Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

I just played Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective.

This is a puzzle-solving, point-and-click kinda game released by Capcom, created by the director of the Ace Attorney series. Released in 2011 on the Nintendo DS and 2023 for modern platforms.

I played the Nintendo DS version. But from what I can tell, the modern versions are exactly the same as the DS original, so there's nothing to worry about here.

2011 is pretty late for a DS game, huh? The Nintendo 3DS came out a couple months after this game's release. Maybe that's why I don't remember hearing much about this game back in the day.



The story of Ghost Trick is a murder-mystery, with the twist that the main character Sissel is a ghost, solving his own murder. And with all of these supernatural shenanigans going on, the case is a lot less straightforward than it first appears.

The game is a puzzle-solving game where you must manipulate objects in order to find a path to solve the scenarios.

As a ghost, Sissel appears as a little blue flaming soul inhabiting an object within the scene. Using the DS touchscreen, you can drag Sissel's soul around a little bit, and if there is another nearby object within reach, you can transfer his soul over to it. This is how you move around the rooms.
Many of the objects Sissel can possess have an action he can perform with his ghost powers - he can turn on fans or lamps, open umbrellas, swing doors, ring bells, pull down curtains, and all sorts of other poltergeistery shenanigans. Manipulating the objects in the room is the key to solving the puzzles.

For example, in order to get something to fall down from a high shelf, Sissel must cause a chandelier on the ceiling to rock back and forth, which just so happens to light on fire the tail of a rat living in the ceiling, who then, in a panic, runs towards the wall clock and clings on to its pendulum, which Sissel must then possess to make the pendulum swing harder than normal, which reaches just far enough for the rat's tail to light the nearby candelabra, which, when angled correctly, can burn the string that holds the shelf up, loosening the shelf and causing the item to fall down.

The puzzles are all very amusingly contrived like this, which is something I always love to see in point-and-click games. It's fun to see what ridiculous sequence of events you must make happen in order to solve each puzzle.

Many of the puzzles involve manipulating the behaviours of the people who are in the room, by startling them with sudden ghostly movements, or making them respond to a strange noise or occurrence. It does involve a lot of trial and error and experimentation to see how the characters respond to every action you can do, and you need to figure out whether their reaction is helpful in any way. For example, in a police station, you can jostle a memo on the noticeboard to make it fall off, which causes the nearby policeman to catch it in mid-air, crumple it up, and throw it into the nearby bin. If Sissel is possessing the memo while this happens, then he's just earned himself a free flight across the room. But not every interaction like this is necessarily useful.

Throughout the story, more murders take place, and this is when Sissel's other ability comes into play, his ability to connect to recently-deceased spirits to travel back in time to the moments just before their death. In these scenarios, you see a short scene play out that shows the moments before the victim's death. You are then are taken back to the start of the scene, and now need to find a way to prevent the death from occurring as the scene plays out in real time. You need to observe how each character moves, which objects in the room they happen to interact with, and how these objects can be used to change the course of events. Maybe you need to startle the culprit before they can take their shot by turning on a spotlight that shines on them, or by making a loud noise elsewhere. These timed puzzles are the highlights of the game for me.

The game is very generous in giving you hints, and I never felt stumped on any of the puzzles for this reason. Maybe it was a bit too forgiving, but this is the kind of game where getting stuck would maybe be a little too frustrating, so I don't mind the overall low difficulty. The hints appear as speech bubbles that you need to click on to read, so they are optional in that you can just ignore them. But of course I want to click on them to see every piece of dialogue in this game, because the game's characters and writing are really funny and likable.

This game has a cast of very fun and distinct characters who all have very over-the-top personalities. The animations for these characters are very detailed and expressive in a way that makes every cutscene fun to watch. Especially with Inspector Cabanela, who moves everywhere with an exaggerated dramatic flourish and strikes dramatic poses at every opportunity. Every single character has some kind of odd quirk about them - the jolly chef who's always singing to himself about chicken, or the fancy novelist lady who's always holding a glass of wine, or the bored policeman who breaks out into an elaborate dance whenever he gets nervous. Every single character is a delight to watch in every scene.

The story of this game is really good. Any story would be fun with such a great cast of characters, but this game's story is also very compelling with its mystery as well. There are so many revelations and plot twists that make me want to keep playing to see how the story goes.
The game is only 18 chapters, so it's not a very long story by any means, but it is certainly a fun one. And this game also has one particular plot twist at the end that really got to me - it might be one of my favourite plot twists of any game story ever. I'm not going to spoil it here, but it's so perfect and so bizarre that it just made me love the game even more.

The game doesn't have much replay value - there's only one solution to each puzzle, and the story only has one way it can play out. But that's okay too - sometimes a good story with some good puzzles is all you need to make a good game.


So yeah, it's a great game, and I'm very glad I played it. Ahh, I need to play more point-and-click adventure games! I've been on a big RPG kick recently, but I've also got a big backlog of point-and-clicks to get through too. ...ahh, oh well. I'll play 'em when I get to 'em, I guess.