I absolutely love this game, but if you know how it works, you probably shouldn’t buy it.

That may sound odd, especially when it’s a social co-op game that was popularized by Twitch streams, but playing with that context may actually hurt your experience. Personally, all I knew about Phasmophobia going in was that it was about ghost hunting, it had online co-op, and it had a well-received VR mode. Luckily I had buds who were willing to buy the game even when they knew as little as I did, along with a VR headset, which makes anything scary about ten times scarier. We all agreed not to look up anything about the game, nothing about how any of the items work, nothing about the behavior of the ghosts, everything we learned would be through experimentation. The twenty hours it took for us to learn these lessons and go from “the idiots in the abandoned house” to “The Bustin’ Crew” were fantastic, since the gameplay itself is so unique, along with its satisfying learning process, and the added hilarity of learning how your friends would act in a scary situation. However, as soon as we knew how things worked, all that was left was going through the motions, doing the same things on the same maps over and over again. Repetitiveness is the most common critique to see in reviews, but I believe this issue has been aggravated due the aforementioned viral nature of the game’s popularity. If you watch a few streams of it, you’ll know the maps and how to play effectively, and will only get a few hours of interest from it before it feels tedious. If you play with friends or randoms who already know the maps, you will follow them or just be told how everything works, and the appeal will dry up quickly. It’s also natural for any game that generates its content randomly and doesn’t have a set progression path to be considered repetitive to some degree, as the only definitive endpoint is getting bored and deciding to move onto something else.

I do realize that’s a pretty bad sell for a game I want people to play, though. “Check out this game, except don’t research it, just take my word for it, and also convince three of your friends to do the same thing, and it’ll get repetitive eventually” is hardly the best way to get people to shell out cash. However, the humor, the terror, the mystery, and the uniqueness of learning how to hunt ghosts is so compelling to me that I really want people to see it for themselves. Sometimes the best experiences are the ones that take you by surprise.

I think I've played enough of this both in flatscreen and VR to give a fair review. Phasmaphobia is decent fun but features a very repetitive loop.

The atmosphere is top notch, as are the scares (at first anyways) it is very well done and captures that ghost hunting energy perfectly. Whether playing with friends or alone everything clicks pretty immediately. Phasmaphobia is seriously captivating.

These feelings unfortunately go away after enough playtime. After a couple runs, you'll probably never get that same high you got at first. Ghosts will never scare you the same, levels will never give you that anxiety again, and it's kinda a bummer!

The gameplay loop is simply just too repetitive. There is a certain method to play this game and there is no way to create new playstyles, so every run will just be going into the map, testing for things while also running into hiding spots every now and then until you've figured out the ghost, then you leave. Rinse and repeat. Ghosts have different traits sure, but they really lack in uniqueness and none of them stand out, thus again drilling in that repetition.

I've put in about 8 hours, 3 in vr, and I'm just kinda over it? I honestly find it a bit boring now. It's just like inspecting a house and filling out a checklist, which isn't any fun. Bigger maps just kinda drag on and don't solve the repetition problem either, so I don't really know what would fix this game's loop. Maybe a campaign mode? I'm unsure, but for now I just have to write Phasmaphobia off as an incredible first 2-4 hours, and the following hours are as dull as it gets.

Review #4 - 2021

Never have I ever played a game that made me tremble with fear upon first booting it up. Even with the company of friends, I was extremely unsettled the entire time. The sound design is so fine tuned to your surroundings, that every little noise you hear feels as if it were happening in the very room you're sitting in. Playing with headphones is a MUST, unless of course you have a fantastic surround sound system, which works just as well if not better (can confirm).

It's best played with friends, for working together to figure out what ghost you're dealing with is such a fun thing to experience. Sometimes you have to "split up gang" which can lead to some funny, and terrifying results. My first session ended with me all by myself, with no one to talk to. I was MORTIFYED. The fear never wore off even after the 2 or so hours we played. It was a real blast, and a highly immersive one at that.

It's janky looking in a lot of places, but it's the tension this game builds, and the thrill of being chased by feral haunts that makes this game worth the while. If you're a scaredy cat like me and love getting spooked, you're going to have a good time (playing by yourself in the dark is something I highly recommend). If you don't get scared easily, you'll probably get tired of the gameplay loop very quickly. I for one, had an unforgettable time, and look forward to getting the gang together again for more haunts.

this game has a few issues.

1. the new changes entirely disregard what made the game fun in the first place
2. the game stops being scary when you realize that the ghost has very predictable and repetitive patterns
3. the game NEEDS to be scary to be fun, which doesnt apply to other, better co-op horrors such as Lethal Company

in its prime, this was a five star game. unfortunately it has fallen from grace, hard.

T h i s i s n o t a h o r r o r g a m e

It's a detective kind of game, but with ghosts! You need to get 3 evidences, when you have it, you find what type of ghost you're dealing with, the jumpscares are non-intentional

It's fun, but It's way better with friends, the walkie talkie and all

So I've played Phasmophobia since its release, and through the years I've seen the game change for both better and worse. Since this is my first review on the game, I'll split this into two parts.
First, the game as a whole.
Second, how I feel about the newer update.

So firstly, I've enjoyed the game a lot, especially as a co-op game with friends and people I know. By yourself or with a friend, the smaller maps can be plenty of fun and finding the evidences by picking roles based on your tools can be fun and interesting. There can even be certain tools or strategies I prefer to play around with and find out.

On larger maps though, it is needed to have a larger team as finding the ghost room in the limited time span can be a challenge, but it can be rewarding and fun either goofing around or just getting a different mood in with the larger areas. It can also be far easier in some cases to get away from the ghost and hide with maps like the school, prison or hospital.

I personally love the cursed items and will go out of my way to find them each run, with the tarot cards and oujia board being my favourites. The mechanics are fun, other than the music box, which I feel doesn't really help at all.

Secondly...
Today however, with the latest update and changes, I have a a stronger negative experience than ever before. With the level locked items and the harsh experience of barely usable starting tools, it's hard to get a footing, even with hundreds of hours on the game previously. Partly because the quality of the new items making it hard to get into the game, but also because the game has become overly complex from what it used to be.

The Yokai, in my opinion, was the last fun ghost type they added before it became too cluttered with ghost types, and with the short time you have to react to a hunt and the sheer amount of times the ghost simply does not give evidence, even on intermediate, it quickly kills the fun in completing a round and simply turns tedious.

Part of the fun for me was finding ghosts even without evidence, to get a feel of how the ghost acts, what it interacts with and the mechanics it showed aside from the obvious textbook evidence. Even with only one or two pieces of evidence, you could tell what ghost it was by what it did and where it hung out. There's just not enough time and too many things to keep track of for that now.

With the new update, I'm also not a fan of how they changed the DOTS and the spirit box audio. I haven't reached the higher tier spirit box yet, but the buggy audio is just straight out annoying and hurts to listen to, and I think the audio responses were far more fun to hear than the ones they use now. The dots look cleaner now, but I often find it hard to tell what exactly it is I'm looking for or where to look with it now.

However, I do still think the game could be fun with the newer update, and I'm excited to try the new items that have been added and the difference in the higher tiers of the old tools. Sadly, I will have to spend hours on the game and push through the initial tediousness of the first levels before I can even try that.

It's still a fun game, especially with a group, but I do feel the game has lost a lot of charm and fun throughout the years, and I still feel that a lot of the parts that made Phasmophobia fun has been lost.