Great Puzzle mechanics that almost keep pace with a top notch story
Ghost trick is a quality puzzle game with a unique story that takes engaging tricks, heh pun, and turns with a colorful cast of characters. The story executes an engaging murder mystery detective story where a murder happens per chapter that "Sissel" our main lead needs to reverse. You go back 4 minutes before every murder and see the events that happened before. The puzzle sequences then have you sometimes waiting for things to happen in the real world during this 4 minute duration, or going into the ghost world, where time is stopped and Sissel can zip between objects before manipulating them back in the real world to change the fate of those he is trying to save.
Sissel has a mechanic performing these tricks. Later Missile which provides you another mechanic to gameplay. There are also some levels that have different mechanics you have to work around to succeed in the chapter. Overall though the variety of ways you can interact with the the puzzles presented isn't switched up too much, and might become tedious to someone coming to this game for the mechanics. I even felt a sense of "these puzzles seems easier", in the later 1/3 of the game. I experienced a sort of ramping down of puzzle difficulty while the story started to pick up and signal the beginning of a closure to the story. While there is variety of mechanics in ghost trick, there could of been more to keep the experience fresh throughout the game play.
The story is a real selling point to me of why you should play this game. The dialogue is well written, with an interesting mystery that is kept at the forefront of our character's concern even while being sidetracked by random folks that need to be brought back to the world of the living. The script is humorous and pulls off several moments where I caught myself chuckling at the antics of Lynne and all the characters. The story even does bring in some more grim and somber elements. But having a teenage, shonen angle, even when the characters get into the dumps, they mentally wrangle the strength to be positive and look for a solution.
I have to bring up the art of this game also. It is this gorgeous fluid borderless animation that create not only interesting animation for the characters and objects our detective interacts with, but also interesting scenery. The more traditional anime characters used during dialogue sequences are also well draw with a variety of expressions to meet the dialogue.
In summary, for anyone who is looking for a puzzle game with an engaging story and characters, you should play this game. If you come to game mostly for mechanics, I could see your patience start to waiver over the full course of the game, but still think this is worth a play through for you.