January Talking Meme Day 10: Best Ace Attorney Game of 2023

Talking Meme Index

For today, quailfence asked which of the Ace Attorney games I played last year was my favorite. The relevant four are:

• Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice
• The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles

I'll dismiss the crossover and SoJ immediately. Both strained my credulity beyond even Ace Attorney's leeway for shenanigans, while leaving me not that emotionally moved. SoJ in particular, was the first time I played an Ace Attorney game and went uh, I'm just going to excise all of this from my mental model of canon.

So we're left with Dual Destinies and The Great Ace Attorney. The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles is the objectively best AA game I played in 2023. It is well-structured, with character motivations that make sense, new gameplay mechanics of Deductive Dances and multiple witnesses, a final case that slots all unanswered mysteries into place, albeit with a Victoria Ex Machina. It does a remarkable job of being grounded in its setting while still being classic Ace Attorney. It's not afraid to take big swings, and I loved plenty of the characters - Ryunosuke, Susato, Gina, even the insufferable Sholmes and Barok by the end of it.

Yet as much of a mess as Dual Destinies is (seriously what is that chronology? who thought that resolution to the bad guy was satisfying? why aren't we playing as Athena for all five cases?), it has a lot of heart. I love the defense attorney-prosecutor dynamic, Themis is a cracktastic AA-typical institution, and the stupidly personal motivations of our characters' backstory shenanigans is the kind of thing that gets to me easier than the international intrigue and honor-bound dudes of TGAA's backstory. It got me to dive into fic in a way none of the other three compelled me.

So, as a game alone, TGAA wins, but in terms of kindling my fannish enthusiasm, Dual Destiny wins.