Release Date: December 2022
Available on: Playstation 5, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4 and PC
Genre: Horror Adventure
Japan sure has a lot of ghost stories, right?
Kazuo Yashiki, who is called by many a "Spirit Doctor" (against his will), is a man in his 40s. He is called by Seizou Konoe, to visit Konoehara Academy. Konoe is the headmaster of this school, and he's facing a very serious problem: One student received a letter from a entity who calls itself "The Departed", telling her that she would be killed tonight. After that night, the student went missing. To make things worst, a new letter arrived, targeting another student. Now the Protagonist must investigate the school and find out if this is some kind of bad taste prank, or indeed work of evil spirits.
Spirit Hunter: Death Mark II improves a lot in gameplay compared to its predecessors. Controlling the Protagonist, the player can walk in a 2D screen, run, talk to the partners, and investigate points of interest. The school is divided in three main sectors: The Special Building, where you can find the Faculty Room, the Infirmary, the Student Council Room and the Library. The New Building, where you can freely explore to talk to students during the day, and the Old Building, which is an abandoned part of the school... They say it's haunted.
The game also works like an RPG. The protagonist and his partners have an amount of HP (at the top of the screen) which will go down when scary events happen, and when attacked by spirits during confrontations. They can also level up when you collect "Lost Souls" scattered around the chapters of the story. Those lost souls are actually... Well, teeth. Yes, when exploring the surroundings, sometimes you will find "eerie teeth" scattered. Collecting then will let you purchase protection itens and you will also get Experience Points.
The Infirmary is the "Safe Haven" of the School. You can purchase itens using lost souls, talk to your friends, choose a partner, and Save the game. To explore your surroundings, you must walk around and find objets that you can interact with. There are also segments in first person, where you can use the light of the flashlight in order to interact with itens and objects (just like the previous games).
You don't actually meet random enemies in this game. Every spirit appears during scripted moments, and you will enter a "Suspensive Act" moment. When that happens, you will take control of the Protagonist and his partner, choosing which actions they will take. This is the most important moments where your HP will be important. I'll explain better.
In Suspensive Acts, you start by choosing a character. Then, you will need to choose what they will do. For example... "Yashiki" and then "Knife" and then "Cut the Rope". Then, Yashiki will lose a couple of HP, and perform the action. You will find out that this action has a 075% Success rate. In other words, after a "Roll the Dice" mechanic, you will either succeed or fail the execution. If you fail, you will have to try again until you run out of HP. If you succeed, you will either advance to the next Act (or Survive the event) or, you can also find out that this wasn't the right choice, and will have to try other choice.
Don't worry, you will never get softlocked in a Suspensive Act for choosing wrong options, or not having a particular character in your party. Running out of HP is the only way to fail it.
Konoehara Academy has a lot of mysteries. Who is this "Departed"? Why are they sending messages to the students? And why are the students disappearing? It's up to you to investigate and discover the horrors behind this story.
Also...
If you are not good with Jumpscares or intense material, the game has two friendly options in the menu: One of them disables all the random jumpscares in the game. Death Mark II sometimes flashes a monster in the screen only to give a scare to the player. If your heart is not very strong, or you find it annoying, you can just disable it.
The other option will reduce drastically the amount of blood and gore in the scenes. Particularly, I think this goes against with the purpose of an horror game, but some scenes are very intense, so if you don't like it, you can turn it down too.
Spirit Hunter: Death Mark II is a game that I started playing about four days ago, and I got very addicted to it. The characters, the story, the gameplay... It's a Adventure Visual Novel very well made, and I think I'm already excited to see where this series goes next.
The Good: Insane horror story, good gameplay, good soundtrack, really spooky game.
The Bad: Lack of voice acting, some minor translation problems.
Game:
Last edited by Alex_The_Hedgehog - on 03 January 2026
