Sweet Home

 I knew I was going to get here eventually.

For what feels like a decade now, I've heard about Sweet Home, the NES game that served as the basis for Resident Evil. It's one of those games I knew I was eventually going to review, and it looks like now is the time. I think a lot of gamers know the story by now. Resident Evil started as a remake of Sweet Home, with the latter's director Tokuro Fujiwara working with the former's originator Shinji Mikami. After realizing the technical limitations of the relatively new PlayStation hardware, as well as a variety of other snags, the project evolved into the zombie-filled survival-horror icon we know and love. It's a title that most people know is influential, even if all they know about it is its name.  

You know, for all of the talk about how influential it is, I barely knew anything about Sweet Home's gameplay. I was totally expecting some level of action game, maybe akin to the original Metal Gear. I was shocked, pleasantly so, to find that Sweet Home is actually a fairly traditional JRPG. I guess that helps explain why I like Resident Evil so much despite not really being a fan of third person shooters or horror? Maybe? Its gameplay is far more similar to old school Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest than it is to its spiritual successor. At least on the surface. The game also offers tons of survival horror aspects as well, including a limited inventory and an emphasis on puzzle solving. There's also a lot of MetroidVania elements, though Sweet Home did come out after the original Metroid. If there was one thing that I took away from this playthrough, it's that Sweet Home may actually be more influential than it is made out to be. This is so much more than the game that evolved into Resident Evil, Sweet Home was an outstanding game that was far ahead of its time in just about every aspect.

The influence on Resident Evil is very obvious, from the door opening animations to the horror elements to the lack of inventory space. The madman enemies who's reveal animation is reminiscent of the first zombie, the notes about houses of residing evil, the pseudo-quick time events, it all started here. But it's so much more than that. It helped further cement RPG elements that were new to the genre at the time. It was one of the first games to have permanent character death. Its horror elements were truly grisly, far more disturbing than what you would ever see in most Famicom games, or any NES games (this is a large part of why it never made it to the U.S., Nintendo of America would have never, EVER licensed Sweet Home). It's layout, with backtracking and opening new areas with new items, was hugely influential to MetroidVania games. It's frequent party switching, varied combat options, unique characters and stat building were influential for RPGs. Hell, it was even influential beyond the scope of video games. Sweet Home was developed alongside and released in conjunction with a feature film of the same name, a collaboration like that between gaming and film was unheard of at the time. It was one of the earliest games to have an English translation patch, created by fans as early as 2000. Full disclosure, that's the version I played, I try to stick to original hardware but I don't own a Famicom or speak Japanese. I should also mention, I am probably going to use "NES" and "Famicom" interchangeably here, I know they aren't the same but they kind of are. Either way, it's pretty clear to see that Sweet Home was incredibly innovative and its influence extends far beyond Resident Evil.

But just because something is influential doesn't make it good. The original Street Fighter was hugely innovative, but it's also hugely terrible. Fortunately, that isn't the case here. Sweet Home is excellent and stands on its own merits as a game. It's challenging and requires a huge amount of patience, but this may have found its way into a spot on my top 20, maybe even top 10, NES/Famicom games of all time. You take control of a team of five documentary filmmakers, looking to recover the lost frescos of renowned painter Ichiro Mamiya. Mamiya hid these frescos throughout his huge mansion before he mysteriously disappeared 30 years prior. The crew enters the mansion, only to have its entrance cave in, preventing their escape. Worse, a vengeful spirit appears before them, threatening to kill anyone who may enter the home. The crew decide they need to find a way to escape, and escape fast.

Your party consists of five characters, each of whom carry a unique item that will help you escape the treacherous mansion. Kazuo carries a lighter, which can light candles and burn away ropes. Akiko is the team's healer; her med kit can cure status effects like poison and curse. Taro is the camera man, he can photograph frescos to help reveals clues to escape, as well as damage some enemies. Asuka carries a vacuum, which can clean the broken glass that will frequently block your path. Emi, the original master of unlocking, has a skeleton key that can open basic locked doors (sorry Jill, you've got nothing on Emi-Chan). If any of these characters die, either in battle or during an overworld event, they are gone for good and their item is gone with them. Of course, you can find replacements for each throughout the mansion. But then you have an item taking up space in your inventory, which is already limited to two. You can have up to three party members travel together at a time, so you will always have uneven teams. Enemies are dangerous and death lurks around every corner, so you need to move deliberately and choose which items you carry carefully. Some items will allow you to pass over unsafe terrain or clear obstructions, while others are specifically used for solving puzzles.

The controls are pretty solid and while the menu system is clunky by modern standards, I think it's as good as they were going to get on a controller with two buttons. You can do quite a lot, though activating some of these commands require you to be in a very specific position and make a few button presses. The "team" command will allow your selected character to either leave or join the group they are currently with. "Party" will bring up a list of all of your party members, which will allow you to choose which one you are controlling. "Item" allows you to use items, thought it gets a little weird here because you pick things up by standing next to them and selecting an inventory slot. "Talk" allows you to interact with NPCs while "look" allows you to investigate objects. Again, that's a lot for a 3rd generation title and there are some issues, mainly with picking up items and how clunky it is to switch characters. But once you get it down, it's not a major issue. The biggest issue here is the impact to pacing, as it requires quite a few button presses to switch around party members and you are going to have to do that a lot. It really slows things down in a game that's already slow-paced. You can also press B to bring up your character's stats, health, prayer points and status, which is nice, because you are really going to need to keep on top of this stuff.

On its surface, Sweet Home's gameplay is pretty similar to most RPGs of its era. You explore the mansion with an overhead perspective and enter battles via random encounters (with the occasional touch-based encounter thrown in). You will never fight more than one at a time. You have the option to attack or defend, as well as pray, which works sort of like magic. You can also call party members, using this command will allow you to have all five in battle at once, and use items. Healing items are rare, but they do exist, and some other items can be used to attack. While it does technically play like an RPG, Sweet Home is very different in practice. As previously mentioned, there are very few healing items and no shops to buy anything. You can't just stock up on potions. Enemies do give you experience when defeated, but they don't drop anything. So, you have to conserve your resources and prayer points. The enemies aren't super challenging, but they will chip away at your health. So, you need to decide whether or not it's worth fighting them. Sounds kind of like a survival horror game. But you also have to keep your characters leveled up. If you are under-leveled when you enter a new area, the enemies are going to crush you and you will have to go back and grind. It makes for a unique gameplay experience and adds to the tension of the already oppressive atmosphere.

   

Exploration is far more complex, and critical, than it was in RPGs of the era. Obviously, Sweet Home doesn't follow the town, dungeon, town progression that most of its contemporaries did. The mansion is more akin to a Metroidvania map, with various areas blocked off by a skill or item check. Old games with puzzle solving can be very obtuse, but its generally pretty obvious which items are used for what and the clues from the frescos tend to be very clear. Believe it or not, there are actually quite a few NPCs to encounter. Not all of the possessed dolls and zombies you encounter are hostile and, in fact, many of them will offer encouragement or hints if you speak to them. Of course, exploration is also very dangerous here. You will have to deal with quicksand and water that can kill you, or brambles that damage you, as well as collapsing floors that your characters can fall down. Spirits will sometimes grab unsuspecting party members, carrying them off to a faraway location in the mansion. That's a major problem, as it's really not good to be alone here. But the biggest standouts here are the pseudo-quick time events that can damage your party. Every so often, a light fixture will fall, or a booby trap will fire a blade and it's up to you to either dodge, duck or pray to escape. You usually don't get punished too harshly for failing but again, it's really difficult to manage your health here so you don't want to miss.

The graphics are incredible and I think Sweet Home may be the best looking Famicom/NES game I've seen. The overworld screen is solid, it looks like a pretty high end 8-bit title and does a great job using lighting and color to convey a creepy atmosphere. The lightning strikes and blazing torches look especially good. But it's the battle scenes where the game really stands out. The enemy sprites are detailed and probably some of the prettiest (well, ugliest) I've ever seen. Some of these monsters, like the maniacs, are truly grotesque and intimidating. The sound is also great, it does a really good job of building tension with a mix of brooding and upbeat tracks. Really, the presentation is unmatched for the era and I can definitely tell why the people who worked on it wanted to see what they could do with a little bit better technology.

The biggest flaws in Sweet Home come from the pacing. The game is very deliberate by design and you will spend a lot of time switching around party members and moving your split parties in unison. This is compounded by a huge random encounter rate. In a more traditional RPG, this can work because you are constantly moving forward, so even when you stop to fight you still feel like you are making progress. But because this game is stuctured more like a survival horror or Metroidvania, you are constantly backtracking. That means that you are going to be fighting a lot of the same monsters over and over again, and your time is going to get sucked up by fighting enemies you out leveled long ago. Part of this was on me, I had to take off my RPG player "fight everything that you encounter for experience" hat and put on my survival horror "it's okay to run away" one. But running away is a lot more simple in a game where you aren't taking a full minute to enter and exit a battle screen. The other issue, and this is common for old games, is that it doesn't always tell you what the items do. At least the hints and directions are clear, that wasn't always a given at the time, but some of the item use is really trial and error.

Finally, it is very difficult, as games from this era tend to be. As I alluded to before, you kind of have to forget you are playing an RPG and approach it like a survival horror game, but not so much so that you aren't gaining levels. The mansion is huge and exploring it will take quite a while, and even weaker enemies will eventually start chipping away at your limited resources. The permadeath is particularly brutal, losing a character isn't something that happens often but when it does it can potentially be gamebreaking. I'm telling you right now, if Akiko dies, just reset the game and load up your last save, because your chances of beating it without her hover somewhere around 0.

None of that changes the fact that Sweet Home was an excellent game. I know it's influential, but Sweet Home would have been a top tier 3rd gen game if it didn't influence a thing. It's an excellent title by it's own merits that's still worth playing, even 30 plus years later. It requires a lot of patience, but any old school RPG fan should give Sweet Home a try, as should any die-hard Resident Evil or survival horror fan who wants to go back to the series'/genre's roots.

9.25/10