Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters Daybreak Special Gigs is one of those games where you try and try to find excuses for their faults, but at some point, these excuses just get smothered by the abysmal amount of issues.
Honestly, the controls are the least of its problems, although they are genuinely awkward at first. It took me about an hour to get used to them, and I had no issues afterwards. If you're used to switching between platforms, your PS4/5 controllers and your friend's xbox controller, have played 2-player games on a single keyboard as a child - getting used to odd controls shouldn't be an issue. Also, if the game is good, it's not even worth the mention.
Sadly, Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters Daybreak Special Gigs a.k.a 魔都紅色幽撃隊『DAYBREAK SPECIAL GIGS』(Mato Kurenai Yūgekitai) is definitely not a good game and is not worth any compromises.
I will start with the good sides, as they are so few, I'd rather get them out of the way before starting on my huge rant on how problematic this game is, how it ages without any class and how it was probably bad on PS Vita too, cause some things are just there, regardless if it's a port or not.
The good sides of this visual novel/tabletop children's game are:
nice mid-scene graphics; lots of locations to roam about; good ideas of side-locations such as various stores and hidden areas in the website etc.; fine stories up to episode 11 included; awesome idea to have an OP and ED for the episodes - made my anime-loving heart fall for them each time I started and ended an episode; the music altogether; the variety of objects to use such as charms, weapons, accessories, equipment, borrowed skills AS AN IDEA but not as an implemented feature.
This said, let me jump into the deep, dark abyss and begin my humongous rant about how cheated I felt while spending 79 (yes, SEVENTY-FKIN-NINE) hours in this game. While streaming, I lost 2/3 of my usual viewers because of this disaster of a game, but I am a stubborn piece of work, so I took the challenge, and I beat it. Since they decided it's not worth putting achievements on Steam, let me use the data from PSN: just 4.42% finished the game (episode 13). Trust me; there is a reason when this happens. And it's definitely not the controls. Also, reasonably so - they didn't spend too much time and money on setting up achievements on this platform - I wouldn't want to witness how many MORE players dislike my progression either.
Okay, so actual problems in-depth [MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS]:
The story
The story is a mess of episodic events which are by no means related to each other. Unfortunately, in the very last episode, you end up getting a bunch of messy sub-stories mixed into a dreadful bonanza of illogicality.
You suddenly have a story about the founder of Kurenai Academy, about Necromancy, about World War II (WTF and where did this come from???). You get to meet a girl from an earlier episode which is nice, but hell - nothing, I repeat NOTHING, prepares us for the "drama" of the "main antagonist". Why do I quote-unquote everything? Because they tried oh-so-much to be dramatic, but it just didn't work.
Character development: just when you thought they had something going on, nothing happened. Really a downwards spiral: they forgot side-characters, they don't introduce characters, the skills and abilities have no sense according to each character's specific history and hobbies, crafts and professional nature etc.
2. Skills, weapons and general equipment
There is no such thing. You get to learn skills from your allies, but there are limitations to what you can use, no explanation of these limitations whatsoever. I spent half my game equipped with skills I couldn't use. Unless you follow the builds to the T from a guide, you will have a tough time in the battles. Don't pick melee; it's not worth it - instead, choose a friggin guide and don't play in your personal playstyle. You will have too much money in your account without any way to spend it. Unlike most visual novels and JRPGs, you have no personal life, no side-quests, no side-stories, no character personalisations and no way to make this more fun. Hence, you will stack and amass a tremendous amount of cash, weapons and accessories you will never use cause they are just too weak or too useless. If you equip passive or idle abilities and skills, you may never understand they are not working because there is barely any description of what's up in this game and why it's there.
3. Team and party building
You can miss out on party members. I have no idea if you have some side stories with them or not if they even ported the romantic relationships in the game. I got some odd Tei confession, which is supposedly a relevant achievement on PSN. However, it felt so awkward and out of character, especially since I never had anything with her specifically, that I feel bad for the character who was forced to explain how much she loved me. Also: such emotional achievements have zero influence on the game.
It would have been nice to have a friendship/romantic metre in the game and unlock special abilities to use during battle like tag-switch or them to use heal without exhausting a turn/AP.
You pick your party before seeing the map, the enemy or the setup as a whole. Hence, most of the times, you are basically shooting yourself in the leg every time you pick a party, skills and weapons before each fight. Maybe this is why it's hard to beat the enemies, too - you just don't know what is happening.
4. Farming for campaigns
Okay, this is my HUGE issue with the game - although the story is mediocre, and I could enjoy it, out of my 79 hours, I could bet at least 69 were spent farming from the PC requests. And these are boring, monotonous, EASY, and just too much of them in there to enjoy anything related. They bring too few points for levelling; the ghosts in them are repetitive and boring, the maps for the fights are the same five or six maps.
It was exhausting and annoying, terribly not fun and even winning, considering how easy it was, was anticlimactic.
5. Fighting in the campaign vs fighting as farming
Okay, tell me, please, how can a level 50-ish have 1,500 life and a weapon that deals 200+ dmg in one shot, sleep and paralysis as effects and the ability to escape whenever he decides to? He also had like 5-6 resistance items. To compare: level 60+ in non-campaign fights reached up to the mesmerising 400 health and did barely any damage to me and my allies (<20 points to myself, and the most they did on an ally was 50-ish). No res items.
Considering this, and how hard it is to farm in this game due to the sheer amount of low-level and low-rewards battles, made the battles dreadfully annoying.
6. Enemies and allies
I have a hard time being negative about the characters in this game. I see that they had a good idea, that they had planned the character types and profiles, but they just didn't execute the lot well enough. The initial 4-5 episodes have a good story with well-explained situations, nice clients who had believable stories and relationships with the ghosts, as well as well-described and delivered ghost enemies. After episode 4 or 5, however, things went as downhill as they could. The allies lacked in descriptions; they were there simply to fill in space.
The most awful of experiences unifying the lack of level balance and the lack of story and character build was that typical prince charming in the arc with the copycats. He entered my battle as a supporting character with 20 (yes, TWENTY) levels less than my team and even more than my main character). Basically: a shooting duck and a filler.
I know there is more on my mind, much more that we discussed with my viewers during my playthrough, but I just don't see a reason to spend even more time on Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters Daybreak: Special Gigs. It's a waste.
