Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters: Daybreak Special Gigs (PS Vita) Review

Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters: Daybreak Specials Gigs starts off slow and confusing, and doesn't ever make remarkable progress towards fixing either of those two issues. For anyone who's played any sort of visual novel or text-heavy RPG, the most noticeable flaw is the complete lack of explanations, especially around the reaction system. While the story progresses, the main character has a chance to react to other characters via a set of wheels representing emotions and physical actions. Unfortunately, this mechanic is never really explained.

While a lot of mechanics in video games try to teach the player through utilizing them, this mechanic is just sort of 'there.' It doesn't seem to have any discernible impact on the experience itself, rather it just flavours the character interactions with just a hint of emotion. It overall becomes a frustrating addition, rather than a way to enhance the narrative: while it gives a bit of an illusion of agency, using the system feels like a game of chance, rather than a way to interact with characters and situations.

It does allow the player to slightly interact with the dialogue, which is nice, but it really only changes interactions slightly, adding an extra line or two of dialogue here and there. It's nice, but it doesn't do much to enhance the original text, which ends up being a bit on the dry side. The characters themselves are pretty bland and generic, and they read like a handful of stereotypical anime characters.

Worthy of note, however, is the character's art. All of them are all beautifully drawn, with sprites that move onscreen in a very fluid style. All of the in-game art has a wonderful feel to it, and it does always feel in-tune with the narrative's tone. Despite the slowness of the plot, it does have a well-designed feel.

The battles feel much less thought out, with most requiring to square off against a host of undead spectres, with a look very similar to those found in the Shin Megami Tensei series. It's a system that's highly prediction based, and more than a little frustrating. Each character is represented on a simplistic grid, and each action moves them to a spot and has them declare an area on the grid they wish to attack. If an enemy moves to that spot, battle ensues between both parties.

It's a really interesting take on strategic gameplay, but it's one that feels gimmicky and removes a lot of the careful planning usually associated with the genre. While there are skills and items that can help mitigate the randomness of the enemy movement, it still winds feeling frustrating and non-interactive, especially in earlier stages of the story. The controls in battle feel weird as well, and moving characters around the grid feels completely unintuitive to how it should.

Really, Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters: Daybreak Specials Gigs suffers from a lack of coherent explanations. The interface issues aside, the dialogue doesn't do much to inform the main character about the mechanics of the emotion wheel, and the battle system could definitely use some additional work. There's just a lack of polish in a lot of the mechanics, and it's certainly possible that investing more time into one or the other could have helped.