Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters is certainly one of the most unique titles the Vita has seen or will see by far, and while it can take an astronomical amount of getting used to, it's absolutely worth investing time in.
A Japanese take on the Ghostbusters, sacrificing graphics for functionality. A fun game that can be done in doses, and with a story that will keep you wanting to come back for the next dose. Great for visual novel fans, or those looking for a different kind of RPG.
This is a fun game but kind of on the short side. The visual novel portions are not very long, and it is broken into many different episodes. Each episode culminates in a boss battle. I read a lot of reviews saying this game was difficult before I bought it, which made me all the more excited for it. After beating the game I have to say that after the first battle this game becomes incredibly easy to play and beat because you figured out how to predict your enemies next attacks. Sure it may be hard for some people, but because chess is hard for some people that doesn't mean it is a terrible game. I enjoyed this game a lot, and I think that the things that can be improved upon are dramatically outweighed by the fact that the developers went out of their way to create a game that is fun and exciting.
Another concern people have about this game is that there are not really any tutorials, and since I never have enjoyed tutorial sections in games before and always skip them when I can this is a welcome relief. For me this game is a ten, but you might not enjoy it as much as I did. Do more research before buying this game because it is not the most user friendly game.
Great Episodic Visual Novel about ghosts with Oui-Ja ghost battles.
It take a few moves to understand the battle system and the emotional wheel but they add to the atmosphere of the game.
I wrote "episodic".
This is clearly a positive point, because the battle system gets repetitive towards the end. But as it is episodic I didn't have to beat the game straight. One episode once in a while, like a japanese anime. It felt perfect.
The main characters are cool, the story is interesting with high parts and correct ones but as a whole this is a must try.
A different experience is always welcome.
Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters is a nice addition to the Vita’s library, and is different from most games that are being released for the system lately - just don’t expect to be too impressed; ghosts exist, and middling games as well.
Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters tells a great story well and sets a new graphical standard for visual novels. Sadly its attempts to provide more player choice and agency fall flat, both in terms of vague (often creepy!) character interactions and tedious turn-based combat.
It's cool that Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters is trying to make something out of the visual novel that's more than historical dramas or tales involving barely pubescent schoolgirls, but ultimately, it doesn't seem like the end result matched the goal.
Kudos to the arc and toybox companies for coming up with the first original concept for a game in a looooooong time. The game itself is essentially a board game slammed together with a tactical rpg and married with a virtual novel. It works really well!
Positives: The characters for the VN portions are actively animated using an art style that is very visually pleasing, The games dialogue is very well translated and does not suffer from the "engrish" problem in so many new JRPG north American releases, the atmosphere of the game matches perfectly with the story line, and they got Uematsu-san to do the music for the game (for those of you who don't know this means its gold), the characters are well emoted and can be really silly and/or otaku which i find quite well done considering the possible derailment of such a title with these antics
Negatives: alot of the game mechanics you will need to learn from trial and error as the games built in guide explains NOTHING clearly (I ended up licking a character I was speaking to accidentally...yeah), The battles you will never get particularly good at as many aspects of it revolve around luck (this can also be a positive as it also means they never get really boring), and the game has absolutely NO back story to the main character and his entrance into the core group is forced at best.
overall i recomend this game to those who are tired of playing the same tropey crap and would like an interesting experience (buy it on playstation network tho as its nearly 20 dollars cheaper than retail[canada])
I really wanted to like this game. The animated graphics are beautiful, and I'm really big into visual novels, horror AND strategy RPGs.
The problem is, the game isn't particularly interesting, and doesn't do any of the above points well. You'll spend most of your time grinding mini-games so that you can get the ending that you want, and even then the relationship system is notoriously wonky. The characters have no depth beyond the first few chapters, the dialogue devolves into that generic JRPG style. A rockstar being like "I like to rock!" and then your crew is like "man he likes to rock!"
Way more Ghostbusters than horror, it's not particularly scary, although the game sets it up with a serious tone in the first chapter. Why? The story doesn't go anywhere after characters are introduced, it's mostly just a "Creature of the week" TV show in game form.
I felt like combat was actually the most fun part of the game, but the amount of grinding you have to do to have one fight per chapter becomes too tedious. There's a crafting system, store and other things going on, but just literally can't... buy stuff. I've been using the same weapon for 4 chapters because there's literally nothing I can do to upgrade it. The game goes from 2-shotting ghosts, to being 2-shot BY ghosts. I wouldn't particularly mind the difficulty curve, but ultimately combat relies on you cheesing the fights. Either you'll be frustrated and not know what to do, or they'll be so easy that combat won't be fun. It's not very tactical.
Bad Story? Check
Bad controls? Check.
bad gameplay? Check.
Completely uninteresting opening? Check.
This was a pretty disappointing playthrough, I wanted to play some other VNs but nothing about the storyline was gripping and once I got to the gameplay portion it was just bland, uninteresting and didn't make sense. Really my only positive is that the graphics looked pretty good, so it's clear some sort of effort was put into this by some people.