The Haunted Hoard: Ghost Parade (PS4)
Video games are an excellent way to be introduced to mythology and folklore not only because they draw on them so often for characters and enemies, but they present them in a context where they’re more likely to be remembered. Games like Final Fantasy helped cement certain mythological figures and religious characters in my mind because they were an interesting part of an interesting game and ones who served memorable purposes in that world. Ghost Parade promised to do something similar with the less explored source material of Indonesian mythology, but there are a few reasons why the folklore isn’t as likely to be remembered by prospective players.
Ghost Parade is primarily the tale of Suri, a young schoolgirl who takes a path through the woods on her way home and ends up stepping into a huge forest populated by a variety of spirits. The forest is tied to these spirits that Suri begins to befriend, but other humans have encroached on the woods with a darker purpose, hoping to clear away the lumber for profit’s sake with an outright malicious approach to dealing with anything they find within. Suri swears to help her new friends by fighting back against the humans, the spirits fighting alongside her with their own unique powers.
Despite the denizens of this forest being the characters you’re fighting to protect, only three of them really seem like characters connected to the narrative while others weave in and out of the plot so quickly they fail to really cement themselves in your memory. That isn’t to say Ghost Parade is lacking in interesting spirits, the game is packed full of potential companions, 30 different characters willing to help you in your quest. Some like the green childlike ghost Tuyul are around long enough and constantly chime in on affairs, his ability to hurl stones to break objects being one of the few mandatory abilities for progression as well. Others like Miss Kunti do serve as Suri’s companion storywise, but her ability to pacify enemies with her song isn’t necessary despite its usefulness. For the most part though, most of the spirits you encounter are defined by one special ability they can contribute to combat. From shooting a few small blasts at a baddie to summoning a giant fish from the ground, your ghostly allies are pretty much just new special attacks and ones that vary primarily by how much damage they deal or how they deliver that damage. You can only have three out helping you at a time and most enemies can be handled with Suri’s own basic combos with her knife, so for the most part the variety between them only matters for boss fights or enemy swarms.
Meeting the ghosts is still interesting because almost all of the non-essential ones require some sidequest to attain. The game on the whole is an exploration-focused platformer, the Metroidvania aspect of it being returning to previous areas primarily as part of recruiting these new allies as their quests send you around the map. Collecting them all isn’t too compelling because of their minimal importance, but some side quests will take you to new areas on the map or have you face optional bosses that help spice up these diversions, many side quests also containing other goodies like equipment to up your strength or other stats. They essentially fall into the area where you don’t need to indulge in their side activities if you don’t wish to, but you can benefit from doing so both with more interesting things to do and decent rewards for seeking them out.
Unfortunately, Ghost Parade gets off to a pretty awful start, the kind that will no doubt turn away many players before they’ve even really met any of the ghosts. Suri starts off a terrible fit for her world, the platforming asking for precision, proper timing, and careful navigation of enemies who can whittle her down quickly if approached poorly. Starting with pretty much just a jump, you can expect many missed jumps due to its unusual floatiness and the environment will continue to throw things at you that are near instant deaths with little means to heal if you mess up. The fact a loading screen pops up after every death certainly risks dragging down the game even further. Thankfully, once things like a parachute and double jump give you more ways to adjust your movement, Ghost Parade reveals that it has some fairly good platforming challenges. Restricting those helpful abilities until you’re a little way in colors the experience poorly though, and it makes some of the other little annoyances more glaring as well. To use any of your potions, be they healing items or brief stat buffs, you need to open your pause menu and find them, the game’s real time battles in a platforming style not a good fit for the slow menu navigation needed to reach this vital tool. Your menus will also get crowded with crafting items, and while hiding the potion recipes all around the world is an interesting idea, the areas you can craft potions are very limited, meaning its mostly inventory clutter that will probably be ignored over just using what potions you find or buy with the game’s currency instead.
Ghost Parade is a beautiful game for the most part, animations like Suri’s jump looking a little bad because of her paper doll with brass pins style of limb movement, but the many spirits are lovingly designed and come in a variety of art styles. There are plenty of anime influenced adult spirits, but then there are your cartoonish main companions with their mask-like faces and some heavily detailed little masked ghosts. Their designs can be based on things like scarecrows, animals, skeletons, and demons, and walking into a new area and finding a new spirit is usually an interesting affair. The enemies and bosses come in many different forms as well. While you might be fighting humans as part of the plot, the path to beating them not only involves overcoming their machines and more unsavory sorts, but fighting through creatures in the forest like spiders, a living tree, and giant beasts. Most of the regular enemies you encounter are usually the plainer concepts like giant beetles and bats, but they mostly exist as a way of making the platforming more perilous or encouraging proper caution rather than putting up the better fights the bosses deliver on.
While most of the game is focused on its interconnected play area punctuated by skirmishes with regular bad guys and more capable adversaries, Ghost Parade dabbles in some minigames as well, mostly as part of the spirit recruiting quests. Running a potion restaurant and fishing are two of the more easily found examples, but the game sometimes twists its regular play in a way that feels like a break from the normal design. One boss fight is a race to stay alive as you need to navigate an obstacle course without dying and there are side areas of the game where you rely almost solely on wall jumps or your parachute as safe ground is almost entirely denied to you. Ghost Parade is trying to mix things up and reward exploration even though the minigames are much simpler and easier than those gimmick platform segments, but it is at least shifting its content around in new ways to make sure the play is engaging even though the beautifully drawn world and characters often feel underutilized.
THE VERDICT: Ghost Parade gets off to a terrible start by making the leading lady a poor fit for its challenging Metroidvania world, but once she does start getting the movement abilities she should have started with, the game settles into a design that delivers on decent platforming challenges. The spirits occupying the world make for plenty of side activities to engage with and you’re rewarded for pursuing them, but their overall importance to play is minimal since they are mostly just a new ability that might not even be superior to your current trio of combat buddies. Some improvements to combat would help them shine, but battles are mostly either with the rare but enjoyable bosses or with enemies who act more like level hazards when they aren’t grouped together. Ghost Parade is an acquired taste with other small faults like how you use healing potions, but the Indonesian mythology, diverse platforming layouts, and beautiful art are rewarding enough for those who push through an ugly start.
And so, I give Ghost Parade for PlayStation 4…
An OKAY rating. If a player jumps ship before Ghost Parade’s game design solidifies into something decent, it is hard to blame them. The beginning is very rough and some of that roughness sticks around in the animation quality and menu systems, but it’s very easy to see how they could have all been made into something that worked from the start. There is little reason why you can’t have potions set to button shortcuts or at least have a mini-menu you can open to encourage using the stat buffing options more and making healing less of a pace breaker. The animations definitely just needed more time to work on smoothing them out, and the ghosts could have been more rewarding to seek out if they had a greater degree of usefulness, variation, or synergy, the only real cooperation between them in the game’s current state being an unnecessary and unexceptional super move certain trios can activate that doesn’t justify itself over using whatever set of three ghosts you find best in regular battle. Ghost Parade mostly gets by once its found its stride in the platforming department, area navigation satisfying and challenging once the game has given you the tools to properly experience it.
Ghost Parade’s Metroidvania fundamentals are done well enough to make it an interesting play, but the Indonesian folklore element that was the selling point feels underserved in the end product. It gives the game a visual flair and they enhance other areas in minor ways, but this doesn’t feel like the game that will stoke an interest in the country’s mythology nor will it stick in the memory of players as well as if these spirits were made more important or prominent in the design. Their underutilization doesn’t hurt the game truly and their presence does help it in some ways, but it’s just one of the areas this game could have obviously improved and the one that would certainly have helped make it a much more memorable experience.