Ghostpia season one is the first part of a kinetic novel that is supposed to be a two-part series (if the sequel is ever released).

The story takes place in a fairly original setting: you follow the adventures of Sayoko, an outcast in a snowy "ghost town" where the inhabitants are immortal and can only live at night; a town where new arrivals are supposedly non-existent.
Time having become an almost abstract notion for these "ghosts" under the impression of having lived for more than 9999 years, Sayoko can't remember the exact nature of this place, or even who she really is and why she's here. It might seem like a classic case of an amnesiac protagonist, but in this world, this vagueness is something quite common and shared by the majority of characters, despite the fact that Sayoko appears to be more affected than the others, struggling with the feeling of being an outsider, of being out of place, and notably not receiving much sympathy from her neighbors. She is treated as a rebel within a system ordered by an authority referred loosely to as "The Church", which views her presence in a negative light. Sayoko is not entirely alone, however, and has two friends of her own, Pacifica and Anya, with whom she has set herself a goal: to cross the immense snow desert that surrounds the city to discover what lies beyond the horizon. Is this town truly an afterlife? Could civilization, that of mortals, still exist? Many questions without answers.
They tried to leave once before, but it was a failure, and the memories of that day remain both etched in Sayoko's mind, yet hazy when it comes to the most crucial details. Even so, from that moment onwards, Sayoko's life seemed to make even less sense, until one particular day something unprecedented happened: the arrival of a new "ghost", an anomaly, and the opportunity to form a new bond.

Ghostpia centers around Sayoko's encounter with this newcomer, as well as her relationship with her friends, with whom she has previously experienced failure. It is about friendship, love, loneliness and the meaning of life when you're unsure about yourself. It's a slice-of-life story wrapped in a mysterious, unusual atmosphere.
Unusual because it ranges from the melancholic to the cartoonishly childish, with its appealing visuals, characters that speak like they do in Animal Crossing and carefully crafted staging emulating the style of a dynamic comic strip. There are also moments of wonder and confusion, and even action scenes with a hint of violence.

As a result, what Ghostpia makes you feel when you read it isn't exactly easy to describe: what's touched upon is pretty self-explanatory, but you cannot necessarily say the same about how all the story beats tie together, and yet when you take a look back at what's already been told, you have something that's already pretty packed in just 8-9 hours of reading.

I personally enjoyed it a bunch, as I like this kind of unique experience in terms of atmosphere, while the story itself has a lot of heart, despite still being incomplete.
Yet it is rather criminal that this VN currently has so little exposure. If you're not afraid of a purely reading visual novel experience, I urge you to let your curious mind do the work of discovering this curiosity.

This game is really disappointing. The gameplay in the trailers looked really flashy and fun and the concept for the story sounded like it had potential. While the game lived up to the gameplay expectations imo, The story, characters, and overall writing fall exceptionally flat on its face. The story is boring after the 4 hour mark, the world is also boring after you've done all the activities like once and the characters range from annoying and unlikable to straight up forgettable. There's a lot of potential here but it didn't do anything to realize it at a $70 price point

all of the three games are great! the third one was my favourite by a lot, but it couldn't have been as great as it is, without the first two games laying the foundation. the last case of the third game was very satisfying and a perfect ending for the trilogy! i do have a few minor nitpicks, but nothing that really sours my experience with the third game!

the first game was very great as well! miles edgeworth is iconic and my favourite prosecuter. i feel like almost all the original cases are very iconic in this game (case 1, phoenix's first case; case 2, maya's introduction; case 3, steek samurai and case 4, the von karma one). case 5 was a nice extra but as someone who only played those three games so far, i got no idea who all those new people were. maybe after i play apollo justice, i'll know? either way, case 5 just was a case i can barely remember anything about anymore

the second game is my least favourite one, but still a very good game! meeting pearl and learning more about kurain is great and the last case has a great twist! but the circus case really wasn't it and franziska von karma is a character i sadly never got very attached to. also, this game had some characters i really hate with a burning passion (i am looking at iny mimi or whatever her name was and the hospital director-- i couldn't stand them)

all in all, great series! i'm sure i'll get a lot of enjoyment out of apollo justice as well and if i manage to get my hands on the great ace attorney chronicles, then i'm certain i'll enjoy those as well!

I don't like to go hard on games like this, but as someone who is ostensibly the exact target audience for this(ex-tumblr lesbian jrpg fanatic), its awful and basically the exact opposite of what to make a faux-jrpg as.

To start, lets get the combat out of the way. Its a mix of Paper Mario and Battle Network, except somehow lamer and significantly slower than either of them. Even trash encounters take 3-5 minutes because you spend an inordinate amount of time walking up to hit the guy only for them to jump away immediately. Combined with the generally low combat numbers and high HP pools of enemies, in addition to the action button combat making it so you can't speed up combat its just a miserable slog. By the halfway point of the game, I just turned on the "instant win all combat" button, except that STILL makes you wait until the protagonist's turn in-combat to activate so you're still sitting there 30 seconds each fight waiting. That alone killed any momentum in the game for me.

Next, the world. You'd think a Magic School would be a slam-dunk setting for a jrpg--lots of fun themes and tropes you can choose from, quirky npcs to encounter, etc etc. Ikenfell does a very bold move here and makes the entire map a dungeon. Besides one tavern at the start of the game(and ceases to be relevant 10% of the way in), there is no real "towns" or calm places. You walk into the school courtyard, which is a dungeon, which leads you to the dorms, which are a dungeon, which leads you to the botany labs, which are a dungeon, and so on. There is functionally no "downtime" from the combat portion of the game, you are just shuttled from dungeon to dungeon to dungeon. There also aren't really any npcs to deal with, no sidequests to handle, nothing of the sort. Just large dungeons bereft of anything interesting or exciting. This game is honestly a masterclass in how not to pace your game, the constant slog of enemy encounter after encounter just removes any tention or interest the game could have.

But surely, I thought, this game should be heartfelt. Perhaps to someone younger, it might be, but I could not connect with any of these characters. The most interesting one is the hot-blooded lightning lesbian, in part because she does something besides mope around the entire game. The writers focused so much on either the grander Plot stuff or the traumas the various characters have that any sense of comradery or fun is lost. And like, you can make characters who just mope around all the time--I recently played Tales of Berseria, where the main character is a deeply traumatized young woman who spends 80% of the game with coping with that trauma, but there she's surrounded by people who don't take things as seriously and the game isn't afraid to clown on her from time to time. The plot itself is also generally whatever, its basically just a collect the macguffin plot to lead you from place to place. It doesn't even really use the setting in any interesting way.

An odd note as well is that there's three vocal themes in the game, all of which belong to later-game party members who's function is just not plot-critical. Which, its fine, I love hip hop and am a huge sucker for vocal themes but its a weird choice. None of the main characters, just these three weirdos. It feels like a bit of a waste of dosh, but like sure why not.

What actually gets me is one of the songs has a lot of references to real life figures like Martin Luther or Bob Ross, and it took me out so much. Like, the game pretty expressly does not take place on Earth so..???? Petty concern, for sure, but its actually funnily enough the thing that stuck with me the most.

All in all, a waste of talent and time by all involved. I feel bad because every lesbian-themed western indie jrpg seems to disappoint(even Christine Love's Get in the Car didn't hit the marks it should have), and I don't want this to be the case because, well, thats me.

But that's the world we live in. Its a pity.

Definitely a game that starts very good but starts to lose steam at around the halfway mark or so. Not to say it becomes bad or anything, just not as good. There really is not much that can be said without getting into spoiler territory and I do think its worth playing if youre into Adventure Games/VNs, particularly Uchikoshi's work but with Occult Theming rather than Pseudoscience.

The music and character art are very good, even if it started to get distracting a few hours in when you notice that a lot of it uses seemingly rigged animation or recycled stuff for different characters? I don't exactly know how to put it but it does add an air of cheapness. Admittedly the game weighs 800mb and the director is most well known for mobile ADV games so maybe Squeenix really did give them a small budget.

The puzzles and navigation of the branching paths are okay for the most part, fairly intuitive and even predictable at points, with the glaring exception of one point of maximum confusion where the game asks you about a situation that ocurred at a specific time, but there is no visible time in the "story chart" , you have to manually select the chapter for it to tell you what time it was, and that couldnt be done without restarting the current chapter, seemingly that would be cheating apparently. But, this is a 10 hour VN with twists and turns! You expect me to remember all that shit in detail?! The kicker is, after brute forcing the solution and then finishing the rest of the game... I still don't know what the hell was up with that question?! Its the one thing I still dont understand. Maybe someone smarter will inform me, its the question with "8 am".

The characters are lnteresting to see, ranging from sympathetic to psychopathic and everything in between as you would expect. In particular enjoyed the "Dan from Game Grumps going to a rodeo"-looking private eye. The prose itself can get a bit confusing, the pacing isnt perfect with some mighty info dumps at times and odd placements of events but for the most part I enjoyed enough to keep playing and am fairly satisfied with its conclusion. And I enjoyed a couple of the, lets say "unconventional" puzzles. Just good spooky vibes, well worth the price of admission I would say.




SPOILER WARNING - I want to very briefly go over something about the plot details. You have been warned, spoilers beyond here.
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I have played a few japanese adv games/vns whatever you want to call them, in particular I am a fan of Uchikoshi's work, but I have to ask the VN heads who are reading : Is the whole "Story Flowchart/Branching is contextualized as canonical and the transfer of information between branches is diegetic/part of the plot" not Uchikoshi/Spike Chunsoft's thing? I might be showing my ignorance but I thought that was the particular innovation theyd come up with. Is it just a common feature of these games? Does it predate Uchikoshi? Did he popularize it and now everyone does it? Am I just "Man who has only seen boss baby watching another movie - Getting boss baby vibes from this"? Any answers would be appreciated, thanks

Cause this game definitely does it, in several ways. At first I thought it was just a gameplay mechanic but I definitely held out hope it would tie into the plot by the end and it did. Its definitely an interesting idea which I enjoy and I can see why it would become popular, if you are going to require the player to navigate a series of choices to get to a true ending, the act of navigation and correct choices being another puzzle in itself, why NOT incorporate it into the plot? Makes a lot of sense. I also would like to say I though the psycho mantis-esque puzzle to beat the Foot Washing Mansion curse was clever. At first you look at the options and see "voices" and wonder "huh, this isnt voiced?" and then you realize its only there to defeat a curse which is activated by listening to a voice. It did seem slightly silly but in context it makes sense that seiman would just disable that aspect if he was in control and knowledge of the various curses. Anyways, it was a good experience even if it fell off a bit towards the end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu4e96tRCnY

Time Hollow seems quite promising at first: you play as a high schooler named Ethan Kairos, who has just turned 17 and has obtained a pen referred to as the Hollow Pen. Ethan suffers greatly from a case of suburban domestic boredom from his seemingly plain family and ordinary school life… and then proceeds to take it all back once everything around him begins to rapidly unravel, with a series of temporal and unexplained incidents creating sudden, unwelcome changes that all revolve around making him and the people he care about miserable. As a result, you have to use the Hollow Pen to open portals to interact with events of the past and try and rewrite the negative externalities that keep popping up as consequences with meddling with the flow of time.

Sadly, the core gameplay loop doesn’t quite live up to the premise. Most of this investigative and puzzle work inevitably boils down to figuring out exactly what went wrong, and then talking to individuals across town and scanning a medley of locations to “resolve” flashbacks and gain an idea of what happened where and when. It falls into the same classic adventure game trap of “click everywhere to hopefully strike upon the right findings” because many times, the details that you need to stumble upon don’t actually align with intuition of where to visit/whom to speak with and the game generally doesn’t do the greatest job at highlighting what locations/areas are relevant and what areas are just flavor text/timewasters. Opening up portals is probably the coolest aspect here, but those segments are over in a flash; you open up a portal and talk to someone/drop off an item/meddle with an object, close the portal, and it’s onto the next flashback. That said, the game also has long stretches of cutscenes where it basically forces you into several strings of guided questions and scripted interactions, so Time Hollow never quite hits that perfect balance of satisfying the player with carefully crafted scenarios where the answer can be reasonably intuited but is never outright given away.

As a result, between the peddled cutscenes and excess meandering about, Time Hollow is often exhausting to play… which is not a good sign when the game only took seven hours to complete. The experience is further padded by the need to refill the Hollow Pen meter, which you’ll have to account for more if you screw up portal sections by opening the portal in the wrong location (easy to do because you won’t have a side by side reference on hand and some places are oddly specific regarding where you must click to proceed), but is also necessary in general because not refilling the meter will result in the meter’s capacity significantly dropping when moving onto the next chapter. This issue gets worse though, because in order to refill the meter, you have to find your cat wandering around town (in random locations that are unmarked upon the map, with tons of clicking around not just the map but also within locations to move between rooms/scenes) to refill one bar at a time. I do honestly think that at least an hour could be shaved off the length if the game allowed instant fast travel to not just locations on the map, but inner sectors within the locations themselves.

It’s difficult to recommend Time Hollow unfortunately; the detective/adventure game elements don’t feel very compelling or engaging, a lot of the side characters could have used more development before disaster suddenly strikes, the main antagonist feels too inexplicably vindictive and essentially becomes a comic book villain by the end of the game, and a lot of plot threads are either left on unsatisfying notes or have strange twists and reasoning behind them that feel like they were included just for the shock factor (a non-spoiler analogous example for your pleasure: man gets sent note in the past to join the Audubon Society -> man no longer commits arson and avoids arrest???!!?!?). There are two alternate New Game + endings, and the first is essentially a truncated version of the game and might be worth your curiosity, but the 2nd one is not quite as succinct; practically every action prior to the last 10 minutes or so is the exact same as the standard playthrough, and it only changes some minor details at the end, so you might be better off just looking up that extra ending on Youtube instead. The vibrant art style and background tunes are soothing at least, so it does get that coziness factor down, even if that coziness begins to overstay its welcome two hours in. Ultimately, it's enough of an interesting diversion if you’re looking for pleasant VNs to pass the time on the DS, but I’d suggest playing through the Cing library first.