the next treasure. This inevitably leads to an encounter with your first team member, a ditzy but charming Kobold monster girl called Waffle, and a boss fight too.

The aftermath of which results in us meeting Jewel. A sea slime monster girl, who captains her own ship and luckily, as it turns out, is also really good friends with your newest recruit Waffle, leading her to join your team also. And also allowing us to use her ship.
 
Which brings me to one of the best parts of Seven Pirates H. The interactions between the various girls. They're really well written, really cute and really charming. Fans of harem animes where all the girls support, bully, argue and help each other will have loads to entertain them here. I'm sure you'll quickly develop a "best girl" from the 7 team mates you'll end up recruiting in the first few hours of gameplay. Parute herself acts like a strict captain but is loving and caring towards her crew. Waffle is a ditzy airhead who doesn't really understand what's going on but goes along with it regardless. Jewel acts tough but isn't the most confident. There's my favourite, the ara-ara older sister stereotype Saqra, who is a demon girl that thinks she's super conniving and evil, but really just wants to be fed tasty food. I don't want to spoil the rest but you'll come across a varied cast of different girls, all different types and personalities that are sure to make you "haha" and "awwww" in equal measure. Even with Japanese voice acting only (there is no English voice option unfortunately) I found them entertaining and the interactions between them quickly became a high point of the experience.
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After you unlock the ship, you gain access to the overworld map and can travel around to any of the areas or points of interest you can find. Most of the map is locked away behind a fog wall however and you must find map parts to open up each section. It is pretty linear to be honest, and you'll open the next area when the story allows and there isn't much to do outside pushing forward the narrative. Each area is themed differently, ghost ships, deserts, caves, and ancient temples and so on all make an appearance and each has its own unique resources and enemies to fight. As you advance you'll unlock special abilities for Otton that aid in finding secrets or traversing the world. The girls will jump onto his head, while blushing and making lewd noises to boot, as they float across water or climb sheer rock walls. These sections aren't that common though, each island is pretty small and can be explored pretty quickly. There isn't any real hidden quests or large puzzles to discover, no NPCs to find granting missions or anything like that. As I said earlier, the narrative is the main focus with the story and little character interaction events being the real gems.

Saying that however, you do have "Booby Kin" quests to complete though. These strange little creatures are the ship builders, crew and traders of the Monsupi sea. Each sea sailing craft in the world has at least a few of these little dudes on board and yours is no exception. Starting off with only a few, they provide basic services on the ship but by finding more their usefulness will increase. They'll often provide clues to where their team mates are, leading you to search them out on the overworld map. As their numbers increase they'll grant new team skills for combat, increase items available to buy in the ships onboard store and provide little clues to where some useless but humorously named (especially if you know Japanese) items are to be found. They also allow you to craft new underwear (armour basically) by collecting specific items from areas in the game world and from the rewards for taking down different enemies.

Which brings us to combat. Again it's mostly the traditional JRPG styled turn based style you'll be familiar with, fun to take part in but mostly something you'll know the second you see it. As you explore the games different areas, you'll see various types of monsters walking around and will have to make a decision about whether to fight or not. You can avoid most battles if you want but will miss out on items and experience by doing so. Sneak up on an enemy without it seeing you and you'll be granted a "preemptive attack", allowing the entire team (you can have 4 squad members at once) to make a move before the enemy gets a turn. If the enemy touches you when you're not looking though, they trigger an "Ambush" where they get to all attack you first. Other RPGs have used this system, it's not ground breaking, but provides an opportunity to do more than just run towards an opponent. You wait till they aren't looking before touching them from behind or try to avoid them running up behind you while you grab treasure or grab resources. Once battle is joined, you're shown a bar at the bottom of the screen with the action order, and both your team and the enemy are shown on it. As each character gets their chance, you choose what action you want them to take.
 
You can do a basic attack with their normal weapon, doing relatively low damage but costing nothing to use. Or they can use an item, like healing potions, escape items, status cures and so on. They can defend, completely missing a turn but taking a tiny percentage of damage if attacked. They can try to escape, which might not work. Or they can use skills. Skills are like your special or magical attacks that each character can do. They're powered by MP though so can't just be used willy nilly. By landing normal attacks, getting hit, defending etc your MP will slowly increase. You can spend it to do special attacks, burning the opponent, using poison, healing and a whole load of others that unlock as each character levels up. Each character also has a super special attack that can only be used under special circumstances.
When they're aroused.
 
Yip, that's right by fully filling the MP bar your character gets super turned on and enters a state of arousal. She'll take less damage and hit harder but, best of all, she'll also do a little sexy animation where she goes all ahegao faced and blushes, running her hands over her scantily clad anime girl body. So it's like a little reward basically. Enjoy!
 
Each character has a unique "arousal" ability, each with their own unique animation, that's ultra powerful and can instantly give the advantage to you in combat. Be warned though, when the fight is over she'll lose her aroused state, whether used or not, meaning you start the next fight with zero MP. So at this point it's mostly the usual but there is one other thing to consider in a battle.
 
Pheromones.
 
Each character has a different "flavour" of pheromones. They come in three types, blue, red and green with each being weak to one type and strong against the other. Think "elemental affinity" from other titles and you've got the idea. You should line up the correct pheromone type against the correct enemy and make sure you have a team that can face any type you'll come across. I do kinda wish this system was needed a bit more. The combat is at its best when you use all these features but I found I didn't really need to. Boss fights did require them occasionally but for 99% of the battles I was able to win by switching to "auto mode" and just spamming basic attacks. Although that might have been because I was OP.
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Like WAY OP. And that's because of how you level up.

​Yeah, you guessed it, it's time to get to the reason you buy this game. The fan service. Now don't get me wrong, the game is a fun little JRPG regardless. It does everything solidly, if a little generic, and has really great characters and interactions. But it's probably the fan service that will make this one a "buy" or "avoid" for most people. It runs through everything in the game, from the cute barely dressed character designs, to Ottons perversions, to the sexy animations, it's a constant. Even simple mechanics become sexual in this game and I, for one, think it's about bloody time!
 
So we were talking about levelling up and how I became OP yes? Well let me tell you. Like most RPG games, as you fight and stuff you earn experience to level up your character. Now usually you'd get enough points, your character would advance a level and their stats would increase, and that would be that. Not in Seven Pirates H it isn't!
 
When you get enough experience you earn an "H training extract" for the relevant character. This can be used in the options to level up in a very special way. Remember way back when I mentioned the "Booby training system" that Otton had? Well this is it. You get a REALLY well done picture of each girl, up close, in their underwear and doing a sexy little pose. They're blushing, embarrassed but also turned on, filled with anticipation for what comes next… And what comes next is good!
 
A minigame of sorts appears where you must rub the extract into the willing oppai of each girl. Each movement will have a different cosmetic effect and increase a different stat. Pushing both boobs upwards for instance will increase the perkiness and her attack power. Rotating the breasts will increase the size and her maximum HP. Size, height, perkiness, cleavage, softness and firmness can all be affected and will increase different stats as they're increased or decreased.
 
Even better though, you don't just pick an option from a drop down menu. No no no, we go full Hentai mode here and must do each input manually. Pushing the sticks apart separates them puppies, increasing cleavage, while pushing them together lowers it. Clicking the stick buttons pinches her mummy buttons, increasing the softness. Every manipulation increases some stat, as I said, but is also accompanied with the relevant horny animation and sexy cute gasps of pleasure that wouldn't be out of place in one of the highest quality of Japan's finest exports. Hell you can even dial the immersion up to 11 by using the touch screen and actually do all these actions for real. Jiggle, pinch, push and squeeze till you're completely satisfied. The corresponding visual changes carry over into the game too, updating character models with the new breast shape, form and size. There are even items to only change the appearance, allowing you create any type of breasts you like. Prefer small and perky? You got it! Big and bouncy? You got it! Pointing to towards the sky, or swinging low, you can can customise those bazongas anyway you want.

Now isn't that a better way to upgrade you character than just changing a number? Why don't all games do this ffs!
 
There's also another little thing that might take up your time too. Another mechanic that should be mandatory, especially in this day and age. It applies to loot boxes.
 
Now don't panic, Seven Pirates H doesn't have micro transactions. You can’t buy loot boxes or anything like that so no worries. But what it does have, is monster eggs. When you defeat an opponent in combat, there's a slight chance you'll be rewarded with an egg. I had quite a few of these collected before I had the opportunity to start "cracking" them and I'm glad I did. You know how in a usual game with loot boxes you'll get a flashy animation, some bright particle effects, and crazy sounds going? Well here they do it much better.
 
To open the eggs, which basically act like loot boxes, you place them between the dirty pillows of you favourite girl and, using the sticks to manipulate those fun bags, you squeeze them together breaking the egg. Not only do you get the lovely animation of all this happening, and a cute sexy little gasp of pleasure, but you've a good chance of getting an in-game item too. Healing potions, revives, ingredients and even new stat boosting underwear can be given as rewards depending on your luck.
 
You can also get nothing too though.
 
But don't be sad, the game shows true genius here too, turning the bad into the good through the magical power of boobies. If you get a dud egg, instead of being rewarded with an item, the egg will instead crack open covering the girl in sticky egg white. Oh, and giving us a cute pic of it too, along with a tongue out, cheeks red type poses as well!
Ultimately, Seven Pirates H is a great little game if you're looking from a traditional JRPG with loads of fan service. Breasts are a huge focus, with "essential to the experience" minigames based entirely around playing with them. Character models will change depending on subtle manipulations you make to them. The character of Otton makes pervy conversation ripped straight from the best anime and the girls fit every anime "type" you've ever encountered. But there's more to it than just boobs. The interactions between the team members were really well done, with funny moments, cute moments, teetee moments and more all excellently written. The character models, although obviously still close to the PSVita version roots, are really detailed too with jiggle physics and facial expressions being top class. Gameplay itself, although firmly in the traditional mode and pretty linear, is firmly entertaining with enough going on to make each area interesting enough to explore. Combat too, while not adding anything new and being a little too easy, is still engaging and the pheromone system gives a little twist that can increase the attention needed. I think for most people though, it'll be the fan service that makes or breaks this one for you. Without it, this one would be more of a mid-tier experience. If you love fanservice though, this is definitely one for you!

*Note: A copy of the game was provided for the purpose of the review.
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FINAL SCORE: 8/10

+Great Character designs
+Excellent dialogue between the girls +Levelling up is hella fun!
+Plenty of fan service
+Jiggling Jubblies

​-A little linear
-Combat could be more challenging