God, fuck this game. The dialogue is some of the worst exposition dumping I've ever heard from Uchikoshi, and he's the guy known for having bullshit info dumps in his games. The new characters all suck. Ryuki barely has a personality, Tama feels like a creepy 40 year old man's idea of what a "sexy" character is, and I cannot take any of the side characters fucking seriously because apparently Uchikoshi doesn't either. The music sucks and feels royalty free. The somniums suck. It's even more trial and error than the first game and the process of going through those errors is way more annoying, because Ryuki and Tama's banter is not nearly as good as Aiba and Date. Instead of making the visuals look above ps2 quality they instead decided to put in a fucking dress up and tamagotchi section. The English voice acting, which used to be my favorite aspect of the first game, is so much worse, with the only saving grace being the returning cast. Speaking of the returning cast, FUCK this game for being marketed as a sequel while barely actually being one. I really wanted to stick through this game because I heard the twists later are awesome, but I really can't with this aggravating drivel anymore.

Turns out the motherfuckers who repped this game above everything else were right.

This is Shu Takumi at his absolute best - from Ace Attorney we already knew he could weave an intricate and compelling mystery, but in Ghost Trick that mystery is both expanded and made more intimate as every character matters until the end (unlike most AA cases where characters appear for only one case). Ace Attorney's cost-effective writing that makes even the minor characters pop is on full display here. Every character is instantly memorable and goes through an arc that usually revealed them to be far more likable or interesting, especially the main characters, which are all very easy to get attached to. The story sometimes went into cartoon logic, but it was never unforgivably bad like a lot of Ace Attorney cases.

The gameplay and concept is also incredibly innovative, and every puzzle felt very satisfying and brain-expanding to solve. I had to consult a guide a few times, but it was very clear that just with enough experimenting all of the answers were in front of me, it's just that I couldn't bother sitting through the incredibly long and unskippable animations throughout the level, which is pretty much my only complaint (it's a DS game though, so it makes sense).

OH AND DID I FORGET TO MENTION THE FUCKING MUSIC AAAAA ACE ATTORNEY 1'S COMPOSER RETURNS AAAAAA THATS WHY HES THE GOAAAAAAT

Was immediately sold on the game after hearing about a visual novel where choices actually matter a lot, but the overall result was a bit lackluster.

The art style, voice acting and writing were all great, and the idea of repeating the same story sequence with different voices in your head and a different princess is very well executed and (mostly) fresh the whole way through. My problem comes with the repetition of the runs. Every run ends pretty much the same way before the big climactic ending, which made it predictable and really grading after a while, to the point that I was almost unable to get to the finale because I was so bored. Still, when you do, the finale does comment on some interesting themes and ties together the game quite well.