Preview: Even a decade later, ‘Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective’ still impresses

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The most unfortunate thing about Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is just how few people seem to have played it — it’s anecdotal evidence, sure, but my decade-plus of polling gamers, other writers, and game devs hasn’t exactly inspired confidence. Still, I can’t say I’m entirely surprised — aside from the fact that Ghost Trick is an adventure game through and through (by which I mean, it’s not the most popular genre), it was only released outside of Japan in early 2011 for the Nintendo DS, a mere two months before the much-anticipated 3DS was set to hit store shelves.

Call it bad timing, bad juju, or a hard-to-market genre, I can understand why Capcom’s cult classic didn’t exactly take the world by storm all those years ago. But, if you missed (or skipped) out on Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective the first time around, you might want to consider need to keep this one on your radar.

A little more background info, but I promise to make it quick: Ghost Trick is, in many ways, remarkably similar to the much-beloved Ace Attorney games (yep, that’s right, this article features not one but two niche Capcom series). The common link between the two is none other than Shu Takumi; a venerable developer in his own right, having also led development on Dino Crisis and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (he also worked on Resident Evil 2!)

With that in mind, it shouldn’t shock you that Ghost Trick is half visual novel, half point-and-click adventure. You play as Sissel, a man who not only lost his memory but is also… dead. As a result of biting the dust, he can’t recall anything about his life, but he makes up for that with his newfound ghostly abilities. As the name suggests, Sissel can pull off ‘tricks’ as a specter, possessing key objects