Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters Review (PS3)
There was a recent influx of games with Tokyo in the title, from the action mecha game Damascus Gear: Operation Tokyo, to the upcoming dungeon crawler sequel to Demon Gaze called Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy, to Tokyo Dark a new Kickstarter adventure game. Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters on the other hand is a visual novel RPG hybrid that has a unique approach, but ultimately may alienate some gamers.
After transferring to the Kurenai High School in Shinjuku, you are soon plunged into the world of ghost hunting. After helping exorcise a ghost on the school grounds, you are quickly recruited by the Gate Keepers to work as occult newspaper journalist by day, ghost buster by night.
The story is broken up into 13 episodes each with an opening and ending scene, making it feel like a season of your favorite anime. Episodes are more or less self-contained, as you will be hunting different types of vengeful ghosts each time, most with an interesting back story. In one episode you will encounter a ghost of a loved one unable to let go, while in another you must stop the ghost of a guitarist who haunts the band during concerts.
Throughout these episodes new people will join your ghost hunting ranks. They are a wacky bunch and include your tsundere classmate, a sci-fi geek, the money obsessed editor, and the cute but mysterious cat which sometimes tags with you during missions.
For a visual novel there is quite a bit of interactivity. After inputting your name, surname, prefecture, favorite class, height, weight, you are also asked some creepy questions such as your blood type and eye ware prescription. Aside from the traditional choices you get from time to time, Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters also features an innovative albeit confusing conversation wheel. At set points in the story you get to choose from five emotions: love, friendship, sadness, anger and thought. Immediately after that you have to choose one of your five senses – touch, taste, smell, sound, sight. Depending on what you selected your character will interact differently with that person. Select love and taste and you will have you smooching the person you are talking to, but selecting anger and taste will have you biting them.
The problem with this system comes from the fact it is never explained. You are never told what option does what and if it actually ever impacts the story. What makes things worse is that you cannot save whenever you want like in other visual novels, but only once you arrive at the office after which its action time.
Battles against ghosts play out on Ouija Pad. However unlike in typical SRPGs, all turns are played out at the same time, so if you are not careful you will be hacking away at random desks instead of the ghost.
Since attacking, moving and even turning all use AP points, you won’t always be able to attack the enemy during every turn, even when he is near you. You will have to play intelligently and position and rotate your allies so that they will stand a fighting chance. Different weapons hit at a different range covering multiple squares, so it’s worth balancing out your team.
The maps have a fog of war so you mustn’t let the ghost out of sight once you find him. Helping you with this are various items as well as clues to where the ghost may be. Sometimes even your trusty cat comes to the rescue helping you see ghosts. Once you find a ghost you will be able to see its possible move area, which will allow you to predict where it may go, allowing you to attack those points in hope of hitting it. This all makes the game feel like a chess match where you have to anticipate the opponent’s upcoming turn.
All missions have a time limit, which can make things challenging when the ghost keeps running away. However, before every mission you can place a number of traps on the map. These range from salts that prevent the ghost from stepping on that tile, to decoys and traps that paralyze the ghost. Tactically placing these will give you an upper hand during these difficult battles. Like I said it’s very easy to attack the wrong location and attack a random object in the location. Get ready to pay off any damages you do during the exorcism as they will be deducted from your pay.
At first the combat felt very frustrating, I even managed to fail the introduction mission, however once you get deeper into the game everything clicks into place. This is mainly because the game forces you to figure out things on your own.
Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters does a phenomenal job tying in the story and world with its gameplay, as it never once felt out of place. The backgrounds feature filtered photographs, while the characters are stylized and fully animated, reacting differently depending on your remarks.
Everything feels like part of the world. There are no menus. Getting to your mission has you hopping in your van, as you shop your receipt will grow, battles are done on a digital board, accepting side missions is done via the in-game website, character stats are shown on their resumes and even save games are posters you slap onto the walls.
Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters does lack in the voice acting department, and aside from the occasional grunt or catch phrase everyone is silent. Also some things were lost in translation, such as puns that now make little sense in English.
Initially I was concerned that Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters might be a frustrating experience, but after some time it started to grow on me. And while on their own neither the story nor RPG elements live up to the standards set in respective genres, they manage to mesh surprisingly well – never feeling out of place. The lack of explanations and the rather challenging battles are bound to put off quite a number of players. However if you are up for some ghost hunting with a very tight presentation, look no further.
Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters is available for both the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita.
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