Sweet Home may be a goofy name for a game, but it’s one you hear thrown around a lot when discussing Japanese imports. This role playing game from Capcom never saw the light of day when it released on the Nintendo Famicom home console in 1989. It’s noteworthy for a couple of reasons. First off it’s the title Capcom cites as the main inspiration for the Resident Evil series (although anyone who has played the original Alone in the Dark knows this is clearly a lie). Secondly, this is a horror RPG based off of a film license and it’s widely accepted that it blows past the source material. I’ve long been interested in giving Sweet Home a go given that it combines two of my favorite genres into one. I’ve been a big time procrastinator. That is, until now. Today let’s take a look at this unusual and obscure Capcom classic.
Five documentary filmmakers have it in their minds to investigate the mysterious and supposedly haunted Mamiya mansion. Thirty years prior a famous artist named Ichiro Mamiya went missing here leaving behind several of his frescos leaving everyone to guess what happened to him. This documentary crew is dedicated to solving the mystery, and upon entering are trapped within by the ghost of Ichiro’s wife who informs them that they won’t escape alive. Our protagonists soon discover the house is teeming with ghouls and ghosts and the way forward will require them to solve the mystery all the while fighting for their lives. The characters don’t really contribute much to the scenario and are simply there as vessels to keep the story moving. Sweet Home is entirely about the Mamiya family and the grisly goings on within the mansion. A ‘sweet home’ this most certainly is not.
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| The frescoes pretty much all look the same. |
As I mentioned there are playable characters in this game, but you can only travel in a party of up to three. Sweet Home makes use of a unique system where you switch between the heroes who can move in two teams or even entirely separate from one another. That last option isn’t a wise one, because within the walls of this dilapidated lies many strong monsters that are out to get you and your friends. Outside of a few cases (where the enemy avatar chases you on-screen) battles occur at random just like in Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest. At this point you’re whisked away to another screen, shown the enemy you’re fighting, and can then input commands which include the typical attack, tool, run, etc. The action is strictly turn based, and the battle ends only when your characters all die, you run, or the enemy perishes. This is a more modern take on the role playing genre and so your characters don’t have magic per se, and their only special move is to pray which engages a bar to fill and you must time your button press for maximum effect. It’s a powerful move, but is limited by prayer points and you’ve only one way to restore them. That means you can’t squander them.
There are several things that set Sweet Home apart from its contemporaries. First of all there is no in-game currency. That means no shops, and also means no grinding to earn money. Every item you find in the game is found laying either on the floor or on a table. This also means you cannot purchase healing items which in this game take the form of tonics. The game has only a handful of these precious potions, but by the end of the game I had a few left in my inventory and was never particularly worried. The limitation does keep your stockpile in the back of your head the whole story through, and really charges you to think about if using one is the best idea. Each character has their own special tool that will be required to get past obstacles at certain points in the adventure, and they can only carry three other items (including their weapon) at a time. Whenever you pick something up you can drop something else and come back for it later. This forces you to make tough decisions and remember where key items lay. This adds tremendous tension to the experience.
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| Enemies start off easy but get more and more difficult. |
And finally, you can only have three different characters in your party. This means that you can switch freely between different groups and even make everyone go solo. During battle should you encounter a particularly strong opponent you can use the call command which makes you take control as the character you’ve selected as they make their way to the engaged party to join in the action. This is easily the best and most unique element of the game. It requires smart planning because everyone has their exclusive tool, and constant management between at least two different groups. What’s more is that when your characters run out of hit points they actually die. For good. They’re no longer a part of the story. You can find a variation on their tool so that you can still move forward, but it takes up an item slot and you’re down a party member. This, too, ups the ante in terms of suspense. There’s nothing more stressful than being low on tonics when someone is close to death.
Sweet Home’s graphics are pretty decent most of the time. The only issue I have is that, with the overhead perspective, the character view is a bit wonky and unusual which is off-putting. The characters are all easily distinguishable from one another outside of battle, and the various areas in the Mamiya mansion are distinct and highly detailed for an eight bit game. The enemy designs are where Sweet Home really shines. Many of these are animated while others are huge and take up significant real-estate on the screen. I particularly like the zombies crawling on the ground or the demon with the pulsating bumps on its skin. A lot of these monsters are palette swaps, but I don’t care because they’re so well done and the most gruesome I’ve seen on the system. The soundtrack manages to be plenty spooky despite the hardware limitations. The music gets faster and more high pitched the deeper into the mansion you go which really creates an unpleasant sense of urgency.
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| The Mamiya Mansion would make the Spencer Mansion blush. |
It’s not the best RPG as I’ve seen claimed all over the internet, but Sweet Home mostly lives up to the hype of its fans. I was genuinely spooked by the end of this macabre quest and found some of of the party’s objectives to be disturbing (particularly when digging up a grave on an island in the lake area.) The role playing conventions are very tight and focused here. You can really feel your party becoming stronger as you enter areas, struggle for a few battles, and then find new equipment and/or level up. It’s a rewarding system. It’s also a simple one; the lack of stores, towns, etc. Is sure to turn some gamers off but I didn’t care at all about their absence. Sweet Home is a very focused game that’s mostly about telling a ghostly story sprinkled with battles against memorably gruesome and haunting foes. It’s a great game even if it is overrated a fair amount by its rabid fanbase. Regardless, Sweet Home is one of the best role playing games for the original Nintendo. It’s also one of the greatest survival horror titles I’ve played.
