A man dressed in black holds a young woman at gunpoint. He's a hitman, hired to erase all those who possess knowledge about something our unlucky gal has stumbled upon. Between her and the barrel of the shotgun is a man, who realizes what's going on and wants to do something to help. Except... he's already dead, his body lying face down in the ground, and his disembodied spirit just watching helplessly.

Not all is lost: with the help of another ghost nearby, he learns of a spirit's ability to possess and manipulate various objects, as well as, when faced with a corpse, the unbelievable power turn back time to just before that person died. After a bit of trying, he is able to prevent the girl from being assassinated. All is well! Only, he's still dead. Even worse... he has no idea who he is, or why he died. With the girl he saved being the only person who might have a clue about what transpired, he elects to follow her, and the night that follows is a sequence of ever more unbelievable events.

Coming out of several years in a row working on the Ace Attorney series, director Shu Takumi wanted to try something different, creating a new IP that pushed the beloved style character-focused stories of his previous works even further. To achieve that, he planned on using a disembodied spirit as a protagonist as a means to explore multiple locations and connect more intimately with more characters, in a way a person with a physical body wouldn't be able to. This opus took years to come into fruition, and how cruel it was that, in the saturated and piracy-ravaged market of the Nintendo DS's later years, it earned the label "cult classic" instead of the shorter and more deserved "classic".

Ghost Trick is an adventure game unlike any other ever made. Its unique style of puzzle gameplay puts the player in control of Sissel, the amnesiac spirit, whose most basic ability is to hop between highlighted objects in a scene and use them in some way, like moving a cart or turning on a light. In the most basic stages of Ghost Trick, that's just his goal: traverse a certain location to cause something to happen, or to eavesdrop on a conversation and obtain a piece of information.

Everything changes once he finds a dead body and travels back in time to exactly four minutes before that person's passed away. We're presented with the sequence of events that led to that death, and are then set loose in the scene with the goal of altering it and preventing that terrible outcome. Naturally, Sissel cannot talk or otherwise directly interact with anyone in the past, so in case he needs to change someone's behaviour, he must use his powers over objects to induce them into the desired course of action.

These sections are superb puzzles. They force the player to go through the scene several times, understanding what are the pivotal moments in the scene and what tools they have to work with. Sometimes, it's a simple matter of finding the right timing to perform a certain action, or finding a way to gain more time. In other occasions, the paths Sissel can take in a certain location must be thoroughly explored in order to gain more information and act appropriately. There's even cases where more elaborate chains of object manipulations must be enacted -- if the thought of preventing crimes by building Rube Goldberg machines sounds appealing in any way, this is the game you need to play.

More than the puzzles themselves, however, what's most intriguing is their execution. A pitfall games centered around puzzles often fall in is that those get in the way of the narrative, especially towards the end of the campaign where the difficulty is at its highest. Ghost Trick, on the other hand, follows in the footsteps of Ace Attorney, interleaving them with action and character moments. In addition, as the story progresses, the game focuses on offering a larger variety of puzzles through exploring different locations and featuring new characters instead of scaling the difficulty. Both of these decisions confer a flawless pacing to the narrative. The final section of the game, in particular, is so extraordinarily well paced that it doesn't feel like playing a game, but being part of a story yourself.

A story which is in itself, exceptional, and alone worth the price of admission. Shu Takumi was cooking he put forth the idea of a ghost used to explore a large cast: there are many, many characters in Ghost Trick, all of them worthy of being someone's favorite, and the game has the time and means to move between scenes, giving each person time on the spotlight and exploring their personality and motivations. Of note is that Ghost Trick is home to the single best dog in all of gaming: Missile, the Pomeranian, based on Shu Takumi's real life dog at the time, is a standout character whose energy and charm wins over just about anyone who plays the game for a bit. The uncontested best boy.

Each scene in Ghost Trick is rendered in a sidescrolling 2D view, which is in itself pretty rare for a narrative game, but the way the story is presented is what really makes the game shine: the scene direction treats each sideways view of a location as a stage, making heavy use of theater language to convey thoughts, emotions and information to the spectator. This is reinforced by the team's rejection of motion capture, which led them to hand-animate the flashiest, most unique and detailed animations for each character, sometimes establishing a character's entire personality simply from the way they walk into the stage. The game's flat colors and strong shapes may make every frame of it a painting, but seeing it in motion is the truly breathtaking part.

Ghost Trick's only debatable flaw is that the story being told here is so extensive and so complex that it makes the experience into one the player has to give credence to, and has to be willing to stick with to the end. The script very slowly unveils its hand, and it might feel, at times, like certain arcs were forgotten or huge plot holes are being opened. And that's not true: the plot is masterfully paced and paints a complete and concise picture by the time the credits roll, but because that process takes time, it demands a certain openness from the player, a willingness to engage with the narrative and let it unfold on its own time.

Which is to say, its only flaw is being too good for its own sake, a demerit that can no doubt be worn as a badge of honor. Ghost Trick is an exhilarating experience, and it is a blessing that it survived its weak sales performance on the DS and went on to be ported and remade for other platforms. Sissel's supernatural adventure between the worlds of the living and the dead deserves to be seen and enjoyed by more people.

to understand what a gem ghost trick is, you should take a moment to sit back and try to come up with a gameplay mechanic thats like nothing anyones ever seen before while also being fun.

if you were to try and compare the gameplay in ghost trick to another game you would eventually liken it to a point and click adventure in the sense that the puzzle comes from the player having to discern the relationship between various objects in the world. people whove played this game though know that thats where the comparison ends. in ghost trick, you are a ghost thats physically bound to the object youre currently possessing, meaning that simply moving from one location to another becomes the puzzle itself.

theres a law in game design that says new mechanics should be introduced to the player in a safe environment in order to acclimate them to the idea of it without them getting frustrated and i was consistently impressed with how ghost trick follows up on this idea.
ghost trick is all about context sensitivity. theres only one real action button in the game, and its effect is determined by the object the players ghost is currently possessing. this means that for every single new object the player encounters, a new effect of the action button is introduced to the player. this might seem daunting at first, but ghost trick handles this brilliantly. a single word hint is always given on the secondary screen about what might happen when the object is interacted with, but even more importantly this is when the law i mentioned earlier comes into play.
the puzzles in ghost trick where its possible to reach a fail state are always about preventing the death of another character in the story. before entering the puzzle, the player is always shown a little movie of how the events leading up to that characters death play out, which often clearly display the nature of objects they will soon be interacting with. furthermore, before even that, the player is usually tasked with traversing the area the puzzle will take place in. this puts them in a situation where they cant fail and are given the space to freely interact and experiment with the objects in the area.

the gameplay is executed so well that theres no hiccups in it at all that would get in the way of enjoying the even more impressive aspect of ghost trick, the story.

ghost trick starts out with one of the most compelling introductions ive ever seen in a game and keeps that interest going all the way to the very end. theres 18 chapters and every single one introduces some kind of new twist or mystery that had me unable to put the game down until i was physically too tired to keep playing. ghost trick stacks so many mysteries on top of each other for 80% of the game that i thought there was no way they could all be resolved in time. the final few chapters however wrapped everything up so much more neatly than i couldve ever thought was possible.

the only unresolved mystery in ghost trick to me is that such a great game could somehow fly this far under the radar.

has a novel core mechanic that is entertaining throughout and a compelling high concept that sets up the story well. this story did feel like a bit of a slog to get through though, often leaving me in frustrated anticipation of the next puzzle scene—where the game truly excelled. couldn’t help but feel that i would have preferred it to be either a visual novel or a puzzle game, rather than what sometimes felt like a disparate mix of the two. it is very charming though and fits the DS like a glove

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, or GODDAMMIT LYNNE NOT AGAIN

If you thought Ace Attorney was wacky, Ghost Trick is all of the typical nonsense of an Ace Attorney game crammed into one night and on steroids. Every single one of this game's 18 chapters threw me for a new loop and I was so hooked I physically couldn't put the game down. Normally with things like this, they're never able to stick the landing and satisfyingly explain and wrap up everything, but Ghost Trick has a surprisingly graceful dismount. Even the big twist has a ton of foreshadowing peppered in if you're paying close attention.

Gameplay wise, conceptually it's like an old school point and click adventure game where you need to make use of various objects throughout the room to come up with some convoluted solution to your situation, but the execution is extremely unique. I've never played anything else quite like it. The gameplay itself contributes to the racketing tension of this game, and also contributed to me being unable to put this game down.

Do I even need to say the presentation is fantastic? The soundtrack is banger after banger, the art style and character design are excellent, and the animated style through which the game shows events is unique and has a lot of charm. Characters have such distinct, exaggerated ways of moving that stick with you.

The characters, however, are the one thing I'll really fault this game on. Comparisons to Ace Attorney are a little unavoidable, and while characters in those games were silly but ultimately had a very real core and a lot of heart, the Ghost Trick characters feel more like vehicles for the story to take place. I suppose that's a consequence of only knowing them for one night and not being able to see much change or alternate sides to them. When the plot works this well, I can't complain too much. Besides, it's not like they're unlikeable at all. Shu Takumi can keep throwing weirdgirls at me and I'll keep standing there like a dog stands in front of a garden hose.

It's such a shame this game failed commercially. I think this story got extremely tightly wrapped up and there's no need for a continuation, but I would love another game in this world featuring these mechanics.

What a charming hidden gem. Its peculiar, well-constructed story and characters offer a wild ride from beginning to end. It has a very characteristic humor, always present to alleviate what are actually pretty dark and mature themes.

The gameplay is also very unique, but it is probably where the game falls a bit short. In the final third, the lack of new mechanics make it start to feel a bit repetitive, and all the puzzles could gain from being less straightforward.

Even then, this is still a fantastic game. If you're remotely interested, give it a try.

PS: I know there's a Switch version, but I do think that the animations of the original leave a bigger impression and that the remake simplifies them too much. Apart from a couple of new scenes, there are no other major changes, so I would recommend the DS version.