When over the Christmas holiday Epic Games gave away Ghostwire: Tokyo, I decided to pick this up as well since it takes place before the main event and is a free title. I already understood it was a visual novel, but I was hoping for a lot more then I got here. I pray this doesn't reflect on the main game beyond the setting.
Story: Ryota needs help and he needs it yesterday. His best friend has been missing for a few days now and while at first everyone was helping him look, people have given up... especially as there has been a wave of disappearances as of late. But somehow, he has gotten in his head that this and the others are more then meets the eye. As such he has scoured social media to find help, finding the works of a man only known by the initials KK who seems to get involved and solve a lot of these type of cases. Desperate, he hunts down the guy's number and makes a call.
And this is where we have to make a full stop. I did not leave a typo in the above paragraph. To quote the game itself:
"Social media would never lie. And that means KK is an expert---maybe THE expert---in all things paranormal."
This is the kind of logic that goes right there with finding out everything there is about an ancient and until 5 minutes ago unknown threat to all of mankind and how to stop it because "it was on the internet." 5 minutes of scrolling your facebook page is the kind of research I expect to be done for an internet political argument, not to get help for a friend who is in danger or worse. It's also incredibly unbelievable that they have a number "just out there" on social media to find them so conveniently with nothing more then their first and last initial to go on ASSUMING that is even correct. It is just pure cringe by stupidity without any thought put into it.
The car itself is sadly not much better handled. Besides the kid, the first characters you will meet are a young punk-girl with the side of her head shaved and a black trenchcoat wearing hard boiled detective who she works with that in his own words, "she knows the exact day he stopped being afraid of anything." This is also the man the kid was looking for, out of pure convenience.
Soon they are joined by a generic as hell looking office man who often lets recordings he made previously speak for him so he can go obsess over his research and an overly energetic teenager who wants to prove her worth in the field while oozing naivete about just what she's asking for considering what these "hard core" people are hunting down. Basically if you and some friends rolled got together to play the tabletop rollplaying game Cyberpunk, this is the kind of party the player would come up with the first time you met up.... and the only one who gets any time to develop or even let you get to know beyond the stereotype they visibly represent is Mr. hardboiled.
But thankfully some of that might be just how they rushed into this since there really isn't even much of story here to begin with. You will play mainly from KK's point of view (as noted above) while he talks to the kid and goes to investigate where is friend disappeared. Not a lot is going to happen here and you will basically be done in 30 minutes tops. Much like that party, it's the kind of bog-standard story I might expect a Dungeon Master running the game to introduce the party to the world the real game will take place in (minus the rest of the cast being active in it)... which seems to be the point here too. I don't really see anything outside of suggesting there is a big bad out there really going anywhere from here to the main game.
5/10
Graphics: What you are about to see is effectively a video-comic, which makes sense since this is a visual novel this time around, and honestly here I can't complain. The art work is actually really good! You will only have a few background as the game doesn't have many locations, but what is here is well painted and well detailed. If it wasn't for the people painted into the background in some of these, I could see them used for actual animated work!
And the characters are not bad either! There are not many, but they all have several shots drawn and drawn very well, as if they hired a comic artist who knew what they were doing with shading, but still wanted to stylize it somewhat. It all flows together very well for a very nice looking package.
8/10
Sound: Sadly this is a point where the game runs very short. For all the good in the visual department, the audio is barebone to put it mildy. There is some voice acting, but its basically one syllable work to show an emotion at best. There is also incredibly little sound work with almost all of it being in the one battle you will have to direct. Really all you have is what I can best describe as generic music tracks which may or may not fit particularly well.
6/10
Gameplay: This prequel is a visual novel and will play NOTHING like the game that follows. However, like most visual novels there really isn't much actual gameplay. In fact it will all boil down to choosing a few specific conversations, casting one spell, and one incredibly simplistic turn-based battle (which you can lose for taking too long best I can tell). There is just nothing here.
But again, this is a visual novel. If there is any one type of game that isn't about the gameplay, this is it.
N/A
Bugs: I can not say I ran into a single bug playing this game.
Digital Rights Management: Outside of Steam itself, this game uses no DRM. (And if you get it on Epic, it can be told to run without any launcher at all.)
Score: This "game" was just a disappointment from start to finish. Yes it's a visual novel, so I am not going to knock it for a lack of gameplay. But the writing mixes dumb and bog-standard to pretty much offer up a whole lot of nothing. I wasn't expecting a lot out of this, but I somehow walked away with even less.
5/10
System Requirements:
- Any CPU running at 2.2 Ghz or higher
- 4 GB RAM
- As long as it supports DirectX, your GPU should be fine
- 3 GB hard drive space
- Windows 10 (64-bit)
System Specs:
- Ryzen 7 (5700X) 3.4 Ghz
- 32 GB RAM
- AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT (8 GB VRAM)
- Windows 11 (64 Bit)
No comments:
Post a Comment