With all the fast-paced games out there - whether it's shooting some terrorists in Call of Duty, jumping on Goombas as Mario or settling some friendly disputes in Smash Bros. - it's sometimes nice to unwind with a slower, more story driven title. And few are more story-driven than a good old visual novel - a wordy, slow-paced genre that's only really found its way out of Japan in recent years. Kind of like a choose-your-own adventure book, you simply sit back and read your way through the game, choosing a few conversational options here and there to nudge the tale in different directions. Mixing a visual novel with some turn based battles, Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters is the newest kid on the block - but is it any good?
Anything that has a tea club must be good, right?
Like almost every game to come out of Japan in the past ten years, you play as a high school student - this time called Ryusuke Touma - who's just recently transferred to the Kurenai Academy in Japan. From there, it morphs into a classic tale of boy meets girl, boy meets boy who soon becomes BFF and parter in crime, then boy meets an older lady who runs an occult magazine-come-ghost hunting business - you know, the classic setup. Essentially a Japanese high-school take on Scooby Doo, you soon find out that the lady just happens to employ your new friend, and is in need of a second pair of ghost-spotting eyes. Yours, as it turns out.
The magazine, Gate Keepers Inc, takes care of the many ghosts that terrorise the people of Tokyo, exorcising them in return for cold, hard cash. Bookended by an intro song and ending credits, in a manner similar to an animé series, each of the game's chapters centres around a different ghoul, such as a fiancée who's popped her clogs, and is jealous of her man's new lovers, a mysterious suicide at a school or a deceased guitarist looking for a hit song. Fortunately, there's a few hallmarks to being grabbed by the ghoulies that the victims can remember, such as feeling cold and a strong smell of sulphur mere moments before the attack - at which point it's time to leap in the Mystery Machine and prepare for an exorcism, done through some strategic turn-based battles.
The swine!
But Tokyo Twilight: Ghost Hunters is a visual novel game first and foremost, which means it has a heavy emphasis story, with the bulk of your time spent reading reams and reams of text. And much like other visual novel-type games, at random points in conversations, you'll have a choice of various responses to pick from. Of course, the last thing you want to do is say the wrong thing and stick your foot firmly in your mouth with your team mates - so it's handy that the options you get choose from are all wonderfully descriptive and totally relevant. (We're being sarcastic). Rather than any words, you get a choice between a love heart, a fist, a quizzical face, a crying eye and of course our old favourite, the handshake - and that's not all! Once you've picked one of the above, a second wheel of options appears - this time with pictures of a hand, ear, eye, nose and sticky out tongue to pick from. What? You want to know what they mean, just in case you accidentally end up calling someone's mother a fish? Don't be ridiculous!
Navigating this weird response system can be a bit of a minefield, with what you think you're saying rarely matching up with what you actually do. When meeting our soon-to-be best friend Shiga, we chose handshake, then hand, which - unsurprisingly - saw us shake hands. But when we were tried to thank class president Mifune for showing us around the school, choosing the totally reasonable combo of handshake and mouth (so it'll shake her hand and talk to her, right?), we ended up creeping her out by... licking our lips. We further embarrassed ourselves when we were introduced to Mifune's hot friend and attempted what we thought would be flirty handshake (a combo of love heart and hand) - but found out the hard way that Japanese schoolgirls don't like you stroking their chest before they know your name. Who knew?
Stare, sniff, listen, lick or grope? The choice is yours!
So, the conversation system can be a little bit frustrating, and it ends up feeling like the results of conversations are totally out of your control, even if some characters responses to unsolicited hugs can make you chuckle. Sure, you can open up the chat log and find out precisely what you've actually just done (and make a note for future reference), but that doesn't really help with the inconsistencies. For example, take the combination of fist and mouth. Logically speaking you'd expect it to mean disagreeing with someone, perhaps getting angry, right? And yes, in certain situations it does lead to arguments - but in others, you're just as likely to try to take a bite out of their face to show your displeasure. Admittedly after a while, you'll find the weird meanings start to click, and it's not really all that essential to the overarching story to get your responses "right". Instead, they inject a bit of funny randomness to the proceedings - just try not to awkwardly touch up the object of your affections. Oh, and don't take too long thinking about your answers either, otherwise it'll time out and people will think you're ignoring them!
Much like conversing, Tokyo Twilight's aforementioned turn-based battles can be a bit confusing and random too. When you finally have to face off against the ghost, the game transitions into a gridded floor plans of a haunted room, and gives you a set number of turns in which to move around the map (most of which is clouded out in a "fog of war"), lure out the ghost and defeat them. It's a system that requires a fair amount of strategy - and unfortunately, a large dose of luck too. Before things kick off, you can lay various traps around to try and slow down your ghostly quarry, such as scattering salt around doorways to try and keep them in one room. Then, once your preparations are complete, the turn-based strategy battles take over, as you move your characters a set numbers of spaces around the room, hunting for the ghost that's hiding somewhere inside. Each character has a set number of points to spend each turn, with each square you move, each rotation you make and every attack you make eating up a portion of your total. As each of your characters can only see a certain distance in front of them, its in your interest to split everyone up at the start to cover as much ground as possible, helping you find your ghoul sooner.
Cornering a ghost is harder than we expected...
However, once you've actually found the ghost, it's not as easy as just whipping out a pack and trapping it. Instead, you need to try and attack it, and hit it - which is easier said than done. When you're setting up your attack, the game shows you the area of effect your attack will have, so you can choose the most strategic place to strike - the problem is, the ghost gets to move before you can actually perform the attack you've chosen. Giving the ghost ample opportunity to scoot out the way of your deadly blow, this means you usually need to do two things - one, attack in all different directions rather than concentrating your firepower, and two, try to corner the ghost - which is easier said than done, given that it can move through tables, chairs and even your teammates, or teleport from one side of the room to the other through electricity sockets. The spaces where the ghost is likely to move next are highlighted in blue, while the areas affected by your party members' attacks are shown in green - and your best bet is to try and cover as much of the former with the latter, increasing your chances of hitting the ghost. In practice though, you'll likely do more damage to the surrounding furniture while the ghost slips past to the one square you couldn't cover, waltzing out of sight unscathed, and sending you on wild ghost chase after wild ghost chase until you run out of turns (yes, you have a limited amount of turns to catch it in). Add in the fact that you're penalised for wrecking the joint, and you're likely to come out of every encounter with less money than you went in with - and that's assuming you can find and defeat the ghost in time. As time goes on, you'll probably come up with something approaching a strategy, especially as the story-based battles generally seem easier than the optional side quests you can take on, but it's nowhere near as straight-forward as it probably should be.
While the obtuse conversational options tend to be more entertaining than frustrating, the sheer amount of guesswork involved in Tokyo Twilight's battles hurts the otherwise solid visual novel-type game. It's Scooby Doo, Ghost Busters-esque story and characters are certainly entertaining- it's just a shame that the combat makes no sense, particularly if you're new to strategy type games. Much like the ghosts you're trying to capture, Tokyo Twilight: Ghost Hunters seems a little confused unfortunately, and doesn't quite live up to the likes of Danganronpa, Hakuouki or Virtue's Last Reward. Still, for fans of both visual novels and turn-based strategy games, it may be worth a look - just be prepared to put some time into figuring how things work first.
Format Reviewed: Playstation 3
