Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters: Daybreak Special Gigs

The Good
It is different enough, the characters are well designed and the RPG/Strategy mechanics are very fresh. The board minigame is a lot of fun (though you need to figure it out, very little is explained ingame), and though there is a lot of RNG, it is manageable (and it creates tension).

The Bad
The interface is often inscrutable. For example:

i) The "senses" wheels are totally bonkers. You choose "friendly" and "mouth", that means you will talk nicely to someone, right? Well, suddenly you are trying to lick someone's face, deal with it. You try to "friendly look" at someone, and they accuse you of stalking...

ii) Sometimes you find these strange substances lying around... and the game expects you to lick them? This does not make a lick of sense! (Sorry, sorry....)

iii) It took me half the game to figure out that I could take side missions to level up my characters; problem is, you need to press a button combination to access them, and this combination was displayed with a cryptic description which led me to think it was something which would show up later in the game.

iv) I only found out I could speak with the characters between missions from the main office at the very end of the game -- another button needs to be pressed on the right screen, otherwise you will never see this!

v) The game does not allow any saving until Chapter 2, and there is a lot of stuff until then. I fired up the game, watched a long cutscene, interacted with a few characters, had the first tactical fight, searched for the save button, could not find it, then figured it must be autosaving, quit the game.... Well, WRONG, had to replay this whole thing later. :(

Also, the balance is very wrong. The first few fights are super easy, which is ok; then I found out about the board minigame, which was fun and let you level up your character, so I played TONS of it. My main character was level 3 or 4 before I did that, and I got to level 30+ after a long time. Of course, this made the fights even easier, but it felt right, since I "grinded" so much. Then, suddenly you get to chapter 11 where you get FLOORED by these super hard fights near the end of the game. Worse, some of these fights force your party choice on you, so, if you have not leveled up the right characters, you are screwed... So lots of MORE grinding was necessary to level up everybody to level 60 or so...

The Bottom Line
This is mainly a strategy RPG, with a strong Visual Novel attached to it. There are tons of skills to acquire, and even money and inventory management. It is quite unique, but be prepared to learn not only mechanics but ALSO the interface.

Score: 76/100.