The Ace Attorney Series

Well, the 3DS games were dubbed too so that's not exactly breaking new ground for the series.

But! Since there's dual audio if you want to be really hardcore you could change the language setting depending on where the characters are!

Well okay yeah, that's true, BUT this does mean the great Ace Attorney is getting effort from Capcom.

Like I said, it looks like a lot of time and effort is being put into this and I love it.

I do love how they're basically treating it like a Legacy Collection with all the art and music galleries and such.

Yeah, and it's getting a physical release, which we haven't had in the West since the Layton crossover. So I'm definitely pumped.

So after 8 years of not owning a 3DS or a phone that could run DD I finally got the chance to play it for the first time.

Unfortunately, while not bad really, I can easily say it's my least favorite AA game. That title previously belonged to AAI 1, of which only the last case was particularly memorable, but in this game most of the cases were like that. Its last case, like the game as a whole, isn't bad and is the best case in the game overall, but is probably my least favorite final case of any game in the series.

Revealing who the culprit or it being obvious is at the start is nothing new (in the first game this applies to both the first two cases in fact), but I felt it was especially bad here since the only non-obvious culprit is the phantom aka Fulbright.

I also am not really that hot on the "dark age of the law" thing because with the way the characters talk about it it feels like this should have been one of the bleakest and most oppressive AA games but in fact the opposite is true. Sometimes it even actually works against the game like the confrontation with Means towards the end where Athena is trying to replicate a convincing statue under the cloth. It's relevant to the case but the way the scenes are framed and the music that plays just undermines the tension; sure, past AA games had sillier or more comical moments in otherwise serious trials but I feel in the past they didn't defuse or undercut the tension like that moment did.

I guess the best way to sum up my feelings on this is simply this: there are games in the series that people might not like that much or have severe flaws like JFA and AJ and I understand why other people might not like them as much, but even in those games there were usually big highs that let me look on the experience pretty positively overall. Here, there's not really that much in the way of that: there are good moments yes, but they aren't really good enough to offset the general "ehhhhh" feeling I got from the game.

Edited by Draghinazzo on May 26th 2021 at 6:34:31 AM

I also didn't like DD (DLC case was pretty good, though).

Spirit Of Justice does the Oppressive Dark Age of the Law stuff better in Khurain's version.

I don't mind DD's story. That said, it takes a lot for me to consider a game too handholdy, and DD managed to impress on that.

eh, I dunno about that. It kinda falls into the opposite problem of being extremely obnoxious for not much to the point of dragging down the pacing of most scenes. I'll take DD kinda not really selling that notion over SOJ trying so hard it undermines itself way harder than DD for me.

Edited by Yumil on May 26th 2021 at 11:36:02 AM

I feel like chapter 3 of DD has a similar problem. To a large extent it feels like that's the only case that really addresses that particular plot point/theme, but it does so in a largely not that satisfying way where the phrase "ends justifies the means" gets repeated so incredibly often the idiom almost starts to lose meaning.

Edited by Draghinazzo on May 26th 2021 at 6:54:39 AM

Spirit of Justice is my favorite game in the series.

I wonder what happened to Iris post 3-5.

Man i wonder when Apollo and Trucy will finally meet their mom.

I feel like the Dark Age of the Law represents itself the best in the Great Ace Attorney duology.

I have very mixed feelings on Dual Destinies. Athena and Blackquill both hold up as well as the original trilogy’s characters, but none of the other characters really reach that level for me save for Fulbright. Case 1 is aggressively mediocre. Case 2 is a good case that suffered greatly from making it completely obvious as to who the killer is. I don’t really care for Case 3. But Cases 4 and 5... those are legitimately phenomenal.

The other problem with case 2 IMO is that L'Belle isn't really that charismatic or intimidating. To give another example, while there were issues with case 2 in AA 1 (mostly IMO how mia bails phoenix out in the end in an anticlimactic way), you can't deny Redd White, despite being a one-dimensional dick as well, is very imposing and he feels like a big deal to face as an opponent. L'Belle is just kinda there. I'm not saying they would have needed to do things the exact same way, but the point is that the way they did it just left L'Belle as an underwhelming culprit.

Edited by Draghinazzo on May 26th 2021 at 9:16:35 AM

So which murderer do you think had the best plan/was hardest to pin down?

I remember being legit shocked at the twist of Spirit of Justice Case 3 on my third playthrough... so yeah, probably that.

In terms of being hard to pin down, Quercus fucking Alba

Alba is one of the reasons I remember the last case of AAI fondly. While his refusal to give in did probably drag the pacing and made him kinda annoying, the reveal of him being evil and dropping the façade is very memorable, plus his theme kinda slaps.

You gotta love a good villain transformation.

I heard so much bad things about alba than when I finally played through case 5 I felt it was okay.

Thinking about the villains outside of alba, I feel like gavin has one of the strongest plans in the series, considering it actually takes faking evidence to take him down in case 1, but he also simultaneously suffers from the problem of being a case 1 villains who makes extremely stupid mistakes such as running his mouth on the colors of the cards for no good reason, and turnabout succession suffers heavily of, imo, giving up too quickly at pursuing him for the sake of making the point about the jury system, so he feels like wasted potential more than an actual impossible to catch-villain.

I can sorta see a case to be made for Engarde in that it takes the prosecution to literally team-up with the defense to take him down. Given the themes of the series, it's a very strong feat. I guess blackquill also teams up with you for the final of DD but it doesn't really FEELS like he had to in order to win.

I think blaise from AAI 2 also takes a special spot for how even taking him down once doesn't even do anything and he comes dead close to getting away with everyting unless the entire prosecutor AND judge team has to team-up to bring him to justice.

Edited by Yumil on May 26th 2021 at 5:02:10 PM

Sidenote, I feel like Kristoph really suffered from the fact that he gets exposed as a villain in the very first case. You barely get any sense of a mentor-student dynamic with him and Apollo and that feels like a huge missed opportunity. It would have stung a lot more and made Apollo feel like he had much bigger stakes in the story if we got to hang out and get to know Kristoph for one or two cases before the reveal of his villainy. AJ is waaaaay more concerned with Kristoph's relationship with Phoenix and Zak than it is with his relationship with Apollo and it contributes to Apollo feeling sidelined in his own game. I feel like he gets to shine a lot more in AA 5 oddly enough despite not being the MC anymore.

Edited by Draghinazzo on May 26th 2021 at 12:04:48 PM

yeah, that's a good point - the game really couldn't give a shit to give a feeling of mentorship between polly and gavin. And yeah, DD gives Apollo a lot more focus because the plot is actually about him and his character for a decent part of it, and he doesn't get overshadowed by phoenix or athena.