Awkward Zombie

But then the whole thing would be less silly. And silliness is half of why the game is fun.

Also, it is much harder to make understandable Punny Names. And, unlike other works, the puns are a very integral part of the humor of the series.

So, yeah, the whole thing is incredible silly. But, I honestly think it works.

I have no complaint about the punny names. Ini Miney is one of my favorite minor characters just because her name is so damn fun to say. Ini Miney!

EDIT: Regarding the legal system changes, this just came to mind: Case 1-5 makes a big fuss over the fact that the chief of police, Damon Gant, has the ability to refuse to testify! This is a HUGE deal, because it means that trying to get testimony out of him that he doesn't want to tell is going to be tricky, because what if he exercises his right of testimony refusal?!

...yeah, here in America, everyone has that. It's called the Fifth Amendment. There is nothing special about Damon Gant.

edited 10th Dec '13 8:05:17 AM by TobiasDrake

If I recall correctly, the first game and possibly the next two (three? four?) never make any reference to America. All it ever says is "this country". Yes, it's a country with hamburgers instead of rice balls, but they take efforts not to name it. Dual Destinies is the first time I recall it blatantly claiming to take place in America.

They don't state America outright, but they do mention LA by name in the first game. IIRC, there are a few other names dropped, too.

At least it's better than Trauma Center where the backgrounds of several characters get scrambled because of the country change. The first one takes place in either Japan or America and there's a character who's either immigrated from America or Japan (respectively) and then later on Europe gets involved in the localized version because otherwise her history makes no sense.

I personally don't really get why they're doing it like that either. I mean, are people actually turned off by such cultural touches? If I run into stuff like that in a game, I go "sweet, I didn't know that" or something similar.

Who knows? It is somewhat common in localized animes in US. It can get really weird sometimes.

Ace Attorney does have an excuse, though. As I said before, the game really loves its puns. Most character name is a pun one way or another. Since it is such an integral part of the humor, I can understand the need to adapt the names, as otherwise it would be cutting part of the game. And if you change the names but keep the setting, you will run in other Fridge Logics in itself, as you would have a bunch of Japanese characters with western names for no reason.

If I had to guess, I'd say that changing such things during localization eliminates the need to explain them for people who don't know what they are. It's essentially cutting out a bunch of extra exposition that the original game didn't need because it was familiar to the people who created it.

I've never actually played a Phoenix Wright game. What do they play like? All I know is: anime lawyers, hugely popular, OBJECTION!!1.

They're like a mix of Visual Novel and old-school adventure games.

This.

They're interactive visual novels with intelligence-puzzle gameplay. There are two stages of gameplay: investigation and trial. During investigation, you travel to different places, question people on the events that transpired, search for clues, and generally try to piece together the events. Trial is where the gameplay really picks up, where you have to cross-examine witnesses by poking holes in their testimony and try to find points at which their statements contradict pieces of evidence in your possession.

They're surprisingly fun and mentally stimulating, and also pretty funny. Just don't take it too seriously; the games are silly, the characters have exaggerated personalities, it's really all just meant for fun.

edited 12th Dec '13 3:05:08 PM by TobiasDrake

And on the topic of Ace Attorney

http://awkwardzombie.com/index.php?page=0&comic=123013

This is something that's always bugged me throughout the series.

The "have to lawfully introduce evidence procedurally and as it becomes relevant, and guide it being relevant if it isn't" aspect of the setting at least gives a reasonable explanation to that sort of thing, which you don't often get in that type of adventure game.

It's the main reason that doesn't bug quite me as much in Phoenix Wright as it does in other series (though it's still annoying sometimes). At least in this game, knowing exactly what you have to do but having to find specific and sometimes archaic ways of actually doing it makes a bit more sense.

The way I see it, there's a sliding scale for adventure game puzzles between ones where you know what you have to do but don't know what you're supposed to do to actually do it and ones where you can figure out little steps but have no idea what the big picture is supposed to be. Though I guess that's a bit unrelated.

Oh, god, I hated that so much. I understand that, in a murder mystery that is mostly Fair Play, there will be times where the audience is smarter than the main character. That is fine, and I have no problem with this.

However, when that happens, I want to be able to at least reveal the twist myself at the dramatically appropriate moment so I can feel smugly satisfied in my own smartness. But then the assistant reveals some sort of incredibly obvious hint, which completely sucks out the glory of the act.

Mia, goddammit, if you weren't dead already, I'd kill you.

I have to say while the handholding does bug me (and in Dual Destinies it's worse than usual), it's never bugged me that the assistant came up with the twist and not me. Mia in particular never bothered me, since she's Phoenix's mentor and obviously smarter than he is. 8-)

Or maybe they should add a "you don't say?" answer option.

There should be an option to ask your assistant for advice. It can be useful sometimes, but other times, the hints are just annoying, ESPECIALLY the auto-hint if you Press the last statement of their testimony or just scroll past the end of it. I like to Press every statement to see what they say, and that auto-hint feels like the game saying, "Hey, dumbass, this is what you should be doing."

Funnily enough, latest game does have option for asking advice if you mess up enough many times when cross examining <_<

But yeah, funnily enough Capcom seems to think that you are supposed to press statements only if you aren't sure what evidence to present Silly Capcom, they are playing their own game wrong!

edited 31st Dec '13 9:15:25 AM by SpookyMask

Indeed. The main draw of the game are the dialogs. Why wouldn't you want to see more of it as much as possible?

Sometimes, when given choices, I like to deliberately choose wrong answers just to see Phoenix fluster to explain it.

Turnabout Bro.

Me too. I deliberately save often just so I can go around doing the wrong thing before doing the correct path without getting a game over.

In the third game, during the brief sequence where you can play Edgeworth, his Present Evidence failures are basically all priceless.

"Your honor, this evidence contradicts that statement!" "I don't see how it contradicts that." "But, your honor, you just said it does!" "...don't play mind games with me." *PENALTY*

edited 1st Jan '14 8:21:21 AM by TobiasDrake

http://awkwardzombie.com/index.php?page=0&comic=010614

Hot Skitty on Wailord Action anyone?

A shinny new page!

Well, many shinny new pages in fact (starting here, naturally). Man, what happened to this thread?

edited 30th Mar '14 9:54:33 PM by Heatth