Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

Ghost Trick is a Puzzle Game with a strong focus on story and characters, to the point where I might almost consider this to be a Graphic Adventure. This game originally debuted in Western territories on Nintendo DS in 2011, with a subsequent port to mobile devices in 2012. Now, over a decade later in 2023, the game has received a remastered port to PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

Ghost Trick puts players in the role of a recently-deceased man who discovers that his spirit can manipulate objects in the real world, something he can use to protect innocents from a group of assassins, and also to hopefully track down information about who he was before he died, and why he was killed. However, the clock is ticking – another helpful spirit tells him his spirit will dissipate at sunrise, and even more urgent are the lives he needs to save before their time is up… or even after their time is up, since the player can also possess the body of someone who only just died and rewind time to four minutes prior to their death, ideally giving them the opportunity to prevent it.

While the spirit has a surprisingly impressive array of abilities, players are limited by the fact that it can only pass to select objects within proximity of the one they’re currently possessing, meaning that not only must you figure out what you need to manipulate to accomplish your goals, but you need to figure out how to get there. What’s more, timing is often vital, as is order of operations, as many puzzle solutions require a very specific series of events to happen in order for you to achieve your intended goal.

I have to admit, I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I give this game a lot of credit for having an original central mechanic that’s pretty unique within the genre, and I think that some of this game’s puzzles are extremely clever and really require a lot of thought to determine how to pass them. On the other hand, I can’t help but feel like they’re a bit too clever. With the number of possibilities you’re looking at, and the necessity to perform actions at the right time and in the right order, it can make it a pain to figure out how to solve these puzzles. The game does provide hints in the form of showing your spirit’s thought process indicating what you might want to be trying to do, but often I found these hints to be so vague that they weren’t especially helpful.

The presentation here is fairly decent, with colorful, cartoony visuals that combine 2D and 3D elements, with some very good and often comically amusing animations full of character, particularly the way some characters panic and flail about when you manipulate the environment around them. These visuals are backed by a similarly cartoony soundtrack that makes it seems like this game’s presentation would fit right at home in a kid’s cartoon.

But despite its appealing exterior, I can’t help but come back to just how frustrated I was with Ghost Trick’s puzzles. I think veteran fans of the genre may be delighted at how well-crafted these puzzles are, but more casual players will be left in the cold, unsure about what to do. As such, I do not doubt that this game will absolutely thrill some players, but I cannot personally recommend it.

tl;dr – Ghost Trick is a remaster of a Nintendo DS game that has players taking the role of a dead man’s spirit possessing objects to save innocent lives from assassins while also investigating his own untimely demise. The premise is still fresh even a decade later, and the puzzles are cleverly-crafted, but more casual players may find them to be too clever, as the complex solutions are not always made evident by the game’s inadequate hint system. More skilled puzzlers may adore this game, but I expect that most players will be frustrated by it.

Grade: C+

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2023 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Most Overrated

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