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Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective |OT| Spoiler: The Main Character Dies

Beat it. Fantastic ending. This was literally the PERFECT game to play after 999. Oh, and I totally called
Ray being someone from the future, but I had no idea it would be FRIGGIN MISSILE. Best. Dog. Ever!

I wish this turned into a series, but stuff got wrapped up pretty neatly. Oh well. At least Shu Takumi shot up my list of developers to watch. This totally blows Phoenix Wright out of the water for me (Still want AJ 2 though).
 

bryehn

Member
Finally found a copy and started last night. Absolutely love the music.

Sort of fitting that Phoenix Wright was one of my very first DS games and this is my second last.
 

LiK

Member
bryehn said:
Finally found a copy and started last night. Absolutely love the music.

Sort of fitting that Phoenix Wright was one of my very first DS games and this is my second last.
Don't you love the save music? Totally AA all the way. :)
 

Jintor

Member
Man, I should mock up some screenshots from an Ace Attorney game where you chat with Ghost Trick dudes. Half the team is Investigators and Detectives, too!
 

Boney

Banned
I'm in chapter 7 and this game is pure gold. It's lacking Missile though!! hehehe

And screw Layton, I want PW vs GT
 

zigg

Member
Boney said:
I'm in chapter 7 and this game is pure gold. It's lacking Missile though!! hehehe

I was thinking that very same thing around that time. I even tried to go visit but (ch.3 spoiler)
the phone was in the fishtank...

Boney said:
And screw Layton, I want PW vs GT

PW+GT vs Layton. With Missile tagging along solving crimes.
 

Boney

Banned
zigg said:
I was thinking that very same thing around that time. I even tried to go visit but (ch.3 spoiler)
the phone was in the fishtank...



PW+GT vs Layton. With Missile tagging along solving crimes.
WELCOME!!!
 

Tenkei

Member
Love the game to bits! So sad that I finished it in just over two days. Time to track down a copy of 999 to scratch that adventure itch...
 

jdevil99

Member
I'm on Chapter 13, and have enjoyed the hell out of it. I'd say it's the most fun I've had since I finished Golden Sun. I'm purposely slowing down now because I don't wanna finish it off to quick. I have KH to bounce back to in between and it's a long wait til Radiata Historia. Ghost Trick sequel on 3DS is a must now...with of course, more Missile.
 

Drkirby

Corporate Apologist
Here, I made a gif for you all to use till a proper sprite rip/better gif gets made:
r1wzlu.gif
 

Fodder76

Member
jdevil99 said:
Ghost Trick sequel on 3DS is a must now...with of course, more Missile.

I wish, but this just seems unlikely. Doesn't seem like this did nearly as well as the PW series, and Capcom put very little effort into promoting this one. A shame really.
 
Fodder76 said:
I wish, but this just seems unlikely. Doesn't seem like this did nearly as well as the PW series, and Capcom put very little effort into promoting this one. A shame really.

Anyone have the Japanese sales numbers handy? Can't quite remember how this ended up doing over there.

Anyway, just finished chapters nine and ten. 9 was the closest I've come to frustration with the game, but thinking it through paid off. Chapter 10 was brilliant!
Very elaborate way to get a man his medicine, but a lot of fun seeing it work in the end!
 

Nemo

Will Eat Your Children
I've been playing this for half an hour everytime before sleep. It's like an awesome bed time story <3
 
JustAnotherOtaku said:
Anyone have the Japanese sales numbers handy? Can't quite remember how this ended up doing over there.

Anyway, just finished chapters nine and ten. 9 was the closest I've come to frustration with the game, but thinking it through paid off. Chapter 10 was brilliant!
Very elaborate way to get a man his medicine, but a lot of fun seeing it work in the end!

ch 10 spoiler:
Yes, that was one of my favourite puzzles. The slow mo moment when you hit the medicine was so satisfying.
 

Lafiel

と呼ぶがよい
Only on Chapter 4, but I'm pretty impressed by the amount of originality offered so far in the puzzle design in what i assumed would be a rather "thin" premise in comparison to the ace attorney games. Can't wait to see how it progresses.
 

Boney

Banned
Crumpet Trumpet said:
Best avatar ever? Looks like it.

We need Ghost Trick avatars to spread the word/be obnoxious like Community-GAF or Scribblenauts-GAF.
Hey I've been rocking my Missile avatar for the longest time.
 

Jintor

Member
How did you make your avatar anyway, Aero? I want a Ghost Trick one, pity there's nobody on fire; my tag won't make sense anymore. :<
 

BorkBork

The Legend of BorkBork: BorkBorkity Borking
Teetris said:
I've been playing this for half an hour everytime before sleep. It's like an awesome bed time story <3

I might do that to prolong the length of the game. One chapter a night!
 

Nemo

Will Eat Your Children
BorkBork said:
I might do that to prolong the length of the game. One chapter a night!
Yeah that's definitely true! Did the same with Phoenix Wright and each game lasted me at least a month. Tho often I'd just go to sleep without saving when I felt I didn't follow the story enough heh. You might also fall asleep while still playing :p

But man I'm loving this, just need 999 and I'm good for the next 2 months. These games are by far the best thing the DS has offered, hopefully the trend will continue with 3DS
 
(closing my eyes as I scroll through everybody's late-to-end-game impressions):

So I ordered it from Amazon, had it shipped to work. Late last week I see an estimated arrival date of Jan 17....So, naive me, I expect it to be here when I come in to work this week.

Cut to today, and it still hasn't come in. So I check the USPS tracking...
Jan 12: left Bell, CA (good, that's like an hour from me)
Jan 17: left Cincinnati, OH (?!?!?!!??)
Jan 18: left Des Moines, IA (?!??!?!??)

For some reason this package has decided to retrace the Pony Express route or something. Ah well, the game will still be awesome when it actually gets here...
 

Amir0x

Banned
We had a really dead day at work so I managed to finish the copy I boosted off my bro-in-law.

The gameplay really didn't do anything at all and the the story was so fucking dumb, but man... that animation. That glorious animation. I would almost suffer such a dumb story again just to see more games like it.

I did laugh once, when
Missile said something like 'Oh man I want to drink the water' and then Lynne is like 'NO MISTY, IT'S TOO SALTY.' And then Sissel is all "(um, you'd think the more important point to make is that he can't drink the water because he's dead.)"
Just the way it was done cracked me up.

Such mouth watering animation. Animation is important, developers!
 

Drkirby

Corporate Apologist
The way the story unfolded didn't do anything for you?

I do wish there was some harder puzzles, and some more gimmick puzzles
Loved disarming the torpedo
 
Amir0x said:
I did laugh once, when
Missile said something like 'Oh man I want to drink the water' and then Lynne is like 'NO MISTY, IT'S TOO SALTY.' And then Sissel is all "(um, you'd think the more important point to make is that he can't drink the water because he's dead.)"
Just the way it was done cracked me up.

I laughed too because I just imagined her saying it exactly how most people talk to their dogs when trying to prevent them from doing something. Just the scolding tone + the fact the dog and owner can actually communicate cracks me up for some reason.
 

Amir0x

Banned
Drkirby said:
The way the story unfolded didn't do anything for you?

I do wish there was some harder puzzles, and some more gimmick puzzles
Loved disarming the torpedo

Re: Gameplay - it seemed like they waited so long to introduce the finally somewhat interesting idea of
multiple ghost powers, with the swapping, etc
that it didn't have time to really grow into the type of game that might have been interesting. As it was now, it was mostly a string of really lazy guessing games where you just have to click things in a very specific order, usually with little way to actually logically come to that conclusion. It's difficult to know, for example, that some items might stumble when opened, or other objects might unhinge when jostled. Item descriptions tell you what you can do TO them, not what will happen as a result of your ghost trick. You have to experiment with them and then often you go 'oh i see wish I would have known that would have happened before', right after that you have to restart the 4 minutes before death and do it all again. Which is amazingly boring, having to do the same scenes over and over. It's a lot of the trial-and-error gameplay that is not much fun at all for me. Fortunately, it remained pretty easy throughout, but it never allowed itself the sort of freedom to really do the type of neat things its concept hinted at.

Re: Story - it seemed like another one of those games who cared more about the scenario than the writing. It caused much strain to any rational thought, with characters frequently acting in ways that makes no sense (in other words, there were usually a plethora of far easier, more logical ways to react to a situation that wouldn't have caused as much ridiculousness as it did in the game, but for the point of giving the game its convoluted twisty nature and over the top 'gameplay rooms', frequently threw writing caution to the wind). For example, who the hell would
spend years blaming themselves for the murder of someone they never killed? Who would blame themselves for having to chase someone who had a gun and took a girl hostage? Why would Detective Jowd have to cover up the death of his wife, when there was clear evidence that a contraption his daughter made simply backfired (the burn marks on the painting, for example)? If it was a manipulator or not, it was still no living person's fault it happened. Nobody would have sent anyone to jail or punished Kamilla. There's literally dozens of such bits of painful forced scenario writing that exists only to serve the purpose of making gamers doubt the order of events.

I sort of had the occasional smile when, for example, the game was trying so hard to emphasize the
endless loyal nature of pets, which was cute in its own way
, but it was lost in a sea of bad writing. I didn't expect more than that, of course, so it's not a surprise. I didn't pay for the game so it's no loss.

I'm glad I played it for the animation.
 
Amir0x said:
Why would Detective Jowd have to cover up the death of his wife, when there was clear evidence that a contraption his daughter made simply backfired (the burn marks on the painting, for example)? If it was a manipulator or not, it was still no living person's fault it happened. Nobody would have sent anyone to jail or punished Kamilla.

Actually, this would have some serious repercussions for
Kamila
if it got out.
Not legally of course, but it would only add to the guilt she was already feeling and maybe even prevent her from making friends if the adults spoke poorly of her, an opinion that would be passed on to their children. Things would just get worse from their and her mental health would go down the drain.
 

Amir0x

Banned
cosmicblizzard said:
Actually, this would have some serious repercussions for
Kamila
if it got out.
Not legally of course, but it would only add to the guilt she was already feeling and maybe even prevent her from making friends if the adults spoke poorly of her, an opinion that would be passed on to their children. Things would just get worse from their and her mental health would go down the drain.

That's a really silly, game-logic type way of thinking the world works.

No adult would ever let this poor girl think it was her fault
and anyway, the game only submits the idea
that it'd be possible because magically she lost all her memory of the event as it occurred, another convenient plot point that existed only to serve the already convoluted series of bs events.

In the real world,
nobody is going to stop talking to you, no adults are going to speak poorly of her, and no opinion would be passed onto their children to prevent her making friends. NOBODY on this sane Earth would blame a little child for an accidental contraption that misfired.

It's really silly stuff.
 

Amir0x

Banned
cosmic, unless you are surrounded by sociopaths it simply does not occur this way. I can't imagine your anecdote has
anything to do with something as serious as killing, but a little child is not going to be blamed for anything if the scenario went down the way
it did in this game. No amount of anecdotes can possibly convince me that any sane
loving family would ever allow any shred of guilt to pass on to the child, outside of the individual guilt she'd feel from being involved - which would be impossible to avoid because she WITNESSED the event. The game tries to get rid of that bit by making her forget.
 

Turnstyle

Member
On Chapter 8 right now. Been playing it through slowly on my commute, but I know I could probably have just rushed through it in a day. Waited a while to play this, so want to savour it.

I'm a bit worried that there might not be any more
missle in the rest of the game though!?!? He's the best character!!!

Does the animation of the characters remind anyone else of old Lucas Arts adventure games?
 
D

Deleted member 30609

Unconfirmed Member
Holy shit the gigantic twist was outrageous.

I went from denial to acceptance in record time, though, so that's something.

What a great game. Early 2011 top tenner, perhaps.
 

Amir0x

Banned
Totakeke said:
Someone stop Amir0x!

There's no evidence that the
contraption backfired.

That's incorrect. I mean even going off the logic where everybody begins to suspect
ghosts are manipulating things, which you sort of HAVE to accept in a game about ghosts, there are various things the police would have obviously investigated to determine it was an accident.

The game alone submits one over elaborate way they disproved it, but I can think of at least a dozen:

Inspector Cabanela and Pigeon Dude specifically rebuilt the contraption and found there is no way for the Cupid to fire the way it was originally built. It was manipulated. But in the real world, the determination would just keep coming back to "it was a freak accident." Which again would have zero repercussions for a little girl in any world even resembling this planet.
 

Haunted

Member
The logical flaws and unrealistic assumptions stretching reality in Ghost Trick are about as severe as those in the Phoenix Wright games, what with its ridiculousy stupid justice system etc. So if you can stomach those games, you should be ok here as well.

People defending these things that are clearly not intended to be taken that seriously are, of course, missing the point. Takumi asking the player for some suspension of disbelief is fine, no need to argue that everything's actually logical etc.



I emphasize again, don't play 999 Ami. Because while PW and GT are just skirting that line where suspension of disbelief crosses into annoyance and rejection, 999 just completely obliterates it immediately. For me, at least (and I seem to have a higher tolerance than you for this stuff, so be warned.) :p
 

Haunted

Member
Cosmo Clock 21 said:
You getting pretty mad about anime plot twists which are about part for the course with what Phoenix Wright throws at you
He's not mad, he got asked to elaborate on his opinion and did so.

It's fine to crush those who try to argue that everything's perfectly logical and understandable.
 

Amir0x

Banned
Haunted said:
The logical flaws and unrealistic assumptions stretching reality in Ghost Trick are about as severe as those in the Phoenix Wright games, what with its ridiculousy stupid justice system etc.

So if you can stomach those games, you should be ok here as well.

Just don't play 999 Ami, cause it's full of those, but much more severely, completely crossing that line constantly while PW and GT are just skirting it. For me, at least.

man, for all the "love" 999 gets, I've begin to hear from defenders that it has really bad writing and basically just the scenario is is what does it for these people. Too late for regrets now, my copy is sitting here lol

Cosmo Clock 21 said:
You getting pretty mad about anime plot twists which are about part for the course with what Phoenix Wright throws at you

I am not mad, it's just what I felt was wrong about the writing and story. It was a series of really forced scenarios meant to justify its plot twisty nature, unsupported by quality writing or anything. There's frequently many logic breaks in order to put these characters in situations that the developers thought would be fun.

I don't think it's a good argument that "well it's an anime game in the Phoenix Wright vein so of course it's going to have bad writing!" or something, but again... no big deal.

I like the animation system a lot so I'm not upset I played it. Was really cool to watch.
 

Haunted

Member
Amir0x said:
man, for all the "love" 999 gets, I've begin to hear from defenders that it has really bad writing and basically just the scenario is is what does it for these people. Too late for regrets now, my copy is sitting here lol
Well, that's why you don't listen to the people in the official thread. *glares at his copy of 3D Dot Heroes*


Now I need to subscribe to the 999 thread so I don't miss your impressions
and the ensuing hilarity
.
 

Amir0x

Banned
Jintor said:
Their planet has blue people. I'm using this as a justification for logic going right out the window

Alright, fair enough, but then I'm not sure why anybody tries to judge storylines if that's going to be the attitude. There are always internal rules a universe lives by; I don't think it's too out of the park to claim that these basic things would remain true even in this world of blue people and ghosts (since there are investigators and a justice system where people go over evidence and determine the guilt of someone in Ghost Trick). If a game breaks internal logic, then it feels forced and as is the case in what I believe here, poorly written.

Haunted said:
Well, that's why you don't listen to the people in the official thread. *glares at his copy of 3D Dot Heroes*

Now I need to subscribe to the 999 thread so I don't miss your impressions and the ensuing hilarity.

Technically I listened to people in the neoGAF GOTY thread. You know me, my curiosity always gets the better of me when someone claims something has a 'good story.' It's like something inside me screams 'No I'll be the judge of that'! Because gaming so frequently has terrible stories there is some internal drive to find a single game in an ocean that bucks this trend lol
 
Amir0x said:
I don't think it's a good argument that "well it's an anime game in the Phoenix Wright vein so of course it's going to have bad writing!" or something, but again... no big deal.

I like the animation system a lot so I'm not upset I played it. Was really cool to watch.
I'm just saying you don't go into a Michael Bay movie expecting biting commentary on modern socioeconomic norms, nor do you even watch it for that reason.
 

Amir0x

Banned
Cosmo Clock 21 said:
I'm just saying you don't go into a Michael Bay movie expecting biting commentary on modern socioeconomic norms, nor do you even watch it for that reason.

I guess I just don't see how what I'm saying suggests an expectation of anything beyond what should be there, but um... thanks for the tips
 
Amir0x said:
I guess I just don't see how what I'm saying suggests an expectation of anything beyond what should be there, but um... thanks for the tips
well you did spend at least five posts expounding on how dumb/plot-holey the story was
 

Amir0x

Banned
ok

so, just to be clear here, the expectation about a game that is a great part about its plot and writing is to...be plot holey and poorly written? And that if I expect anything else, I'm just setting myself up for disappointment?

You know what I think I'm beginning to understand why having simple discussions around here can be so difficult lol
 
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