Ghosts of Miami is a fantastic game with a unique premise. A mystery-solving game (where the main shtick is finding missing persons rather than solving murders) where you also get to date people, all wrapped up in an 80's aesthetic? I was sold, and the game delivered.
In terms of overall aesthetic, the game is lovely on all fronts. Like, that opening animated sequence?? Absolutely gorgeous, I watched it pretty much every time I booted the game. The art is colorful and a delight to look at; it does a great job of capturing the look and feel of 80's anime, and all the characters are expressive and distinct. Even the loading screens for when you travel between different areas have these really cool pixel animations. There's a lot of neat CGs too, I REALLY wish the game had a CG gallery!! Some dateable characters had more CGs/events than others though so kinda sucks if you liked, say, [spoiler]Richard[/spoiler]. In terms of music, the soundtrack is catchy and filled with 80's synth. It's great to listen to and effective at building up emotion and atmosphere. I sort of wish it was included as DLC so I could buy it or something, I can't seem to find it anywhere online.
The game really shines in its story and characters. Everyone is fleshed-out, complex, and interesting. This is especially the case for Chelo, our protagonist – she seems very realistically flawed, but still compelling and relatable. It's rare to see a dating sim or VN protagonist who is little more than a stand-in for the player, let alone a fully-developed character in their own right. I loved learning more about each and every character, choosing different dialogue options or different routes to solve a case, just to see what they would say and what kind of insight that would give me about them. Pieces of dialogue that just seem like throwaway lines can actually end up being really meaningful. Even the dateable characters I wasn't personally interested in, I still liked seeing their different routes and how differently they interacted with Chelo. I actually really appreciated the fact that interacting with the romanceable characters actually HELPS to solve cases rather than hinders; they weren't just a distraction from the plot, they're actually well integrated. I sort of wish there was another case or two besides the game's five, just so I could see all these characters interact a bit more.
One thing about this game that actually surprised and impressed me is the amount of historical references it contains to real events from the 70's-80's. Besides the more well-known stuff like the rise of Fidel Castro or the War on Drugs, the game not only mentions things such as the Mariel boatlift, or the Escobar family, or the Iranian revolution, (all of which I knew little to nothing about) it also incorporates the impact of these people/events into the characters themselves, their lives and motivations. I thought this was incredibly fascinating, and it even made me pause the game occasionally just to google this stuff. I feel like I actually learned something. The 80's setting isn't just for the aesthetic; the dev team must've done a lot of research.
Unfortunately, the game has its flaws too. My biggest issue with the game involved its mechanics; it doesn't have options to adjust text speed, or quicksave, or skip previously-seen text, or to press the scroll wheel to get a full look at the game's art – and all of this stuff is pretty standard to have for VNs, so I didn't get why this game didn't have those! Lacking these options made the experience more frustrating than it needed to be, especially when I wanted to replay and see different routes/dialogue options. (Note: pressing the ~ key on your keyboard will skip text much faster than continuously jamming your space bar, but it [i]will not[/i] stop at unseen text). I also didn't really get why [spoiler]Luci and Richard's[/spoiler] routes aren't available from the start? You have to replay the whole game just to get their routes, [i]and[/i] you can't solve the final case without doing [i]both[/i]. Like, I enjoyed learning about these characters through their routes, but all that replaying – especially when you don't have a reliable way to skip seen text – got really slow and frustrating, and I wanted to solve that last case, dammit! Oh yeah, and the loading screens have some cool pixel animations but when you're trying to replay routes like that it just slows things down more.
My other biggest issue is that sometimes it was hard for me to understand the dialogue. The slang played a part of it (I'm not very good with slang in general, moreso if any of it was specific to an era/city I never lived in) but sometimes the dialogue was just...confusingly worded? Like two characters will be having a conversation and it just doesn't seem to flow logically. One example that comes to mind (and this isn't a spoiler) is when Chelo first meets Tala and asks for her help with a case, Chelo says something like "I appreciate your honesty" and Tala suddenly goes "You should, I'm Iranian" and talks about her dad and the Iranian Revolution. It just.... didn't flow very well. Or, occasionally characters will just ask or say something really vague, and it isn't really clarified, and then I just have no idea what the hell they're talking about. The dialogue is perfectly fine for the most part, but in some moments it just left me scratching my head in confusion. Your mileage may vary on this point.
The game also has the occasional spelling error, glitch, or grammar mistake. Sometimes the game can't also properly keep track of its timeline (i.e. it acts like you haven't talked to character X when you actually have). Fairly minor stuff, but still frustrating.
Bottom line though? Ghosts of Miami is great. Despite my ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about its flaws, I still really enjoyed playing it and I wholeheartedly recommend it. Honestly? the worst thing about it is how [i]hecking underrated[/i] it is.
