Popped through my letterbox yesterday and I've put a few hours into it now.
The game is fundamentally a story driven puzzle game. You died and you have to find out why by possessing objects and interacting with them. What makes it interesting is that you can only possess nearby objects so you're constantly trying to find a way to a certain place.
Occasionally you come across someone who has been killed and you have the ability to travel back in the four minutes before their death in order to prevent it from happening. You have rather smart interactions between the objects you can possess, the killer and the person you are trying to save (who is oblivious to you). You often have to time certain actions perfectly and to set up objects so they set a chain of events in motion. Every time you alter history, you get a checkpoint you can rewind to if you fail, this helps lessen the irritation of having to keep sitting through long cut scenes over and over.
The puzzles are really clever and creative without being too abstract, sometimes a little, subtle action is required, sometimes you need to do something big and flashy. It doesn't look like the game will get repetative.
The thing about the game that deserves the most praise is the animation. Silky smooth and full of character, it's brilliant to watch, no two characters move the same and they have their own unique personality. They're not amazingly detailed (they're probably rotoscoped) but they're probably the finest example of animation on the DS.
Bad points? You can't speed up the animation in the time travel bits. This could potentially get irritating as the puzzles get tougher and you have to keep restarting.
Not exactly a bad point but it's amusing how a game that looks absolutely nothing like Phoenix Wright, plays nothing like Phoenix Wright, still somehow manages to feel exactly like a game from the makers of Phoenix Wright (which it is).
The game is fundamentally a story driven puzzle game. You died and you have to find out why by possessing objects and interacting with them. What makes it interesting is that you can only possess nearby objects so you're constantly trying to find a way to a certain place.
Occasionally you come across someone who has been killed and you have the ability to travel back in the four minutes before their death in order to prevent it from happening. You have rather smart interactions between the objects you can possess, the killer and the person you are trying to save (who is oblivious to you). You often have to time certain actions perfectly and to set up objects so they set a chain of events in motion. Every time you alter history, you get a checkpoint you can rewind to if you fail, this helps lessen the irritation of having to keep sitting through long cut scenes over and over.
The puzzles are really clever and creative without being too abstract, sometimes a little, subtle action is required, sometimes you need to do something big and flashy. It doesn't look like the game will get repetative.
The thing about the game that deserves the most praise is the animation. Silky smooth and full of character, it's brilliant to watch, no two characters move the same and they have their own unique personality. They're not amazingly detailed (they're probably rotoscoped) but they're probably the finest example of animation on the DS.
Bad points? You can't speed up the animation in the time travel bits. This could potentially get irritating as the puzzles get tougher and you have to keep restarting.
Not exactly a bad point but it's amusing how a game that looks absolutely nothing like Phoenix Wright, plays nothing like Phoenix Wright, still somehow manages to feel exactly like a game from the makers of Phoenix Wright (which it is).
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