The Sexy Brutale Critique 

I like your distinction between disappointing and bad. Disappointment can only happen when something legitimately good lets you down.

Ghost Trick's best moments are in the final few missions, so I have to agree with the rest of the comments section in saying that you should complete it if you haven't already. It's one of the best puzzle games ever made.

Fair review. I had a pretty long play-time because I tended to follow every person to see where they went on the map (and read the enertaining dialogue) and then restart with that knowledge. Turned out that was unnecessary since, as you say, the puzzles were not nearly deep enough to warrant that level of knowledge.

Just played this game. I enjoyed it a lot, but I got the feeling pretty quickly that it was built to be accessible to a ≈15 y.o gamer. I think that helped attenuate disappointment. idk whether this is anything approaching possible, but this feels like the kind of game that'd do great with a Celeste or Mario style modding scene, where people make custom scenarios using all the base parts of the game that are just astronomically harder than what the game itself was ever going for. Like, the devs kinda accidentally built an engine and asset kit that could sustain the construction of much deeper and more nuanced gameplay than they ever had any intention of attempting, and that possibility space is perceptible to an experienced gamer

you should finish Ghost Trick if you haven't yet. it just keeps getting better and better.

if the entire mansion had been open from the beginning, it would have been so much better. the fact the game limits your travel area and limits the people in that travel area, and tells you who is getting murdered right at the start, basically solves all the puzzles just by narrowing the scope artificially. it's like sherlock has to solve a murder, so now go stand in this guy's office with this guy until you solve it. and it's like, okay, so this guy is the murderer? solved.

I didn't like the idea that it was all imaginary, to be honest. It kinda lessens the value of the setting and the characters to me. Especially because so much of the reward for collecting stuff is lore. But that lore is weird because part of the time it's talking about the real mansion that burned down, and part of the time it's talking about things that Lucas made up for the imaginary version of the mansion. And why do I care about the lore details of a daydream Lucas had? It's not even like there's some justification for a virtual version of the mansion being real, everything is just completely imaginary. They could have, for example, had Lucas be dead and have this twisted mansion be some kind of hell or purgatory he has to go through in the afterlife. I probably would've preferred something like that. Am I just too literal to appreciate the story? I feel like this whole game loses something if it's actually just an elaborate daydream Lucas had to decide whether he should still feel bad about killing everyone. It also means that the ending choice has no real weight. The only options are for him to mellow in guilt for even longer when that wouldn't accomplish anything, or to move on. There are no tangible consequences, it's just a question of if he still feels bad.

Tbh, I felt the same way. It was disappointing that practically none of the guests interacted with each other in their murders. The good writing and style are what hooked me, but if the game were any longer I wouldn’t have finished it since as you said, it never left tutorial depth. I hope there will be a sort of sequel or successor to this game that gives it more depth. Perhaps a game where you are the murder trying to kill everyone in the mansion without alerting the other guests? I liked this game’s concept it just need slightly better execution on it.

i agree a lot with one of your early statements, a sequel would be a perfect thing for this game, creating the missing content that would make this game very good

Agreed. I enjoyed the aesthetic, and the stylisation of the game, but it was way too simplistic, with that said I still recommend it to everyone ( but only if its on sale, some of these PSN games their prices are outrageous for the content provided ), there were gorgeous and tragic moments, some very creepy like watching all the hotel staff lineup ominously atop the glass walkway. I did figure out I had to lock the staff member in the closet, but for some odd reason I was trying to involve the vinyl downstairs in the Poison Bar, I don't know why I was, it seems silly now, but at the time I thought, "nice the puzzles are becoming complex, or abit more fetchy", only to realise all murders are solved by items in their immediate area.

I was waiting for all the rescues to combine into a single day so you could leave the mansion with all your friends but it never happened.

I was really looking forward to this game. Majora and Groundhog Day are two of my favourite pieces of media, and this had me very very excited. Once I got to the first post-tutorial murder, I, like you, was able to ACCIDENTALLY solve it by interacting with the objects I found...on my very first try. I haven't gone back to it yet. It was very disheartening.

You should have completed the collectibles. The invitations are the most fun to obtain, they are the most difficult part of the game. Greyson's (the locksmith, right?) invitation is especially fun to figure out!! And the playing cards lead to a secret ending that's pretty deep (it goes into a subject that's not really spoken of in the rest of the game), even though it's quite short. Also, you're a bit hard with Lucas... I guess you didn't connect with the character. Personally, I put myself in his shoes and I also wouldn't have been able to live with myself if I had done what he did (we all do stupid stuff at some point in our lives, nobody's immune to that, even the smartest among us). So I found myself emotionally involved with the "normal ending". All in all, I loved this game and only found it too short (even after completing it 100%).

Augh I really want to watch this review but the spoilers hurt my spirit because I haven't played the game yet. God damn it.

I agree with you that this game needs more compelxcity and it would be more intersting if there were intersections with murder cases, but i also appreciate the creators did not do "save them all" things. I like the ground hog days genre(which are called as genre in japan), and i've god used to it. I even predicted that the identity of the protagonist. so, i thought the finale would be the one final run - save them all. it's almost the convention, and in gameplay that would be final test. I was very paranoiac about timelins and planed the perfect run. But it fails, and even you choose "yes" to turn back at finale, you can nof save them all. Even then, it was not bad ending. I liked that concept. maybe, I am too long fan of this genre. but that concept was fresh to me

I understand what you mean. I've been wanting time traveling mechanics in games since I played Majora's, so I was really interested in this game. It's not a bad game at all, but it makes you think how incredible it would have been with more challenge, polish, and map design

Possible video on Ghost Trick, and maybe even the Ace Attorney series in the future?

"It was all a dream" endings are really getting old...

The title makes me think the game is about achieving the violent NUT.

Clear and thorough as ever. Thanks

It looks neat, aesthetically

I'd argue it takes a Lego approach to collectibles, where missing character abilities prevent you from solving straight forward puzzles. At the end of the game, you are armed with every necessary ability and not one second before (otherwise levels remain incomplete for a long time).

0:00 the first sentence you uttered, and i was like YES. It's difficult to explain why it's both solid and respectable, and yet massively DISAPPOINTING, so I'm excited to watch this critique now. For me, it's that the premise IMPLIES some cool things the game never delivers on. 1) I hate how linear it is. 2) the big finale should be, you try to solve your OWN murder, and to do it you must learn to save ALL the others in a single cycle to discover the ultimate truth. 3) and of course, I wish there were more murders to solve and was bummed when I realized many were in clusters of two, thus shortening the game because I wanted it to be longer. and 4) I wish the game took place over three days at the mansion. Even after completing all "chapters", I was like "cool, now it's onto the second day of the social gathering. but then it ended. and 5) yes, the story ended up being a bit pretentious and a bit of an "aha just kidding!" ending, which I'm never a fan of.

I think your arguments about increasing complexity and using mask elements in puzzles are quite valid and would certainly improve the game. But with the pressing z thing I don't see how you could really improve things that much, if it doesn't show whether or not you can press z it just means you'll be trying to interact with more things spamming z until you find the one you need. I think this is more an element of choosing how you play the game: you could force yourself to only interact with intention and use an item on an object when you think it's what you should be doing and thus not go spamming z. I'm curious what you'd suggest as an alternative for this, and how would it fix the problems you have with it.

Ghost Trick is really good and only gets better. You should really finish it!

great video, thank you for this

Even though I agree in it's shallowness in it's puzzle and time mechanic, I will disagree with it being a disappointment purely due to the amount of style it has. It is a shame that they never make use the time loop in order to manipulate the guests in such a way that you could cause them to interact more with each other and potentially cause them to help you solve someone else's murder.

In the middle of million of views this video just sits here with barely any attention so I'm here

Late to the party but here goes anyway. I completely agree with pretty much all of this. The puzzles were disappointingly simple, though I still more or less enjoyed the game. I was most disappointed with the ending though. The idea that I was supposed to feel bad for Lucas was insane to me. He was just a scumbag doing a scummy thing and he murdered all of his closest friends because of it. If the fire had been caused by something completely accidental that could have been attributed to Lucas I think the ending would have struck a chord with me. I did LOVE the music and aesthetic of the game though.

I'm listening to these videos like s podcast and this game sounds really brutal without the imagery

(Yes I know this is a really old video but I feel compelled to give my own feelings anyway) I feel like I have a similar problem with the game to you but for slightly different reasons. The thing that makes any of the different puzzles difficult is finding out what happened. Finding out what will occur to the guests and only then is the solution simple. The difficulty comes from figuring out what is and is not relevant to solving the problem and at the start of each murder you don't know what that is yet which means you will search even the filler rooms the first time. Even though certain objects are clearly intractable while others are not, knowing when and where to use them. Where I agree with you though is that the game fails to ramp up the murders. Eventually the method I described of trying to just find out what is going on becomes easy once you've prevented some of the murders and any difficulty comes from figuring out how to get into certain rooms. I dislike the ending, I usually dislike these "It was all a dream" endings because it makes the world you just played a whole game learning about and interacting with and tosses it away and tells you to go back to the real world when the entire point of me getting involved with it is to forget about the real world for a time. This also plays into the gameplay though. The fact that the murders are all so isolated from each other really hurts any kind of conclusion to the game. If the final challenge of the game had been to prevent everyone from dying in a single time loop and there had been interconnecting aspects to all the murders so that once you solved one murder you also gained a new lead on the next then the game could have ended with a more positive story ending but also give you a real final exam for the overall gameplay of the game by having you have to make this perfect sequence of actions that you've been learning about throughout the whole thing. I agree with you, the game could have been so much more but I feel that part of what holds it back is that this is all just a dream and so you can never have any kind of ultimate stakes. If it's a dream then there's no need to make you have to try to figure out how to save everyone because they're all dead already. I too hope that the creators can try this again with a new game that improves upon what was started here.

I'm not watching the video yet due to spoilers, but based on the description, I'm guessing he didn't like it. Can someone please briefly explain why without spoilers? I'm considering getting the game.

Is it possible that the glowing reviews that took their time with it didn't just press Z on everything? Not saying that approach is wrong, just saying that they might have played it more like an exploration game.

Seeing a game like this in that isometric view...makes me think about Solstice for NES and how bad I wanted a sequel for it. Anyone remember that game? Anyone remember it AND like it?

I know this review is several years old, but I just wanted to say how I find it ironic, that for every single point, I disagree with you, yet the underlying feeling and conclusion reached is the same. You liked the twist ending for it's thematic value within the context of the twist, I personally disliked it for how it invalidated the core premise of the game and sort of put everything in the context of none of it really mattering since the twist is that none of it was real in the first place, and is the equivalent of "it was just a dream" except also everyone did die, and you're depressed, and while the CHARACTER goes through some sort of catharsis, if you pick the good ending, the audience doesn't, as they're in the process of recontextualizing the past several hours of saving people as everyone already being dead before the story even started and the player having no agency. I feel that The Sexy Brutale is a game torn between two potential masterpieces, one a light-hearted murder mystery based on the gameplay premise of turning back time to save your friends while unravelling the mystery of why the staff are trying to murder everyone, and the other a dark look into guilt and regret about a man debating with his own fractured psyche. Both valid, both with great potential, but both clashing rather than complimenting each other. The pitch and the follow through don't match so that whether you land on the side of enjoying the beginning premise, or enjoying the ending twist, you land in the same place- Disappointment. Two great core ideas that conflict with each other to make something that's- Good. Not bad, not mediocre really, but good, just falling short of it's potential. I feel like it could've easily become a cult classic or instant hit had it committed to one direction or the other, you could've written the story to better suit gameplay and pitch, or the gameplay and atmosphere to suit the intended twist and ending, but as is, it's good, there's something you'll enjoy, it just may not be what you hoped or expected.

I agree with your points about the missed potential and I also noticed each one. I think whats different and why the game gets such praise is that I didn't walk away from the game focused on what was lacking but by remembering the parts I loved so while I could list all the parts I found disappointing I would never be able to attach that label to the game as a whole. Like in most positive entertainment its good sufficiently distracted me from its bad I guess Mediocre story but great characters that leave an impression. While I share your wish for more complex puzzles but I think you overestimate the average gamer, especially all the non puzzle gamers. You guess that the extra 2 hours of game time was getting collectibles but that doesn't match my anecdotal evidence. Even self selecting to just youtubers and internet commentators who in general are more savvy then those who don't interact with the internet most seem to have had moments where they get stuck for half an hour, sometimes to the point of frustration on a solution that we didn't even think about before completing. To meet my demographic I wanted harder more complex puzzles involving mask powers and all the mechanical interactivity but I feel like that would have forced the game to also have an "easy" or "story" mode for the audience that doesn't like getting stuck and dealing with the frustration of not knowing what to do while a clock is ticking away

That's interesting. As you said yourself, every other review is higly positive of this game. Jim Sterling even went and gave this a 10 and said it was one of the best games of the year. This obviously doesn't mean they're right and you're wrong, I just found it interesting that you have such a different opinion on a game that apparently was unanimously acclaimed. In any case, this is a great video and a great review/critique, as always. Keep up the amazing work, your channel deserves way more subscribers than it currently has.

The mansion was bleeding money, and Lucas was deeply in debt. He could have just sold it or the stuff in it, but that would likely hurt his pride, and he wanted his beloved mansion to go out with a bang. Also, Lucas is a gambling addict. The rush is another reason why he chose to do such a stupid thing.

Thank you! I agree with all of this! When I read the reviews, I had the same reactions as you (did we play the same game? this game is not that great). The puzzles were mind-numbingly simple. This could have been an absolutely brilliant game, but it fell completely short.

Hot damn... I am saddened to have just discovered this game and now have learned it's so shallow.

Spoiler much?

I'm early, let me make a joke............ You cured my deafness

pro tip : never start a critique about the sexy brutale with "the most disappointing" game

Why would people pick to play a game that looks and feels as bad as this to play? out of all the games content out there, how could you waste your time on it? What about 3030 Deathwar, Morrowind, Skyrim, Darkest Dungeon? What about Halcyon 6, what about Stranger in the Staglands, ShadowrunReturns, 100 other games!

Tbh, I felt the same way. It was disappointing that practically non of the guests interacted with each other in their murders. The good writing and style are what hooked me, but if the game were any longer I wouldn’t have finished it since as you said, it never left tutorial depth. I hope there will be a sort of sequel or successor to this game that gives it more depth. Perhaps a game where you are the murder trying to kill everyone in the mansion without alerting the other guests? I liked this game’s concept it just need slightly better execution on it.