Ace Attorney Discussion

Finally got around to beating Dual Destinies again.

So this was my first AA game and made me want to try out more of the series. I loved the humor and the characterization. But when I played it again after going through the trilogy, I felt my nostalgia fading and didn't find myself enjoying it as much as I did before. However, by the end of Case 3, I found myself falling back in love with it. There are some solid cases here.

Case 1 is a fairly weak case on its own. It's your standard tutorial case. However, I think it's the best first case due to how it connects with 5-4 and 5-5, which gives it story importance.

Case 2 is the weakest case for me. Dual Destinies has a lot of connections between the cases, and yet none of them are here. It's very filler and it's really the only filler case in the game due to the mentioned connections between the other five cases.

Case 3 is actually pretty good in my opinion, though it's fairly controversial. Athena is my favorite character in this game and right up there with Ema for favorite in the series, and this case (and the following two) show why. The ending is absolutely hilarious, though I felt that Means was pretty obviously the villain.

Case 4 is a weird case because it ends so abruptly due to its connections with 5. It's short, but it's good. Cosmos carries this case single handedly alongside Athena for making it hilarious (the segway spinning is awesome).

Case 5 is one of my favorite cases in the series. It draws a lot on 1-5 and 1-4, two strong cases on their own. Fulbright, while lacking the intimidation factor of Gant, Hawthorne and von Karma, is a really cool arc villain for how he comes out of nowhere. It's probably the most emotionally powerful case in the series due to Athena, which further makes me like it.

The DLC case is really good too. I like the humor and the references to the trilogy in it. It feels a lot like Rise from the Ashes in terms of structure and I felt a lot of comparisons to Big Top. It's just too bad it costs money...[/quote]

My game ranking is:
DD >= PW1 > T&T > JFA

Now to find a copy of Apollo Justice and play through it before I get Spirit of Justice in September.

DD playtime ended up being around 25 hours.
Trilogy playtime was around 55, or around 18 hours per game.
 
My favourite headcanon: When the Phantom took out out Bobby Fulbright to steal his identity, he didn't actually kill him, but instead dumped him in an Outrealm Gate. Fulbright then woke up in Nohr with partial memory loss, but continued on his quest of justice under the new name of Arthur.

Come on, they even kinda look alike! :p
 
So this got posted yesterday:
Spirit of Justice was totally off my radar, but actually I think I might end up getting it now. The return of Ema Skye was totally unanticipated afaik, but I love that she's coming back! Hopefully with some kind of plot to match. Looking at the direction of the gaming industry I find the following doubtful, but I always found Ema's actual gameplay to be very trivial and easy, in short. I hope they make it more obscure and difficult to figure out what to do this time around.

The new character, Rayfa, is what's really piqued my interest though. I really hope that something really interesting is utilised with her mechanic of seeing the deceased's last memories before death and for it to not just show the murderer, as that would trivialise the rest of the game. Maybe if the dead person thought someone was out to kill them but they actually weren't, so they remember the wrong person as their murderer, since memory is unreliable? That would be a neat spin on the mechanic. Either way it's pretty much sold me on the game, ngl.

IDK how much of this is old news because I haven't been keeping up with Spirit of Justice at all, but what does everyone else think about it?
 
Celever said:
So this got posted yesterday:
IDK how much of this is old news because I haven't been keeping up with Spirit of Justice at all, but what does everyone else think about it?
Click to expand...

I actually feel like it under-sells the game to people who want to get into the series by making it sound too complicated, but that's just me. Rayfa's pretty interesting from what I've heard. Her position as priestess and princess of Khura'in is integral to catching the culprit in Case 5.

Rayfa's aunt, Garan, was jealous of her mother, Amara's, position as queen of Khura'in. One night, she burned down the Khura'in embassy, which Apollo's father was playing in. Luckily, Amara was able was able to escape with Rayfa, but was separated from her husband, a defense attorney, King Druk and their son Nayuta. Druk was blamed for the fire, which is why Khura'in hates Defense Attorneys. In order to cover up her sister's death, Garan posed as the Queen for 20(?) years, taking in Rayfa to not look suspicious. In order to look after Rayfa, Amara disguised herself as Baaya, a feeble old maid. This disguised worked for many years, until Garan's husband, Inga kidnapped Druk and Maya. Inga kills Druk, and Amara kills Druk as retaliation, I think. One important thing to note is that the only person native to Khura'in who can channel spirits is the true Queen/Princess, IE Rayfa and Amara. I'm going to skip ahead to the second day of the trial. Apollo has Amara cornered, and she has to give important testimony against Garan, but before she can, she's killed on the witness stand by the Royal Guards that Garan sends to kill her. A bit later in the trial, Garan has to channel spirits under suspicion that she isn't the real queen, but she can't because she isn't the real queen. Apollo calls her out on this, and she's arrested, making Rayfa queen. Because Rayfa could channel spirits as princess/priestess and Garan could not, it proving that it was impossible for Garan to be the queen.

The mirror never shows the true culprit. In case 1, the victim was killed from behind, so he never knew who killed him. In case 3, the victim committed suicide to frame Maya for murder. Finally, in case 5, the victim had a mental condition that prevented him from seeing well (he was blind?) so he couldn't have seen who killed him either.
 
I've mostly been staying away from trailers and stuff (past the first couple Japanese trailers, anyway, so I guess I know some) so I can go into the game relatively fresh. Definitely looking forward to it! :D
 
I'm not reading any posts about Spirit of Justice because I'm wanting to go in blind when the game comes out. However, I did hear there's a demo on the 25th, so I might play that when the game comes out. Literally all I know about the game are that Apollo, Athena, Maya, and Ema are in it.

Anyways, I'm playing through The Monstrous Turnabout (5-2) and the Engarde case (2-4) right now.
I'm only in Day 1 Investigation right now, but I'm finding it cool but also slightly dull. Phineas Filch is a little annoying (he literally goes into Apollo's pockets and takes stuff) and dumb, and the fact that they revealed L'Belle as the murderer this quickly was a little redundant. I want to be able to go through the mystery of finding the murderer and a sense of getting somewhere, and this case ruins it, because you know everyone except L'Belle is innocent. It doesn't feel as great when you "catch" him, because you already know he did it. It's something that should only be in a tutorial case, in my opinion.
This case is awesome. I'm currently on Day 2 Trial (Andrews), and everything so far has been amazingly set up. Andrews is looking really guilty right now, and the added pressure of having Maya hostage makes everything feel so much more important (and it also sounds like something I'd pull in an Al Catraz case). I think Andrews did it so far.
 
That's what I've heard, yeah. Apparently Turnabout Academy is pretty good, so when I get around to that, I'll probably enjoy it a lot more. Since I'm going on a roadtrip tomorrow, I'm going to play as much Ace Attorney as I can and see where I get.
 
@PikaMasterJesi I would also like to point out that Monstrous Turnabout actually still has a great feeling of satisfaction at the end of the case, though I won't say how. It's more complicated than it may at first seem IMO. That said, it's also my second-favourite case in the entire game (maybe third behind the DLC), so I seem to have a higher opinion of it than most. Either way, stick through with it until the end! :D
 
I actually ended up figuring out the case through reading ahead on the walkthough, but I shouldn't have done that.

Adding onto this, I ended up reading ahead on the other two JFA cases, but I'm going into 3-5 and AJ/Investigations (both and Prosecutor's Path) mostly blind.
 
Aww, that's disappointing. 2-4 is one of the best cases to play through blind.
 
PikaMasterJesi said:
That's what I've heard, yeah. Apparently Turnabout Academy is pretty good, so when I get around to that, I'll probably enjoy it a lot more. Since I'm going on a roadtrip tomorrow, I'm going to play as much Ace Attorney as I can and see where I get.
Click to expand...

"pretty good" Okay
Stop right there
This case has Klavi in it.
Best case.

I have to come out and say that Turnabout Academy is my favourite case from Dual Destinies, and it's the only case I can remember I've played more than three times. Without spoiling much, Athena is great in this case and getting to know a bit of her backstory without being completely flooded with it like the rest of the game is great. I enjoyed pretty much all of the characters, and the idea behind the case is super cool. The whole case is known for breaking 3rd case syndrome.

The characters are fantastic in TA. At first, I couldn't stand Scuttlebutt, but I ended up liking her a lot more once she was brought into court. Hugh is probably the character I can relate to most as he gets high grades but ends up still feeling like a failure. Robin Newman was probably the best character in the case, and she had a gender-swap probably no one saw coming. But man, would they not shut up about that "The end justifies the means" stuff. I didn't think Means was suspicious at first, hell, I thought Hugh O'Conner was the culprit. But I loved how the case threw suspicion to pretty much everyone. There are so many different times when you'll think Juniper, Robin, and Hugh killed Constance Courte, but when you take Means to court and start pressing him, he just becomes incredibly annoying to me. I do have to admit, though, the whole scene with Blackquill just straight-up leaving the court when he's told to "leave the classroom" is great.
 
So, one thing that's pretty big in the Ace Attorney series are the names of the characters. While they garner many a chuckle from each player, there's always that one Ace Attorney name you wish you could change.

Personally, I would change Robin Newman's name from Robin Newman to Manny Artisan. Manny sounds kind of like "manly", which could be used to describe Robin's male personality (It could be short for Amanda, which, when sounded out, sounds like "A man, duh!"). Artisan refers to someone who is a craftsman, like Robin, and it's last syllable sounds like son, which could refer to a male child.

So, do you guys have any ideas for name changes in the series? If you do, then I'd love to hear your thoughts.
 
I played the AA6 demo when it came out last week, and some of the names there are so bad they were groan-worthy. I guess I would change those. I've gotten used to the others in earlier cases, though.
 
So I downloaded Spirit of Justice a few weeks ago and started to play the game, and so far, I've finished Case 1.
The case was pretty okay for a tutorial case. I liked Albhi, and Andistan'dhin's sudden rock/metal mood threw me off-guard. (I also found his screaming at Phoenix kinda funny.) The way the case played out was also pretty okay for a tutorial case, but the contradictions were easy to spot for the most part, and when I played for long periods of time, I was able to get through a lot due to how easy the contradictions were. Then again, it was also a tutorial case, so they kinda had to ease people into it.
For the record, I loved how you could go through the case with no explanations if you knew what you were doing. It was awesome.
I've also started Case 2, but I haven't gotten far enough to really comment on it thus far. It looks really good so far, though. Awesome anime cutscenes. ^v^
 
This is the only case in SoJ I can blatantly say I don't like. For starters, they reveal the murderer right away, which makes 0 sense this time around. Heck, even in the Monstrous Turnabout, one of my least favourite cases ever, at least revealing the murderer makes sense, because with Damian going cuckoo and also confessing to it I think there'd be little reason for the player to continue if it wasn't for the fact that you already knew who it was. So it makes sense there. It makes 0 sense to reveal Andistan'dhin right away, and it ruins the whole "Peaceful, benevolent monk" image right from the start.

Now, onto the actual case. First off, they're talking about giving a 9-year-old kid the death sentence. Let that sink in. They're going to execute a 9-year old. Already that seems dumb, and the fact that if Phoenix doesn't win, he dies is constantly drilled into your head at every opportunity. While it's part of the story, hearing the game yell at me at every turn that it wants to kill me doesn't make me want to continue. Additionally, Rayfa and Gaspen Payne are both insufferable, moreso Payne, especially since 90% of what his objections are are "your honour, he's a defence attorney! He must be lying!" and generally nothing of substance at all, even more than the usual payne cases.

The Water Mirror is a cool trick, and isn't infallible as proven here, although it shocked me that nobody pointed out that the wound was on the back of the head and not the front and that Ahlbi was clearly standing in front of him, and instead went the more convoluted route. The Mirror is a cool gimmick, even if it's tied to an annoying character.

Lastly, we have Pees'lubn Andistan'dhin. For starters, this is probably the worst name in the series. Even other bad names like "Frank Sahwit" would at least work as names in real life. But "Pees'lubn"? Really? Next up, the character. As I mentioned earlier, the "Pees'lubn, benevolent head monk" image that he's trying to pull off already. I can forgive his testimony for being easy because it's the first case, so I won't touch on that. The Dahmalan is annoying, not because of the music but rather because of how incredibly slow the text gets when he's playing it. It makes an otherwise painless section slow down to a crawl several times and is really annoying. And then when he turns metal... eurgh. The metal music was so annoying I turned my volume off, and even his breakdown was more grating than rewarding. Once again, the game insults you at every opportunity just for trying to play it, which really got on my nerves. Well it makes sense, Andistan'dhin's constant yelling at you combined with Payne's constant barrage of "he's a lawyer so he's lying!" just made this entire section insufferable, and really, this entire case ranged from borderline annoying to insufferable.

First Case ranking across every game:

3-1 > 4-1 > 5-1 > 1-1 > 6-1 > 2-1
 
So I just finished SoJ last night, including the DLC stuff...

Best game in the series in my opinion. 6-5 rivals 1-5 for my favorite case ever.

Worst case is 6-6 (DLC) because it's such an obvious nostalgia cash in.
 
I finished SoJ in whole today. Case Rankings are as follows:

6-3 > 6-5 > 6-DLC = 6-2 > 6-1 > 6-4

I think the series has a bright future ahead if 6-DLC is anything to go by. :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top