I had been wondering what kind of mysteries Shu Takumi might write if he wasn't constrained by the world and continuity of the Ace Attorney series. Honestly, the guy could be Kotaro Uchikoshi's long lost brother, because the plotline ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ he pulls off in Ghost Trick shares so much genes with Zero Escape, AI: Somnium series and other Kotaro's works.

Gameplay mechanics aren't important here, the puzzles are engaging, but very simple. This is primarily a crime detective mystery visual novel featuring plot twists as ridiculous as they can possibly get.

I am particularly impressed by the style and detail of character animations. I imagine they were originally designed to look clear and distinct on the DS's tiny 256x192 resolution. The remake appears to be reusing the original source content: on a modern resolution PC displays and framerates these animations look almost comically exaggerated, but I actually found their design charming and unique.

From the creators of the Phoenix Wright series comes a remaster of one of the last great games of the Nintendo DS generation. Ghost Trick puts you in the shoes of someone who is newly deceased and is attempting to remember who he is and how he died. Using his new 'Ghost Tricks', he is able to help prevent the deaths of those he encounters while also trying to see how his fate is tied to theirs.

This is a wonderful and digitally beautiful remake of the 2010 classic. The overly exaggerated animations and gorgeous 2D sprites show just how revolutionary this was for 2010 and is equally as impressive in 2024. I appreciate how they handled the transition from a duel screen setup to one that works with just one, however the character icon was often too big and covered a lot of the background image which would sometimes be an intense "someone is about to die" scene. This wasn't a huge deal but I do wish the character and dialogue boxes were a bit smaller.

The 'Ghost Tricks' mentioned earlier are the standout mechanic of the game and will be your only line of defense at maneuvering from point a to point b and preventing deaths. Many levels will require you to watch the scene play out to see where you witness a death first hand just to gather information before manipulating the objects around you. It requires a lot of trial and error as many objects can serve as red herrings and will force you to restart the death sequence. It's not too difficult to where it becomes tedious and these sequences are only a minute or two long, so not much time is wasted - however, there is only one correct solution for each of these puzzles which limits creativity and free thinking. More often than not, the actual solutions are a bit illogical and almost defy my line of thinking which I wasn't a huge fan of.

The story is a relatively dark one that centers around evil organizations and people who spread death in their path - these deaths can usually be prevented with our ghost tricks so it's not all that bad. The plot twists rival the greats such as Bioshock and Spec Ops: The Line. That being said, there is a LOT of dialogue in this 12-15 hour adventure and some of it can feel incredibly drawn out as each chapter focuses on a death or collecting evidence or intel. If you're visiting this game as an Ace Attorney fan though, this shouldn't come as a surprise or be too bothersome.

Ghost Trick has a few missteps with it's story and lack of complete freedom in puzzle solving, but this was a beautiful and well cared for remaster of the original classic.

Funny characters die a lot.