If there’s something strange, in your neighborhood, who ya gonna call? Ghost Hunters! Time to strap on your proton packs and go ghost hunting on the mean streets of Tokyo. Join a dysfunctional cast of characters as you go from case to case, solving people’s ghost problems. But does busting make you feel good?
Ghost Hunters is the comedy of Ghostbusters meets the world of anime. You play as a nameless transfer student who gets caught up in a murder mystery at school. Soon you’re recruited by some classmates to join Gate Keepers, a ghost hunting company, to help fix people’s ghost problems.
The game is very linear, essentially playing out like a TV show. Between chapters you get to view the opening theme and ending credits each and every time. Each story case is a chapter, with some of them being longer and shorter than others. You’ll see some story, do a little investigating which amounts to picking a set of options on the screen, get more story and then fight. You won’t be spending hours figuring out where to go from case to case because travel is done automatically.
Outside of the story, the player can do an endless stream of side-cases. There is no story to them. Pick them and beat the ghost waiting for you at the location. In addition to a base fee for each mission, you also get extra rewards and deductions depending on what you did. If you break something, expect to lose some money. Beat an enemy without getting injured and you get a bonus. Some of the bonuses are self-explanatory while others are more mysterious. But, you’ll be swimming in the cash. It is hard to go in the red, even if you mess up badly.
Combat is where the meat of the game is, and will also hook or turn-off players. You and the enemies move and do actions simultaneously. On the screen you’ll see the building plans for the area, and all the player does is simply move the character’s arrow around the map with the amount of action points available. Click proceed and everyone performs their action for the turn. When I say building plan, I literally mean building plan. You can see grey squares to denote furniture or bars but you don’t know if anything is on them. It is like if you were a cop planning an entry into a room.
This minimalism is definitely avant-garde and puts the entire focus of combat on the mechanics, not the window dressing. But one of the flaws is because you don’t know what is on the countertops, for example, you don’t know if you’re going to be breaking something expensive when setting up an attack. In one of the early missions I lost half of my pay because I broke a very expensive computer.
The other flaw of the combat is you have to do a lot of guess work about what the ghost will do. Next to the ghost’s name there is an icon that lights up if it is going to attack you, assuming you’ve found it, and there are blocks lit up on the map where the ghost could move. The key phrase is ‘could’. Despite taking five minutes to plan a well-executed trap, the ghost could just move into the character’s square. This was annoying because the ghost hurts you but you can’t hurt it from the maneuver. Essentially, all of the strategy to the game is down to luck. Or you can get rid of the luck by overlapping attacks over an area, so no matter where the ghost goes it’ll get attacked.
There is more to the planning than simply moving characters around from place to place. In the setup phase you can lay traps and obstacles for the ghosts, like salt which prevents them from crossing that square. As you progress through the levels you get more variety to the traps, as well as those that work on stronger enemies. From my experience I never needed any traps, nor used any. However, the mechanic is there are does add an extra layer of strategy to the game.
Despite issues I had with the combat, the biggest problem is the conversation system. The main character doesn’t ever talk, except during rare choice prompts. Instead, you are given two choices from a static set determining how you act. The first is a set of emotions, like love or anger. The second is a set of actions, like touch or smell. It is always the same pair of sets. This creates a lot of frustration or hilarity depending on your own personality. I’d be asked questions from characters but, obviously, I can’t answer with words. So my choices come down to how do I want to act towards them? Do I try to feel up the person? Punch them? Lick them? Those are real examples from the game. This does affect the story to an extent, as performing or making correct choices will open up more of the story. You’ll understand the backstory behind the chapter a lot better.
Character’s abilities help reduce the cost of broken goods, as well as benefit the main character in other ways. You can use your training points, acquired through combat, with any member of your group, allowing you to learn a dozen skills ranging from smaller repair fees for broken goods, to a better selection of missions, and even cheaper prices at the store. Leveling up also takes on an old-school Persona style, where you can distribute the stat points how you see fit for the MC but everyone else is done randomly by the computer.
The music to the game has a jazzy, rock feeling to it. What is nice is the game lets you choose the soundtrack for combat from the previous songs heard throughout the game. The more you progress, the more songs you unlock.For those, like me, who are picky about music or love to listen to one song on repeat, it helps the ghost busting experience.
As discussed with the combat, the graphics to the game are similarly minimalistic. All the scenes take place over a still photo backdrop. Those pictures were well chosen, as they give a more visceral, realistic feeling to the world. It is also informative for those not from Japan, like seeing what a typical Japanese classroom looks like. The character models are well drawn, and it is obvious the company prioritized them. They are made in a 3D anime style but with intricate detail. For example, in the office you can see Shiga’s fingers moving while typing at the keyboard but the fingers don’t look blocky or pixelated at all.
If the minimalism of the game can be ignored, or even embraced, there is a fun and interesting story to experienced. The easy pacing, and side missions that can be done as many or as few as your want, help keep the player engaged instead of getting bored.