Game

Game

Game

Game

More Saturn masteries, this one is “The Mansion of Hidden Souls”, or as I called it cause of that terrible title screen font, “the mansion of kitten souls”. It’s a sequel to the Sega CD game “Mansion of Hidden Souls”. Uh, yeah. Can you see the problem? This is a DIRECT sequel, it is NOT the same game. Why is the name exactly the same but with “the” on the front? Is this Suicide Squad??

So yeah, the first game was a point and clicky style adventure game where you wandered a mansion filled with butterflies, and tried to save your sister who had wandered in. There’s a sense of urgency, because if you can’t solve the game’s puzzles and tricks before time is up, your sister, and then you, will be turned into a butterfly, giving up your humanity. It’s an interesting game, got that horror vibe, but isn’t quite scary.

This game uh, is a bit… less than that. In here, some time has passed, and the mansion is filled with new inhabitants, all new characters. You play as Jun, a butterfly of indeterminate gender, and you’re trailed by Mike, another butterfly living here. The two of you are tasked by the Elder to investigate the blood red moon that hangs over the mansion, and implies a bad omen.

You walk around the mansion with the d-pad, open your inventory with Y, and respond to questions yes or no, A or C. And that’s all the controls. The game is then just go into each character’s room and interact with them, as the story progresses around you. It’s not a BAD story, but the game is literally just walking through event flags for an hour. That’s not particularly interesting, especially compared to the first game. There’s a SINGLE puzzle, an item you need to find in your room to pay a character for information. And that’s not even really a puzzle lol. There’s no urgency like the first game, you can wander around the mansion as long as you’d like, even though characters are like “omg the mansion is gonna be destroyed”, so that element is out.

All the while, these weird floating heads talk at you with no regard for lip syncing, like they’re warcraft 3 muppets. The first game had characters you met and talked to, but they just showed as butterflies. Here, they’re still butterflies, but you see their human heads, which is weird cause these are characters who literally gave up their humanity to live forever as butterflies. It doesn’t quite work, and is mostly humorous. The game isn’t HORROR, really, but it does have a creepy vibe, which is ruined as this muppet yaps at me.

The only other thing to really do, besides the story, is give yes or no answers to people. You can be nice, or you can be a dick. If you’re entirely nice, the tarot card used to define you changes from the Star to Judgement. And if you’re a dick, it turns to the Devil. Does this effect anything? Not really. But I had to play the game multiple times to get this, anyway, cause achievement set!

This is a bit of a disappointment compared to the first game, which I enjoyed. The early 3D CGI pre-rendered Myst-ass environments are still amazing, and I love them a lot, but everything else is really lacking. Even the characters are mostly just tropey, and one is a REALLY racist caricature that I hate looking at, with his shiny red nose and buck teeth. Whoof. I’m not alone in my opinions though, the first game got a “oh this is neat”, but this one received pretty universal “meh”s. Eh, unfortunate. I’ll have to check out the third game in this series though, Lunacy Torico, which is less a direct sequel and more a spiritual one.