Author Topic: Ghost Parade (Switch) Review  (Read 1131 times)

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Offline Daan

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Ghost Parade (Switch) Review
« on: December 04, 2019, 02:41:49 PM »

The biggest ghost is the sadness we developed along the way.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/52305/ghost-parade-switch-review

Ghost Parade has a lot going for it. The unique art style instantly attracted me to the game with great character designs to boot. It seems like a decent platformer to sink your teeth into. The emphasis is on ''seems'', because in reality Ghost Parade is one of the most irritating games that I've played this year. It is a game with solid intentions, but far from sound ideas. In a sea of platformers, it managed to quickly get on my nerves and never truly recover from that.

Initially, I liked the set-up of Ghost Parade. You take control of Suri, a girl who just wants to get to school as quickly as possible. To do so, she decides to take a shortcut through the forest, where ghosts are suddenly waiting for her. These ghosts have one clear goal: stopping humans from destroying their beloved forest. It is a decent enough message, but my lord does it manage to say it in the most boring way possible. There is no character development, and the story mostly relishes in skits. This starts out cute, but that initial high slowly starts to sink deep. The jokes aren't exactly funny, and the game is filled to the brim with obvious grammatical errors.

The gameplay can be best described as bad. Ghost Parade is a platformer with some adventure thrown into the mix. Players can jump and attack while exploring the levels. While the melee attack works okay, I can't say the same for the jumps. I didn't feel in control at all as it lacked any kind of precision. The game became incredibly spotty when I used the double jump and had to land on a specific spot. The down movement was incredibly harsh, making the platforming in this platforming game really not fun. Oh, and you know what is even better? Giving the player no room to recover from an attack. Thanks, that’s really kind.

What doesn't exactly help matters is the level design. It seems designed for a title that should control a whole lot better. Even then, traps can be completely missed without any fault of your own. For some reason, Ghost Parade thought that it would be a great idea to include some backtracking. To get everything out of the story, the game requires you to do this. As the game feels more linear that it actually is, there doesn't feel all that much to see I'm afraid. Ghost Parade has a leveling system, and wants you to destroy enemies as much as possible. The problem is that none of the proceedings are actually fun to play.

Ghost Parade doesn't look all that fantastic either. The character models and backgrounds have a solid style to them, but the platforms feel very slapdash. By the way, the title runs absolutely dreadful on Nintendo Switch. The game has a lot of framerate dips, and loading times are truly all over the place. How this got published in this state is truly beyond me.

Ghost Parade has a few sound intentions, but the game's quality is well below par. The game runs dreadfully, and none of Ghost Parade's elements are exactly fun. There are passable moments found within the combat and story, but all of that feels few and far between. As a platformer, it fails to make even a slight impact. Not even on an ironic level can I say I had fun with the journey.