Topic: Something for Haunting Ground fans

[Pentagram-cracker]

I'm not sure if most people here have played Haunting Ground, it was a survival horror game released by Capcom about a young girl trapped in  a castle with a dog and they had to work together to escape from the psychotic servants who wanted to kill her.

Anyways one of the villains was a woman named Daniella, who was a homunculus working as a maid in the castle. In Alchemy a homunculus is a man-made human who has ties to the mandragora, plant which has human-looking roots that alchemists believed were created from the sperm of hangmen that fell to the earth. It was believed that homunculi have no souls or moral concious, which was a lot like Daniella as she was this creepy unemotional maid who could not feel pain or pleasure and wanted to murder the heroine Fiona out of jealously for being human and having the gift of feeling.

Anyways after doing research on this website the Alraune (aka Venus Weeds) are based on that concept, as it was inspired by the female villain of the novel of the same name about a girl created by a scientist from taking the sperm of a hanged murderer and implanting it in a prostitute to to see if a child born of evil parents could turn out to be good if raised under the right conditions, but ultimately the girl turned out to be a monster who commited horrible crimes.

I wonder if the character Daniella was also inspired by this? It seems very possible. Here is a picture of her BTW

[X]

Maybe it's just me, but her head size is just a little too big for her body. Interesting picture though. looks almost like those ninja maids from CV Chronicles. Her hair-style reminds me of the woman cultest leader, Celia from DoS.

-X

[Pentagram-cracker]

Oh I forgot to mention that it's implied that Daniella was created from a mandragora plant, and there's a whole garden of mandragora in the game that Daniella watches over. When you pick one the human-faced root will scream and alert Daniella of your whereabouts.

Anyways that's where I got the idea that Daniella was inspired by Alraune, as Alraune means Mandragora in German. Alraune was also a homunculus.

[shelverton.]

I never played Haunting Ground, but I really want to. It's very hard to find a copy in my part of the world though, and whenever I stumble upon one it's usually grossly overpriced.

I did however play Clock Tower 3 (also by Capcom), and by the look of if, Haunting Ground is arguably a spiritual successor. I sometimes wonder if it was actually meant to be Clock Tower 4... dunno.

[Pentagram-cracker]

Well actually Haunting Ground was originally intended to be Clock Tower 4, but the creators decided to make it a seperate game instead. It plays just like Clock Tower 3, only it's a zillion times better in my opinion. I never played any of the games before CT3, but CT3 got a bit silly sometimes. Like when you fight bosses using a magical bow that shoots light arrows. I perfer Haunting Ground because it's more like an old slasher movie where an ordinary girl (with no magic powers) gets trapped in a creepy castle full of psychos wanting to kill her, and her only friend is a dog. They also made the dog Hewie behave very realistically.

I think Haunting Ground was a very underrated game, and it sickens me to think that games like Dead Space and Resident Evil 5 are considered "great horror games" when there's nothing at all scary about them. 

[shelverton.]

Oh, that explains it!

Anyway, I completely agree. Dead Space was somewhat unsettling, but it didn't really freak me out like some reviews would have me believe. And don't get me started on Resident Evil 5... To me it's a straight forward action game with antiquated controls and pretty graphics. That's about it.

Speaking of Haunting Ground always make me think of another PS2 survival horror game called Rule of Rose. Did you play it? It's next to impossible to find in Europe since it was banned everywhere (except in France I think). I heard it wasn't very good, but I'm still looking for it subconsciously... dunno if it's worth the hefty price tag though.

On the subject of girls in survival horror..., I like the Fatal Frame games (Or Project Zero as they're called here). I wonder why Fatal Frame 4 was never released outside Japan

[Pentagram-cracker]

Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy Resident Evil 5. But it shouldn't be called a horror game. Capcom should just admit they've changed Resident Evil into a pure action shooter instead of trying to pass it off as survival horror in their advertisements.

And yeah I've played Rule of Rose, it was released here in the US by a company called Atlas who bought the rights from Sony Japan. To be honest I didn't really like it. I wanted to like it because the idea of playing a horror game set in the 1930's with a Dark Fairy Tale setting intrigued me, but the game had a lot of flaws. For example there was hardly any voice acting except for the cutscenes, most of the conversations were text only. It's near impossible to kill enemies and some are ludicrously overpowered, like for example you could hit enemies with a weapon and watch it go through them without doing any damage. Also you can go through the entire game without even needing to find items like health and weapons, and because they're all hidden you have to get Brown to find everything and it can be a pain in the butt to follow him everywhere. The environments aren't really that interesting (most of the game is set in a giant airship). The only good thing about the game was the plot, which was really deep and had a nice twist in the end. But it can also be very confusing, and a great plot isn't enough to make up for crappy gameplay in my opinion.

And yeah I love Fatal Frame too! Honestly the reason I think FF4 was released in Japan only is because ever since Resident Evil 4 was released and became such a huge success, all these companies have decided that American and European fans only want to play horror games that are more about action then scares. So now every so-called "horror" game tries to copy Resident Evil 4, and thus was the end of the traditional horror games we've all loved. Since real survival horror games are considered "too Japanese" for Western gamers they rarely get released outside Japan anymore. =/