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Ghost Line: Tokyo is a game that brings a lot of thought. What happens when we die? Is our flesh really just a prison for our true self? Can you help an existing soul find a roll of toilet paper so that he can ascend to heaven so that the next soul can use the toilet?
Ghost Line: Tokyo is undoubtedly a quirky game, but the game's erratic performance often obscures its brilliance.
The protagonist, Xiaojin, is an ordinary young man who is dying after a motorcycle accident and is occupied by a ghost named KK. However, since Xiaoren did not completely lose control of the body, the two were forced to reach a strange cooperative relationship and began a "shared body" relationship.
Along with the KK, there is a mysterious fog that envelops Tokyo, stripping people's souls and bodies, causing spirits to float eerily between the skyscrapers and rooftop gardens in Tokyo.
Unlike KK, whose attention is all over the fog of doom, Akihito has his own heart: his sister Mari is still lying in the hospital deliriously, and Akito must find her sister, and since there are evil spirits wandering around the streets, he can only achieve this goal by cooperating with KK.
As a price to take possession of part of Xiaoren's body, KK gave Xiaoren the ability to unleash powerful spells from his fingertips. Spell usage is somewhat similar to the first-person shooter gameplay: wind attribute attacks can be fired quickly from fingertips, water attribute attacks have a large scatter like a shotgun, and fire attribute attacks can cause large-scale explosions.
While Ghost Line Tokyo looks like a first-person shooter, the actual gameplay doesn't quite resemble FPS. The game's control system was sluggish and erratic, and at one point I thought it was a gamepad failure and replaced it. Although the speed of moving the perspective to the maximum in the setting can be greatly improved, it still does not completely solve this problem.
The attack capabilities in this game are also much less than many of the current shooters. How many? Do you remember the three spells mentioned above, which are all the attack methods in the game? In addition to the fact that each spell can be boosted by charge release, you can also get a bow and arrow that will be useful in a small number of scenes where KK power cannot be used (which are annoying). In addition, when the enemy is dying, the spirit core of the body will be exposed, and the player can directly pull the spirit core out to execute the enemy. This is something you'll be familiar with in the first few hours of your game' attacks.
Since there aren't many new ways to play after the initial stages, xiaoren's search for his sister quickly feels tedious and lengthy. There are not many types of enemies, and the way players fight is not much variable, always in the cycle of blocking and then attacking.
Even this core combat style can sometimes be a little wrong. Charge attacks don't consume extra ammo, so you'll want to use charge whenever you can, but at the same time, you'll have to stop your charge frequently to defend yourself because you want to block enemy attacks. In addition, even the perfect timing of the defense can not naturally connect with the counterattack, the enemy's attack is often not like a threat or the opportunity to counterattack, more like a simple interruption, so that the player can not always control the battle under a comfortable rhythm.
The game system built around this battle mode has the same sense of violation. The "Imperial Treasure" item can help you turn the tide of battle, but its expensive consumable properties make me prefer not to use it. Health regeneration items are abundant and can't be used up at all. There is also a powerful ability in the skill tree that upsets the balance of the game, which allows the player to create their own flying (spirit leap) fulcrums that seem out of place in the entire skill tree.
But despite all the flaws, there's no denying that Ghost Line: Tokyo still has a lot of things that appeal to me, most of which are when I strays from the main line to help wandering souls accomplish their unfinished business.
While the mechanics are not as appealing as the sidelines are, many of them tell an interesting story. The ghost trapped in the toilet mentioned at the beginning of the article is one of the most funny sidelines I have ever encountered, and in addition to this, there are many other branches in the game that tell stories that are either sad or stupid, or sad or clichéd.
Part of the reason these short stories work well is that many of them (and most of the in-game story) have a deep foundation of Japanese culture and folklore. For example, the "Jizo Statue" in the game where the player can increase ammunition was originally a thing I was not familiar with, and out of curiosity I went to explore the historical origin behind this item. Jizo is said to shelter travelers and protect the souls of children who have died prematurely.
The enemies in the game also all have background stories, and they all become evil ghosts for some reason under the backlog of dissatisfaction with the world. For example, the headless enemy "Evil Boy" in the game wearing a school uniform has this description:
"A kind of stranger born from the uneasiness of young male students about a vague future." They will pour out their frustrations to anyone who is unfortunate enough to meet them."
(As a digression, this description matches most of the male high school students I meet in reality,)
The game's default dubbing is Japanese, but you can switch to English if you want. I chose to keep the Japanese audio because it gave me a deeper sense of immersion, while ghost line: Tokyo's beautiful game world further deepened my sense of substitution, although it is an empty city, but the beautiful rendering, light and shadow, and detailed details make the streets and houses full of life.
While playing Ghost Line Tokyo doesn't make you proficient in Japanese culture, I feel that as I play the non-formulaic side quests in the game, I do have some understanding of Japan and Shintoism (a traditional Japanese sect).
Living in the moment and not drowning in indignation and guilt is an important theme that runs through the game's narrative. However, the presence of this theme is occasionally weakened by the game's completely unfocused main plot.
First of all, the plot between Xiao and Mari is not unfolding enough, so the game does not have enough motivation to encourage players to advance the plot on the story. In the final chapter of the game, there is a plot that is too full to fill the gap in the lack of depiction of the relationship between the two, but this plot comes too much at once, and it is too late. I feel a little embarrassed whenever Mari's name is mentioned in the game, because I have completely forgotten that my beloved sister is still imprisoned in this world where the living and the dead coexist. I don't want too many spoilers as to what KK is looking for, but like Xiaoren's story, this plot is also lacking in preparation.
Perhaps the most polite thing I can say about Ghost Line Tokyo is that it's a flattering game. You can see the well-intentioned efforts of the developers in many places, such as the excellent branch lines full of cultural heritage and the look and feel of Tokyo in the rain. But none of the advantages can obscure the problems caused by the game's poor design and clumsy mechanics. Ghost Line: Tokyo may have a captivating setting, but I have a hard time recommending this game to anyone other than Japanese culture lovers.
Translation: Liu Sheng's non-love sword
Edit: Tonkotsu ramen