A few thoughts on Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective that I posted on Cohost while playing the remaster, now preserved here on this blog.
July 19th, 2023
Getting acquainted with the greatest video game character of all time.
(I played the first chapter of Ghost Trick way back when it was released as a free trial for the iOS version, but this is my first time actually playing the rest of it.)
August 3rd, 2023
Still working my way through Ghost Trick and loving it. Up to the end of Chapter 9 currently.
A thing that's impressing me about the game that might not get discussed as much is how excellently it's paced. And I don't just mean the fact that no segment so far has overstayed its welcome. I think that in a lesser version of this game it would have a very rigid structure, with each chapter taking you to one new location where someone died and having you undo the death and then moving on to the next location. But instead the game mixes it up a lot.
Between major puzzle segments you'll sometimes be able to briefly pass through or poke your head into areas where you can't do anything yet, only to return there later when said area suddenly becomes relevant to the story. You'll catch a glimpse of what seems to be a goofy one-off character in one chapter and then later have a segment where you follow them more closely, learning how they play into the grand web of conspiracy that ties everyone together. You'll revisit an old area for a new puzzle sequence, and suddenly objects that seemed irrelevant are now key parts of a puzzle. I've also played my first segment that made me rewind time to undo a death within ANOTHER four minutes before death segment, as well as puzzle sequences that take place entirely in the present.
But for each chapter, things are always carefully arranged so that you can't go TOO far off the beaten path and waste an hour backtracking through every area you've already been to. You always know where to go next to continue the story, but there are just enough loose ends off to the side to keep things intriguing, always keep you guessing about what will happen next and how everything is gonna come together for the grand overarching mystery. It's fantastic.
August 5th, 2023
I beat Ghost Trick, so naturally I have now become a person who has to scream from the rooftops about how everyone should play Ghost Trick. What an amazing feat of interactive storytelling.
Anyway, spoilers below about the one late-game puzzle that genuinely stumped me and made me look up a guide.
The ONLY puzzle where I genuinely had to look up a guide was the one where you have to swap the bullet and the hat. I was actually just overthinking this one and going one step too far, though, because I kept dropping the knit hat to the ground thinking that the shape of a bullet would be more cylindrical. But no. You just have to leave it on the hook. I also thought that maybe I had to swap the hard hat on the ground with the knit hat to get it closer to Cabanela's position, but there were always other objects in the way, which made me think that I had to find a way to rotate the lamp to get it out of the way? Anyway yeah this is like the ONE puzzle I find any real fault with, just because it felt like it should have shown me the exact shape of the bullet to make my goal more understandable.
I also got stuck on the first swapping puzzle for a while before realizing that I could make the playground jungle gym thing spin with the guy on it to stall him for a while.
In general, even as someone who doesn't have a ton of patience for esoteric point-and-click adventure game puzzles, I found that the limited options for each puzzle made them extremely doable. Stopping to look at what objects are within reach and just reading the button prompts for what each object can do generally lead me to some kind of breakthrough, and the exaggerated stage play-like choreography of the characters lends itself well to signaling when it's your chance to do something.
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