The Outbound Ghost - Switch Review
"There is a lot of potential here."
The Outbound Ghost is an RPG from Conradical Games (the studio name of the developer Conrad Grindheim) that stars an adorable little ghost. As an obvious homage to the Paper Mario series both in terms of gameplay and paper-like graphics, the release of The Outbound Ghost has been an emotional rollercoaster for all involved (more on this later). But for now, let’s dive in and find out if The Outbound Ghost is a HP-draining hit or a frustrating miss!
The Good
The story in The Outbound Ghost is thought-provoking and certainly made me reflect on mortality and making the most of our time on the third rock from the sun. This sounds pretty moribund but the story is actually told in an uplifting and cheerful way. You play as an amnesiac ghost who finds themself in a world of other ghostly creatures who also cannot recall who they are or how they got there. The story unravels in such a way where you piece things together and it feels rewarding and uplifting as you do so.
One other thing that Conradical Games have certainly achieved with The Outbound Ghost is matching, and at times, exceeding the beautiful environments and world-building that features prominently in the Paper Mario series. The environments are colourful, detailed and just downright impressive for such a small development team. Each location is unique and piques your interest as you spot something to explore on the horizon. The fauna is a luscious green with all of the typical video game biomes that often feature; desert, ice, jungle, and they all really pop off the page.
Much like many others, I find the battle system in some of the more recent Paper Mario games to be boring and clunky, but the battle system in The Outbound Ghost is actually pretty intuitive and accessible. Your party can be expanded in the form of ‘figments’ who are basically various emotions that can be used in battle. The early battles are tough but as you grow, your party of figments and the various battle possibilities really open up and you’ll soon find yourself doing some pretty bad-ass attacks on the many ghostly enemies that you come across. Each enemy also has a stun bar which increases with every hit and when filled, the enemy is unable to attack. This becomes the focus of most of the battles because getting an extra turn over your foes is, of course, invaluable. I normally find the battles in turn-based RPGs pretty dull but I actually enjoyed them in The Outbound Ghost for this very reason.
TL;DR
- Sad but ultimately rewarding story
- Lush and colourful environments
- Accessible battle system
The Bad
As I alluded to in the introduction, the release of The Outbound Ghost has been anything but smooth sailing, and it would be remiss of me to review this game without touching on this. There are plenty of other videos and articles out there that explain the situation in more detail, but there effectively seems to be a complete breakdown in the relationship between Conrad Grindheim and the publisher Digerati. I’ve seen way too many Nintendo Switch games recently where the Nintendo Switch port is a mess when compared to other platforms. By all accounts, the original port of The Outbound Ghost falls into this category, but Digerati at least had the decency to delay sending out review codes until many of the release bugs were squashed, it seems. As a result the build that I played actually ran pretty smoothly, however there were still some frustrating loading delays both at the start and end of each battle. Sometimes you’d see a black screen for upwards of 10 seconds each time and it all made the experience quite laborious.
Moving away from any performance issues, other challenges I encountered was the fixed camera field of vision. I often found myself coming across an enemy who was following a patrol path and when the path was looping off the bottom of the screen, it made it impossible to avoid the battle because you just had no sense of where the enemy was when off camera. Some kind of widget showing their position at the edge of the screen would have avoided this headache.
The in-game map is an aspect I also found to be completely useless. I feel this may be to do with the aforementioned Switch issues because the map was just so small on the screen in handheld mode that it was basically unreadable. Much of the text actually had a similar issue so, alas, I fear there must also be some accessibility issues for many players on the Switch.
TL;DR
- Frustrating loading times before/after battles
- Fixed camera frustrations
- Map and text is too small for handheld mode
Final Score: 7/10
The Outbound Ghost has been one of the more complicated reviews I've had to do in my time. There is a lot of potential here and in some areas, it really feels like Conradical Games have nailed the brief. However, it’s also a lesson in developer/publisher relationships and the pitfalls of porting a game across multiple platforms where the Nintendo Switch version often ends up neglected and compromised. However behind the cloak of bad-PR, I do believe there’s an enjoyable experience to be had by RPG fans, but maybe don’t play it on the Switch.
Thank you for checking out our The Outbound Ghost Switch review, thank you to Digerati for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:
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