Despite being a big fan of Ace Attorney, I never actually played the original Ghost Trick for the Nintendo DS, a puzzle game published by Capcom and directed by Pheonix Wright’s creator Shu Takumi. As such, I was very excited to hear that Ghost Trick was being ported to modern consoles via an HD remaster.

Now having played a demo of the game’s first two chapters, I can safely say that while it scratches that itch for more Ace Attorney with a similar style of humor and character writing, it’s also uniquely its own beast with an interesting gameplay loop and dashing animation that holds up well today. It’s an overall good time if you’re into the more quirky side of gaming.

Your Dead

That’s certainly a way to start a sub-section but it’s actually how Ghost Trick starts. You turn on the game and you’re instantly greeted with the main character dead on the floor. His spirit however finds that he’s still drifting among the world of the living and with the help of a sentient lamp, he realizes that he can manipulate objects in the physical world and reverse time for a few minutes. He quickly uses this ability to help save a young woman being hunted by an assassin.

From here he realizes that his name is Sissel and that the young woman was a detective named Lynne who was investigating his death. From here he decides to follow Lynne and learn more about why he died before he eventually dissipates at dawn.

I haven’t played enough of the game to judge to plot too far, but it certainly is intriguing. It hits the ground running with the fact that you’ve died and gives enough breadcrumbs that you want to see where the mystery is going.

I do also like what I’ve seen of the characters with Sissel, Lynne, Ray The Lamp, and even the assassins you stop at the beginning all having fun quirks that make them stand out much like the characters of Ace Attorney. My only real complaint is that the game also starts somewhat slow like Ace Attorney with the tutorial being a little more wordy than it probably needed to be. It’s a minor complaint but I would have preferred it if it went by a little faster.

Ghost In The Machines

The gist of Ghost Trick is that you as a spirit can travel between different objects and interact with them like turning on a fan or getting a wrecking ball to drop on someone. What makes this tricky is that you can only pass from one object to another when they’re touching, meaning that you’ll have to manipulate different items to move them into the right spot or influence one of the living characters in the puzzle room to move them for you.

The puzzles are done in real-time, meaning that human characters will be moving, speaking, and interacting with the world as you do. When you want to possess an item, you go into a phantom mode which will briefly freeze time but the object won’t actually change and start moving until you are back in real-time. This is important as many of the puzzles are timed or require correcting timing to have a certain character in a certain place to get to the solution.

I did find myself getting a little stuck at certain parts but nothing in the game is too difficult, it just requires a bit of thinking outside of the box and considering just how different items can interact with their surroundings to create new areas to travel. It can be quite fun seeing what you can do with the different environments and creating some funny slapstick gags with your wacky furniture shenanigans.

These were all done with the touch screen on DS but here they’re done with the controller and it works completely fine. Nothing in the game is so specific that it requires touch controls so console players should have no problem getting into the title.

The Dazzling Art Style

So one thing that people always told me about Phantom Trick back when it was on the DS was that the animations were incredibly smooth and expressive, especially for a DS game and they really weren’t kidding.

The HD remaster really shows just how much the animation of the game oozes with style. A lot of that comes down to some perfectly timed, animations that really bring each character to life. There’s a real sense of theatrics in each person’s body language, assassins have sharp, precise movements while Lynne and Missile have more spirited and slapstick-filled movements. Each character feels unique not just in design but animation and it makes each interaction and visual gags pop out all the more.

I’m also a big fan of the game’s soundtrack. This is one of the big changes with the HD Remaster the entire soundtrack has been rearranged soundtrack by Yasumasa Kitagawa (The Great Ace Attorney) and you can swap between it and the original soundtrack at any time during gameplay. Both soundtracks are bop with plenty of catchy synth tunes, especially the main theme which really gets you into the mood of being a detective on the trail of a mystery.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective 

After missing out on its original release, I’m pretty happy to be giving Ghost Trick a shot and finding out why so many people consider it a classic. The puzzles are fun to solve and further bolstered by the high amount of character expressed in the writing and dialogue making for a fun adventure mystery.

While the tutorial area did feel a little long and hand holds, I’m still left wishing I could see more and learn more about the plot which goes to show how effective the game is drawing people in. If you like Shu Takumi’s work with Ace Attorney, this should be written up your alley but Ghost Trick succeeds at being far more as a unique take on the puzzle genre that is complimented by its snazzy aesthetics and a killer soundtrack.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective will launch on the 30th of June for Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One and PC via Steam.