YMMV / Ghost Master

• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Not all ghosts or powers are equally useful. The earth elementals' 'Quake' ability in particular is useful for completing on average at least one objective per chapter. This, combined with the ridiculously common fetter makes an upgraded Stonewall in particular, who is one of your starting spirits perhaps the single most useful utility ghost in the game while also being one of the better ghosts for scaring people away (binding him in a building's entrance area with his 'Slow' ability can make it almost impossible for NPC's that have fled outside to reenter the building again until they flee for good). Him, Boo (who gets 'Fool's Errand' and 'Rattling Chains') and Stormtalon (who has 'Surge' and 'Blackout') can together complete about 80% of all of the game's objectives by themselves.
  • On the other side of the equation are ghosts that have almost no use. Since the game doesn't let you use ghosts for missions before they were recruited even on replaying said missions ghosts that join late tend to get the worst of it. By far the most egregious example is the Darkling who joins halfway through the final chapter and can therefore see use only in said chapter and the bonus chapter. Spirits that have either very rare fetters (f.e. Arclight) or extremely steep plasma cost for their powers (f.e. the Dragoon) also aren't terribly useful, even if their power set may be interesting.
• Ending Fatigue: The bonus level Class of Spook'em High gives the game a legitimate ending in which you and your minions leaving the town by entering a bright light in the sky. Unlock all or most of the ghosts in the game, and the sequence seems to go on forever. Each ghost rises up, does a pose, and flies off. Did we mention there's a lot of ghosts in the game?
• Fridge Horror: Sometimes you can glean a fair amount of disturbing background information from what kind of fetter a mundane object serves as. Some is more straightforward: the living room of the 'Calamityville' house, the one that was once inhabited by an old lady who poisoned her guests' tea, still contains a teaset that can serve as a 'murder' or 'violence' fetter - the same teaset she had used, still there. Then there's the one hospital bed that apparently a murder victim died on (or was perhaps even helped along by one of the staff?). And then there's the occasional couch or bed in the frat house, the mafia cruiser and the military base that serve as fetters for 'violence' and 'emotional'...
  • Everything about some of the Ghosts themselves and there backstories is just horrifying. For example, Terroreyes a floating brain and eyeballs found at the frat house. Why is he there? He was brutally murdered and used for illegal scientific research before the frat boy managed to steal what was left of him. Arklight was just a run of the mill worker trying to do his job before he got killed by a mentally disturbed women along with all the other ghosts in her home.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: It was hailed as a Sims-beater before and upon release. Ghost Master would definitely find its cult following, but its flaws held it back and it was annihilated by the Sims which would go on to become a big franchise.
• Nightmare Fuel: The intro cutscene can be unnerving. Also, even though you play as the ghosts, some are still simply creepy — not to mention some of the epitaphs.
• Spiritual Successor: This game takes a lot of cues from Electronic Arts' cult classic Haunting Starring Polterguy, although instead of getting revenge on a specific family, you're more like a paranormal civil servant just doing their job.
• Tear Jerker: Realizing Lucky the kitten died due to a malfunctioning pinball table that she rested on because it was warm.
• Trial-and-Error Gameplay: The main flaw of the game. The gameplay encourages experimenting with your ghosts, but unfortunately the games design makes this more annoying than enjoyable; you can't change your ghosts mid-mission, you can only pick them at the beginning. It is pretty common to enter a mission and realize most of your ghosts won't be able to do anything, then you are forced to restart the whole level just to change your team. Manipulation missions by far get hit with this the hardest. Like in the "Spooky Hollow" mission the only way to learn which powers can disrupt the summoning ritual is to try them all, even though location should give you some hints. "The Blair Wisp Project" takes the cake, though, because the three humans can easily wander away from each other, making it impossible to manipulate them all at once.