After having previewed the first few levels of Ghost Trick: The Phantom Detective a month or so ago, I walked away impressed thinking that the full version had plenty of potential. I’m happy to report that the full version is beyond what I expected. It’s far more challenging, logically unforgiving with its puzzle execution, and entertaining as hell with its serious, yet whack-a-doodle storyline.
In short, it’s what I was hoping this game would be. I’m glad that Capcom and crew didn’t disappoint with their remaster and delivery of this nearly 15-year-old game. Regardless of its age, it still has a lot to offer and it is indeed very tricky.
On that sweet note, gather your deceased attention span, and let’s talk Ghost Trick: The Phantom Detective.
Storyline
Sissel is a dead man. No, literally, he is dead, or so that is how the game starts. You star as Sissel the recently deceased via shotgun protagonist who has 24 hours to solve his own murder before he takes flight to the afterlife. Without a memory of why he was dealt a murderous hand, and only armed with his ability to possess inanimate objects, Sissel is hellbent on figuring out the whos/whats/wheres/whys of his own death before his time expires…again.
This type of story is completely a ‘who dunnit’ sort of structure and execution. If you enjoyed the movie Clue, then you’re going to love what Ghost Trick has to offer in terms of story. It instantly engages you by bringing you into Sissel’s death right from the start. You get to see his life leave him before your eyes while casting a sense of hopelessness and helplessness from his permanent situation. How much more of an interesting beginning do you need? A dead guy meeting his maker but setting up a mystery at the same time? Talk about engaging and enthralling. The story setup ensures that you’re in for the remainder of the ride and are just as surprised as Sissel is as you start unraveling his death slowly but surely with every puzzle in the game solved.
Again, this is a Clue-like story setup, where you’re uncovering the mystery and you’re hooked into the story as you’re wanting to know ‘who dunnit’. The story is brilliantly put together, as it is compelling in its need for you to solve Sissel’s death, and it contains a healthy dose of wackiness to help swallow the pill of difficult gameplay. The story drives the entire game and introduces the puzzles perfectly with every bit of progress that you make along the way. It’s a well-crafted story that fits beautifully into the gameplay design.
What a Rube
The gameplay of Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective revolves around possessing objects to circumvent sticky situations. While Sissel cannot communicate with anyone or possess living creatures, his ability to possess inanimate objects provides an option to prevent the death of a human or creature in a proper puzzle-solving fashion. Should a person or pet die in the game, you are given the option to rewind the situation back four minutes to try and prevent their unnecessary demise. Your ability to think quickly on your feet as puzzles are thrown at you while a timer is counting down makes for a stressful, yet fun time. Sure, it’s going to make your hands sweaty and you’re going to run into some road bumps along the way, but the solutions are as rewarding as the story that progresses because of them.
Now, the gameplay works on two levels of design when you break it down. They are as follows:
- The first level is that you’re trying to solve the mystery of Sissel’s death. This includes short bridges of storyline that connect through puzzle-solving. This part of the game keeps you focused and engaged on the story that is unfolding, while presenting you with puzzles in the game, such as trying to connect characters to your murder or find new paths for Sissel to uncover details that led up to his death. It’s a good solid path for the gameplay to stick to and it works because it’s such an interesting story that unfolds in a gratifying way, where you feel like you’re making good progress on the main mystery.
- The second level involves preventing the death of secondary characters and being pulled in a different direction to a shorter, more contained story that connects back with the main one. Preventing the death of these secondary characters is a timed affair that creates a solid amount of drama on the way through before taking you back to the main story. This part of the game also tugs at your heartstrings and morals, and your need to protect innocent secondary characters that are simply trying to help.
Both the first and second levels work together to make the game deeper, more interesting, and more gratifying as you figure out puzzles and progress. And these puzzles aren’t easy, folks, so you should pat yourself on your back when you complete one. It’s as exhausting as its cousin Phoenix Wright, and that’s a huge compliment.
Speaking of those puzzles, how are they constructed?
Essentially, the gameplay mechanics are a Rube Goldberg machine, where you must put the right combination of inanimate objects moving together to achieve a certain goal. This could be as simple as possessing an umbrella to open at the right moment for a character, or as complicated as opening a cabinet to send an object launching to successfully save someone’s life. How you get these objects to work is just as important as when you get them to work. The how and when play together with each other in the gameplay structure.
To have Sissel possess an object, you hit L1 on the controller. This turns the game into ‘Ghost’ mode. From there, all objects in the room become silhouettes and small balls of light appear in the objects Sissel can possess. You can jump from object to object by connecting literal dots. Having that type of movement available to possess an object is vital, especially when time is of the essence. Now, the game does feature moments where your ability to connect to another object is impossible due to distance. It might be Sissel possessing a ceiling lamp that has to get to a hatch in the ceiling or maybe moving a bike to unleash an umbrella, regardless of the situation, sometimes distance is a problem. To circumvent this problem, you must figure out how to use the possessable objects in a certain order with other objects to make inaccessible objects somehow accessible. In short, how do you make object A get to object B? Maybe by connecting A to C you will get object B. It’s a certain combination that is tricky at times to nail down. That type of gameplay makes up a good portion of the logic puzzle-solving in the game. It’s tough, yet beautiful in its design. It forces the player to truly focus and think about the problem at hand and add a troubleshooting solution to their mental utility belt. I mean, if you’re ready for some complication like this, then this is your puzzle-driven game.
Now, to gain access and to use any object, you must get to it first by going into ‘Trick’ mode (a quick button push) and then come back to a non-possessed reality where you become the object and can use it in some way. This could be becoming a bike wheel in ghost mode and then going to trick mode to spin the wheel. Spinning the wheel, this might allow Sissel to move closer to another object, or it could be as simple as moving a lamp to create a bridge to get to another object. Building the connection from object to object is a necessary piece to the overall logic problem set of scenarios in Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, which makes the experience brilliantly delightful. Much like Ace Attorney, this sort of logic-puzzle gameplay is equally stimulating and incredibly well-designed and directed. People who enjoy the Ace Attorney series will certainly feel that same logical rush from successfully figuring out how to get a set of objects moving in a certain way to prevent a potential death or take down a baddy.
It might be tricky, but the payoff is always nice.
Bigger than advertised
To make the gameplay experience even bigger, or at least give the illusion of depth to the experience, the game tends to go a bit non-linear at times. This doesn’t mean you’re going to go full Skyrim on Ghost Trick and spend 100 hours on side quests. Not at all. Rather, the game will allow you to expand the story by giving you a cool way to go from scenario to scenario in the game – a phone line.
Every new puzzle location can only (mostly) be accessed via a phone line. Sissel can jump into a phone, travel through it, and out of another phone. Every location you unlock in the game unlocks a new phone that you can access at nearly anytime. Jumping from location to location only requires a working phone, which means you can instantly travel to a location should the moment call for it. Imagine how much potential chaos is going to come from that mechanic. The joy of this type of gameplay transportation is that these phone lines are nearly always available. When you’re lost in solving a puzzle or feel like you have solved everything at one location, you’re welcome to tap into another, even if the story doesn’t necessarily lead you in that direction. It’s very non-linear in its intentions, but the solutions are linear to keep it on track. So, enjoy that bit of non-linear freedom, but also understand most of what you’re trying to do is laid out linearly.
Anyway, it’s a neat gameplay mechanic and overall design that makes the world of Ghost Trick much bigger than it is, even if it really isn’t big.
Frustration
If you have played the Ace Attorney series at all, then you fully understand what you’re getting into with Ghost Trick: The Phantom Detective. As previously mentioned, this game is driven by puzzles and they can get complicated to the point where you will want to walk away to think about potential solutions or avoid breaking your controller. When logic and reason are driving gameplay with a murder mystery backbone, you’re bound to be tripped up here and there. The story and game were built to keep you on your mental toes and if it didn’t cross a difficulty line once in a while to keep you thinking about it, I’m not sure it would work as well as it did.
Anyway, the game trips up its player very well and it isn’t shy about doing that from the get-go. For example, there is a part of the game where you must rescue a girl and her dog from a hitman. The game provides you with accessible clues to help solve the situation, but rarely does it give away anything obvious. Much like Ace Attorney, you must keep an eye and ear out for hints and tells. If you don’t, you’ll be where I was with this part of the game, where I had to move a tray, push a fruit out of a bowl, and wait for a rat to come snatch it so I can pummel them with a dresser door in order to save lives. None of that makes sense to you now, but having to figure all of that out in order while being timed was maddening. There weren’t any obvious clues, nothing that tipped me easily of the order of operation in this part of the story. Most of what I did was trial and error until it made sense. I’m a patient person by nature and this game was trying that patience pretty hard.
Again, this is how the Ace Attorney series was, though, which is more look, listen, and execute. For Ghost Trick: The Phantom Detective, it is looking, listening, trying what you think will work, executing, and then wash-rinse-repeat until you get it right. There are probably smarter gamers out there that can get right what I got wrong. This game tried me a few times and more than a few times I had to walk away from it. Frustration aside, it was ultimately gratifying when I completed a puzzle, but it was difficult. You have been warned. This game isn’t for the faint of heart.
On that note, let’s wrap this mystery up.
Conclusion
Ghost Trick: The Phantom Detective from Capcom is a challenging and creative puzzle game that casts the same logic-driven shadow as its gaming cousins in the Ace Attorney series. It offsets its incredibly large amount of difficulty with a strong story that has sprinkles of humor in it, while still maintaining its murder mystery mission to deliver an overall entertaining experience.
