Decent story, good concept, poor execution.
When I say Hotel Dusk is compelling initially, that is in large part because of its wonderful graphical style. They are comic-book style graphics but with a twist: even characters that aren't moving (and they don't move a lot really) are represented by a few animated cels w/ just slight differences in shading between them. It looks a lot like rotoscope animation though it has more of a hand drawn kind of feel to it. Really, these graphics alone make the game worth a gander for those who appreciate such things.
The problems with this game first rear their head in the form of controls. You hold the DS sideways like a book and control everything w/ a stylus, which is cute and all but leads to a few problems over a similar control scheme w/ the DS held in the normal position. They did thoughtful include both a left and right handed mode so at least your hand doesn't cover the scree your supposed to be looking at but something about the side-by-side format still had me looking at my hand w/ the stylus rather than the screen w/ the room graphics, which sometimes meant I missed things. In addition, holding the DS sideways ruins the stereo field of the audio if you are listening w/o headphones (this sort of thing is a pet peeve for me but probably won't bother others as much). The side-by-side format also prevents allowing an alternate control scheme via d-pad if anyone wanted to use it. Even aside from that, there were other minor annoyances in the controls which were frequently enough to be distracting. For example some (but, oddly, not all) doors required two steps to open and then walk through even once they were unlocked. Little things like that stack up and start making getting around the titular hotel a bit of chore. Overall, the controls are workable--and this is the furthest thing from an action game--but could have been done way better.
This game is really just an excuse to tell a complex mystery and really only has a couple not too difficult or interesting puzzles thrown in for good measure. This to me is fine in concept but if your puzzles are gonna be kind of lame, you had really better bring it with the story and Hotel Dusk simply does not. It is convoluted and twisted for sure but there is really nothing about the characters that makes you much care about them. Either the initial writing or the translation is bad, too, since many of the characters don't really even speak w/ a consistent voice let alone make you believe in them. On top of that, most of the surprises in the plot are either 100% obvious from a mile away or so amazingly far fetched you find yourself rereading them just to make sure you got everything. I like what they were trying to go for here, I just don't really think they got there.
Even if what I mentioned before could be overlooked, Hotel Dusk still has a huge problem w/ pacing. This is pretty much a short story worth of content here or maybe a very short novel but it takes several times as long as it should to get through it all. There is no voice acting but getting through all the text is slow going and there are often long stretches of it in between times when you actually get to do something. Beyond even that, there are a few occasions when you can actually lose this game and when that happens you sometimes have to go through some of these long, irritating slow paced sections again. At one point, I got a game over after accidentally going down a staircase and faced w/ rereading the enormous amount of text again, I almost put the game down for good--and I almost never quit a game once I've gotten to the meat of it.
If anyone of the three major flaws of Hotel Dusk weren't there--controls, plot or pacing--I might be able to hesitantly recommend it to people who really love this style of game. As it is, while it might have seemed innovative at the time it came out, Hotel Dusk is pretty much full-on boring for much of its duration. Even for fans of the genre, even taking into account its wonderful graphical presentation, I have to recommend most gamers to steer clear of this one.