Parents' Guide to Yo-Kai Watch Blasters: Red Cat Corps/White Dog Squad

This action-based role-playing adventure is a spin-off of a popular franchise, but its fast-paced play will easily earn it fans for its amusing, cartoonish monster busting. Yo-Kai Watch Blasters is an offshoot of the popular Yo-Kai Watch franchise, and dives a bit deeper into the game's spirit world. In Japanese mythology, "Yōkai" are spirits that can possess people, animals, and items to cause both fortune and mayhem. In the Yo-Kai Watch series, these spirits tend to be a bit more mischievous than malevolent, and many can even become friends with certain humans and help them out in their weirdly unique ways. The main games usually tell their tales from the human side of things, but in the new spin-off title Yo-Kai Watch Blasters, fans get to take on adventure from the Yo-kai perspective with barely a human in sight. Instead, players control a party of Yo-kai characters and venture out in more arcade-style action, blending easy-to-play button mashing mixed with light role-playing strategy.

The game makes a lot of cool pop culture references that might get lost on younger players, but older gamers will get a kick out of them. In fact, the foundation of the game is basically one big parody of the original Ghostbusters movie, right down to the firehouse HQ and the tricked-out car. It's a fun setup, but more importantly, it's just a lot of fun to play. Admittedly, the button mashing can get a little repetitive over time, but mixing and matching team members to try out new combinations keeps things from ever getting stale. And as much fun as the game is solo, adding extra players via local or online play adds a whole new element to the fun. With a full group controlling members of the team, the game begins to take on a more party atmosphere. No matter how you play, though, Yo-Kai Watch Blasters: Red Cat Corps and Yo-Kai Watch Blasters: White Dog Squad are great ghostly additions to the silly supernatural franchise.