If you like Gyakuten Saiban, why not give Ghost Trick Phantom Detective a try? It’s that simple. The point-and-click visual novel hybrid He may have already done so since it was first released over a decade ago. However, this remaster is a great opportunity to revisit or discover for the first time the cult hit on modern hardware. We recommend that you do so. Ghost Trick is as compelling and compelling as its better known counterpart, and the supernatural setting takes the story to even stranger and wilder places.
The game begins with the protagonist of the story being shot dead in a dingy junkyard. Upon learning that your name is Sisel, you awaken as a spirit with no memory of his life or even who you are. All you know is what’s on the screen. A corpse, a woman, and an assassin trying to kill her. Luckily, you have access to supernatural abilities in your ghostly form, and you can use them to affect the land of the living in small but meaningful ways.
You can possess objects within your reach, many of them can be “tricked”, and small interactions and actions can have surprisingly large consequences. You often have to create your own passageways through the stage, such as flipping open a cot or moving a trolley along the floor. Other small tricks include wobbling bowls and opening trash cans that can be used to distract characters or trigger various chain effects. Switching between the ghost world and the living world can get a bit boring towards the end, but overall it’s a great system. Anyway, you have to play around with these interactions in each level to advance the story.
But that’s not all. Through a phone line, you can also travel to the location where you were found, but most importantly, you can time travel to someone four minutes before he died. These sequences require you to use tricks to change the destinies of your characters to match the events unfolding before your eyes. These are some of the game’s more complex puzzles. With what you have available, how can you avoid human deaths? Finding a solution requires thinking laterally and considering your options. The gameplay isn’t particularly difficult, although some of the later puzzles are more difficult. just There’s plenty of room for experimentation, so you’ll feel satisfied when you find the answer. Even if it fails, checkpointing is mostly fine, but sometimes it can get a little tedious, having to redo a bunch of interactions.
Within the first 30 minutes of the game, the young lady will die. You rewind time to prevent it. This is where the game story begins. The story starts very simply and gradually grows into a big mystery. As expected for a game of this kind, the characters and story are the real highlights, and like Gyakuten Saiban, Ghost of His Tricks is packed with unique and quirky personalities that keep the entire plot interesting. They will do it for you.
It’s basically a murder mystery, but its supernatural hooks take the story in unpredictable directions. Once you start, you’re probably wondering, “Who is this character and why was he killed?” But as we go along, the size and number of questions will only increase. The amount of narrative threads interwoven here is impressive and will keep you guessing for the rest of the game. Thankfully, after about 10 hours of building, we have the answer at the end, but be prepared for it to be quite an explanatory dump. Anyway, we manage to put it all together and deliver a satisfying story.
More or less that’s it. Manipulate objects, save lives and slowly open the can of worm stories. Without spoiling anything, the ghost’s abilities are expanded later, so the puzzles get a little more complicated. It’s a welcome wrinkle to the gameplay, but again, it’s not terribly difficult. It’s satisfying to see what impact you can make on the world, and it’s satisfying to complete a puzzle despite the simplicity of what you’re doing.
This remaster brings the game to Full HD and running at a smooth 60 frames per second. The bright, cartoonish art style is great, and the soundtrack has been redone, with a new arrangement that sounds richer than the original track. However, you can still listen to it if you want. Elsewhere, the package contains artwork that unlocks as you progress through the game and can be viewed in the gallery. You can also play the soundtrack to your heart’s content. Completing the story will also give you access to a slide puzzle set that unlocks more illustrations for your gallery. Overall it’s a neat package and definitely a great way to play ghost tricks.
Conclusion
After more than ten years, Ghost Trick: The Phantom Detective is back on related platforms. Luckily, this is always a great game, with some interesting puzzles, a unique premise, and a mystery that just keeps building up to the end. Check it out if you’re a fan of point-and-click adventures, visual novels, or both. If you’ve played it before, this is the definitive version. This song is a cult hit about giving life a second chance, and it deserves it.
