@smallandnerdy's review of Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
★★★★★
If Ghost Trick has a million fans, then I am one of them. If Ghost Trick has ten fans, then I am one of them. If Ghost Trick has only one fan then that is me. If Ghost Trick has no fans, then that means I am no longer on earth. If the world is against Ghost Trick, then I am against the world. The character designs are punchy and distinctive, the animations have the audacity to look as smooth as they do from the DS era, the plot twists had me genuinely shook the first time I played, and the revelation at the end always gets a few tears out of me. I can’t gush about Ghost Trick without mentioning perhaps the best boy in all of video game history, Missile (I mean, look at my profile pic). Name me a better video game dog, I dare you. I’ve been lucky enough in my life to be on the receiving end of the love of a little dog just like Missile - yappy, fiery, loyal, valiant, extremely cute - who sadly passed away last year. Replaying Ghost Trick makes me think fondly of my Doug, who I have no doubt would defend me as fiercely as Missile does for Lynne and Kamila. Also Missile’s theme song is the soundtrack for little dumb dogs everywhere and I am obsessed with it. Speaking of, the soundtrack is Masakazu Sugimori’s magnum opus (yes, including Ace Attorney). The way that tracks are cut in and out to convey impact is masterfully done, like when the track goes dead and then A Captive of Fate (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KOv0QJijiyQ&list=PLf9WhiP4v6TYX0oCL7LO6IrnN6yihHKba&index=31&pp=iAQB8AUB) starts up, you know you’re about to get hit with one insane plot revelation. Okay, FINE - I will concede that for some of puzzles that are timing based, it can be pretty annoying to miss the narrow window and have to rewatch the scene from the start, especially when you need a few tries to figure out your path. Outside of a few instances like this, the puzzles and their ‘ah-ha!’ moments are fantastic (especially any of the prison sections), and when ‘4 Minutes Before Death’ speeds up from its normal version to its variation as you’re frantically searching your way through cores before the time is up is just chefs kiss. Until now, I’d only played the remastered version on the Switch, this time I decided to give it a go on the DS to try the experience on the original hardware. I found the movement by dragging your stylus between cores and the top screen displaying what action each core can perform to be much more intuitive, plus I preferred the aesthetics of the character art, the font and the animations in the DS version. But if you only have the choice of the remastered version, this was the version that made me fall in love with the game in the first place, and there are very little differences between the two. This game is criminally under played, if you enjoy games from the DS era, puzzle games, hell just video games in general, then you owe it to yourself to try this (there is a demo, so you have no excuse!)
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