Murdered: Soul Suspect

Murdered Soul Suspect was a game that I wasn't expecting to like much. After all, it has a lot working against it. It's world is undercooked, its mechanics are barely utilized in a creative manner, and one of its biggest faults comes in its execution of collectibles. As missing even one in a story area can mean missing it permanently, not to mention, there's no separate tracker to keep track of collectibles in one area, say the apartment, and you can only keep track of the overall collectibles count. Meaning, you could literally miss a collectible in a story area and not know about it. The sneaking from demons is also really half-baked, and it all just boils down to hop between spirit hiding spots, until you get a drop on them from behind to carry an execution. The UI menu is ugly to say the least.And yet, despite all that... i love this game. Maybe it is the lack of ghost detective games i have played. Or maybe, because it has such a good main story, that is equivalent of a good pulpy detective story that harkens back to those famous five or sherlock novels you may have read back in the day like me, or a more cinematic version of those lucas art point and click games, just with a ghosty + slightly adult style. Adult is kind of stretching it, it is more pg 13 than full R. That said, yes, the writing is the strongest suite of this game. From the revelations you uncover about characters and your environment, to the writing of the main story, and best of all, and my favorite parts of this game, those ghost stories you can unlock by collecting these artifacts in each area (there are 8 ghost stories to unlock) and all of these ghost stories are chilling and well narrated, making it a nice reward for going to nook and crany of each area. The character list are small, but all play their parts beautifully. Not the mention, some of the mind reading of npc also reveals things about the world and how the general timeframe of the entire story is. The artstyle can be hit and miss for some. While i would've preferred the game to be more gothic looking, considering it is in salem, the spectral type white-darkbluish type of artstyle isn't half bad, and the juxtaposition of the spectral walls with the regular human walls, making you realize how much normal humans couldn't see is a nice touch. The soundtrack and sound design, while minimal in nature, understand their assignment and mood, and are executed with exceptional professionalism. However...The mechanics are where the mixed bag comes in for many people. While it gives the ability to mind-read, peek through, and influence people by possesing them, the peek and influence abilities are only available for story events, so 90 percent of the time, all you can do is just mind read. Which is a shame.

Also, there are these side cases you can take, where you help random spirits solve their own personal issues by solving their cases. And that sounds like an awesome idea given the central mechanics of the game, until you realize, that, there are only 4 of them. Which lead me to a hypothesis and a suggestion that I am pretty sure everyone else who have played it might've thought: THIS GAME NEEDED TO BE OPEN WORLD. Like imagine how many open world games we already have where you shoot things or race, but an open world game where you do detective work, that would be amazing. Basically take the structure of shemmue and yakuza games, and remove the brawling combat with detective work, and you just going around and solving ghost mysteries.
Which i do believe might've been the initial intention of this game, considering the existence of these many collectibles and the initial impression of side cases. I truly believe, in an open or semi open world, these collectibles and mechanics would've more fleshing to it, and justify the like 200 or so collectibles it offers. And i do believe that initially it might have been the case before either deadline, budget, or resource issues for the devs from square enix's side might've been cut short, but hey....that's just a theory....A GAME THEORY!

It's feels like a movie..

Interesting main story concept but untapped potential ghost story/poor world and very casual, thoughtless detective system.

Underrated, great plot twist. Some graphic violence too.

Was unique from the games i normally play. The storyline was also nice.

Interesting premise and story but the story is far too linear. Diverging paths and different outcomes would have been nice.