Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters isn’t the paranormal punch-up you may have been expecting from Blazblue developer, Arc System Works. Instead, the Japanese studio – also known for popular fighter series, Guilty Gear – has tried its hand at an ambitious mish-mash of genres, exclusively for PlayStation 3 and its handheld counterpart. Although a number of key elements work well and give the game promise, others fall flat, often threatening to drag the rest down with them.

As its name implies, Hunters is set in the bustling city of Tokyo, where everything is not quite what it seems. You play the role of the high school student looking to settle down after transferring across the country. Before the bell rings on your first day however, you find yourself crossing paths with all sorts of characters before being embroiled in a paranormal mystery. Lured to the abandoned top floor of your new academy, events start to unfold as you learn of a special organisation known as the Gate Keepers. Posing as reporters working for an occult magazine, their actual services include supernatural investigations as well as exorcisms.

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It’s an interesting set-up to say the least and one that’s just about strong enough to justify the amount of dialogue players have to initially sit through. The more you progress through the story, the more quirky characters you will be able to converse with both during and in-between missions. In truth, there’s an often overwhelming emphasis on reading through walls of text yet this shouldn’t really come as a surprise, considering the game’s visual tendencies.

The other half of the game – well, it’s more like a quarter actually – comes from Twilight Hunters’ turn-based combat. Although clearly drawing inspiration from the Japanese role-playing genre, it uses several experimental gameplay systems to create something truly unique. Whether or not these systems are cohesive, clearly-explained, and well-executed is different matter, however.

Combat scenarios take place on small interior maps, each one divided into tiny squares. Pitching a team of up to four hunters, the player will move them around the area, an “AP” gage indicating how many actions each squadmate can perform during that turn. Once finalised, the enemy ghosts will then initiate their plan simultaneously, navigating the map and phasing through objects to occupy a tactical position from which to evade or attack.

Naturally, given their ethereal form, you won’t always see them coming, unless you equip items allowing you to detect their presence. Even if you can see an enemy ghost on the map landing a blow can still prove a tough feat to pull off. Whenever you discover an enemy, they will display a ‘forecast’, indicating which squares they may move to during the action phase. The key to defeating them is making sure you have characters who can cover the majority of these grid spaces with their varying attack ranges. If all goes well, you’ll manage to swat down the ghost or at least reduce its health.

More often than not however, your spectral adversary will manage to slip the net, resulting in a game of cat and mouse. What usually comes next is the laborious task of rearranging your hunters in the hope that they’ll land a strike instead of having to chase it again. Factor in the limited number of spaces your characters can move, as well as the mission timer, and it can prove to be quite the ordeal.

Thankfully, there are a number of tactical options that can help reduce such painstaking encounters. Before launching a mission, players will be given a blueprint of the area they are being sent to investigate. On it, you’ll be able to place a variety of different items that can helpful to change the flow of combat. For instance, you can mark any square on a grid using salt, effectively creating a space which ghosts cannot pass through. By deploying such traps, you can given yourself a slight advantage and lock off certain areas.

Not all of this is explained very clearly though, it has to be said. After failing the tutorial mission twice, I had to really take a step back and focus on what rules Twilight Hunters was trying to dictate. Even then, there are many other elements of the game that come with barely any explanation whatsoever, forcing the players to flip through their manual or simply experiment. Although I wouldn’t describe the game as hostile, Arc could have done a much better job easing newcomers into the experience.

Aside from the occasional cut-away, battles are viewed from an entirely top-down, two-dimensional perspective. Although it channels all the necessary combat info, it looks bland and fails to embody the action seen in similar tactical role-playing games like XCOM or Fire Emblem. Twilight Hunters’ visual novel element, on the other hand, looks a real treat, presenting players with creative backdrops and character designs to gawp at.

What’s Good: Great artwork and animation.

Intriguing story.

Visual novel element works well. What’s Bad: Confusing, tiring combat mechanics.

Poor explanation of systems.

Battles look drab.

Overall, it’s a game of two halves that just doesn’t quite come together. Some, like myself, will no doubt find themselves engrossed in the story, only to be disappointed by the trial-and-error labours of combat. Although I’m always keen to see the ways in which developers can expand on the traditional turn-based template, this is one instance in which it hasn’t worked, sadly putting a dampener on what is otherwise an enjoyable visual novel.

Score: 5/10

Version tested: PS Vita