Homura Hime Review – I Ain’t Afraid Of No Ghost

Homura Hime is an anime-style, bullet-hell action game where you play as an exorcist backed by solid parry-based combat.

In the episode “Tsunami Ghosts” of mystery documentary Unsolved Mysteries, a small seaside Japanese town is plagued with sightings of loved ones who died in the aftermath of the devastating 2011 Tōhoku tsunami. A Buddhist priest, Reverend Taio Kaneda, tries to make sense of the event by stating, “Japanese people don’t separate the dead from the living.” In popular culture, from the unnerving Ju-On: The Grudge to the more action-based Ghostwire: Tokyo, ghosts are not coming from a far-off afterlife but are here, among the living. Homura Hime tackles these themes on a decidedly more lighthearted note.

Playing as the eponymous exorcist Homura Hime, she is tasked with eliminating archdemons who have consumed the souls of thousands of people. Accompanied by the endlessly chipper priestess Ann, they embark on linear-based missions culminating with grand boss fights at the end of each of them. Swift and experienced, Homura’s skillset allows her to dodge, parry, and use various melee and ranged attacks to defeat the darkness spilling into the world of the living.

It is easy to use these otherworldly elements as set dressing to tell a banal narrative to justify the hijinks of our protagonist fighting against impossibly larger bosses. Homura Hime surprises by actually trying to tell something meaningful about the relationship people have with death. Some archdemons who were previously kind but were corrupted by a bad situation lament how everything turned out before completely obliterating them. Once embarking on and finishing a quest, gorgeous hand-painted scrolls tell the tales of these unfortunate souls, from inception to demise.

As the story progresses, Homura herself wonders if she is doing the right thing. Does a spirit deserve to be executed for the collateral deaths of others they didn’t intend to cause? Her resolve wavers, and it is a rather commendable effort in trying to ground these concepts without making the mistake of making her a paragon of truth and justice. Whether her actions are morally correct is up to the eye of the beholder, who, honestly, will not have much time to think about it as they move on to the next bombastic, bullet-hell-ridden stage.

Commonly seen in anime games, certain tropes abound. The clumsy young priestess who can’t help but fall, the over-the-top voluptuous women, and the sometimes immature comedy. In this game’s case, it can be mostly forgiven for one reason only: it simply feels great to play. Other than the aforementioned trying to contend with the serious life-and-death subject matter, Homura Hime does an outstanding job of putting you in the thick of the combat, delivering extremely engaging moment-to-moment combat.

Homura Hime is billed as an anime action game. That in and of itself puts it in a sea of similar titles. What makes it stand out is its crunchy parry and bullet-hell mechanics. The flashy move enemies and bosses make to signal when you can parry an attack is precise, with both a satisfying visual and sound effect before and after pulling off the deflecting attack. What’s more, as the combat intensifies the more you progress, connecting five parries in a row to knock out an enemy’s stamina and leaving them open to a flurry of attacks is quite impactful.

Nier Automata was cited as one of the influences of this game, and honestly, if that does not make you want to give it a try for yourself, I do not know what else to tell you. I say this since I mainly can confirm it, and because the developer Crimson Dusk themselves got to receive direct feedback from Nier creator Yoko Taro. Changes in perspective often happen, keeping you on your toes as projectiles appear from every direction. Some can be parried, others dodged, but when successfully avoiding all damage, the feeling of mastery over the gameplay is rewarding.

There are a few hits and misses. The hitbox feels iffy. Sometimes, bosses go all-out with their festival-like projectile show, and it feels impossible to discern where the damage came from. While the flashy combat is eye-catching, it can be disorienting, blinding you from incoming attacks. Overall, the animations could use some work, as they look mostly stiff. Lastly, the platforming has inexplicable difficulty spikes, which could be tighter.

Much like the ghost stories it tries to tell, Homura Hime amazes at every turn. The riveting boss fights drum up excitement as you make your way to the final battle of every mission. Dodging a barrage of bullet-hell projectiles at a precise moment, when it works well, makes you want to come back for more. And the combat, developing over the course of the game with more skills, combos, and options, accomplishes its goal to keep things interesting over its 10-to-15-hour runtime. The mysterious narrative is just the cherry on top.