YMMV / Tokyo Debunker

• Awesome Music: The game’s soundtrack consists of remixed versions of famous classical pieces. Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy” is one of the home screen’s Variable Mix themes.

• Designated Hero: The ghouls. They're the main characters of the story and their relationship with the player character forms the driving force of the narrative, but many of them have difficult personalities. The game makes sure there's no illusions about the fact these people are the kind to make a pact with a demon to get what they want, and so they may have some accompanying personality flaws.

• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: The story is well-praised by fans, with many of the four and five star reviews praising it and the characters, and even some of the more negative reviews doing the same. However, by the same token, many of the negative reviews accuse the gameplay of being too passive or boring, and some of the positive ones say the same. The biggest complaints seem to be the gacha rates, and the lack of ways to earn upgrade materials, other than adding Campus facilities and waiting for them to pay dividends. The few things you can use to get upgrade materials require the player to pay precious gems (which they might be saving for the gacha) at increasing rates. Thanks to these scenarios, some detractors have accused the game and its developers as being money-hungry, while its fans say they like to play for the story but would want to see gameplay improvements added in the future.

• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The game’s original premise that it marketed pretty extensively pre-Covid was an entirely different concept than the Academy of Adventure version it would become. The characters, instead of being ghoul students, were instead ghoul adults part of a pseudo-FBI organization that kept the peace, with a chic cafe as its base. The cast was smaller - only five guys as opposed to the nineteen present at launch - with a different art style used instead of the current Ensemble Stars!!-esque one. It was also marketed as an otome (read: Dating Sim) but the new version is joseimuke (still female-oriented but without romance routes for different characters). Many saw the overhaul of the original concept as reason enough to not give the new one a chance, not helped by the fact that the developers went MIA in the middle of the marketing campaign only to re-emerge later already having scrapped it for the current version, making followers of the account feel strung along. They haven’t stated outright why they changed it so drastically other than “escalating competition within the gaming industry” making them re-evaluate. Some have speculated it was due to the pandemic hitting the mobile gaming circuit pretty hard and heavy-hitters like Obey Me! and Twisted Wonderland coming through more unscathed prompted them to try to make Tokyo Debunker have more lasting power.
  • It’s also gotten many comparisons to Twisted Wonderland, in a strange case of it also being It's the Same, Now It Sucks!