The Outbound Ghost

Waiting for the perfect time to fully dive back into this game. All the Mario RPGs pulled my attention away right as I got started, but I really like what I see and I want to come back to this game one day.

Indie Developers > Big Corporations

A proper tribute to paper video games.

This is a yes or no. It is a very good looking game, nice and clean with distinct graphics. Game play even on normal can offer some difficulty depending on the figments you choose. The biggest issue I can find is the story. It in incomplete in my opinion. Some side characters in the story are introduced, involved a decent amount and then disappear. The main character you start as doesn't even get a completed story line. And some story lines aren't even finished? Still enjoyed but I felt like it needed at least another proper chapter.

Cute and Familiar art style with some fun mechanics make for a game that I would recommend

The game is okay. It looks beautiful, the OST is beautiful too & the first part of the game is fairly enjoyable... but it has a lot of issues, which I can understand might be related to the legal troubles surrounding its release. For me, the best part was the combat. It's similar to Pokémon/Dragon Quest Monsters & it's not *too* easy. You can build different teams, come up with strategies & experiment with different approaches. That said I don't understand why the SP (maná) of some "magic"-oriented Figments are so limited when their abilities are so expensive to use. I'd recommend the game if you're mainly looking for gameplay & combat. Also, from what I could tell, the game seems to scale levels for story progression so I never really felt the need to grind in order to keep up. Now for the negatives. The game feels unfinished. Again, I understand that the legal issues may have played a role here. There are things that are never explained, such as certain ghosts in a specific area. They say strange things but neither random NPC dialogue nor the main story ever explains them. Some characters who accompany you throughout the story simply stop appearing at some point. I don't even think they're at their houses anymore. Near the end of the game, you're forced to backtracking through almost the entire map. Sure, you can access Figments & items that weren't available before but it's incredibly tedious. Then when you reach the actual ending... it explains almost nothing. In my opinion it should have answered at least some of the questions the story leaves you with. Instead, you get a "The End" screen & that's all. It doesn't even give you enough information to connect the loose ends yourself. As for the post-game, I don't think there's much to do beyond refighting bosses you've already beaten, recruiting companions (which I'm not even sure provide any benefits) & doing a small side-quest for another Figment. For the bosses, it seems like you're expected to grind levels unless they're simply designed to be +10/20 levels above you? & once again, there's a character involved here who we only ever see once as a regular NPC before, with no explanation whatsoever. It genuinely felt like there was supposed to be more post-game content. Another issue is that the areas feel empty. There are a lot of large zones that feel like filler. It's hard to explain but many locations give the impression that there should be more things to do, discover or interact with... but there really aren't.