Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies
Sep. 15th, 2023 10:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jaggedwolfAfter a detour to tackle the Investigations games and the Layton game, we’re back to the main line of the games. These lawyers are so goddamn repressed. Working out for them that no one believes in searching each other’s names on the internet.
The below cuts are full of spoilers. This is a long post.
New Defense Attorney
I’ve already posted my thoughts on how the core of Athena and Simon’s dynamic kills me, but let’s go back to the start of the game. I was spoiled for nothing about Athena, other than the existence of Widget and it having something to do with emotions.
Was meh on her introductory cutscene. Then was amused at her crashing into the second case. Her flipping over an officer on instinct delighted me, and I like her little punching animation with the glove. The Mood Matrix is much less annoying a mechanic than Apollo’s Perceive. It’s a fun way to visualize witness’s PoVs and characterize them, whether lies or confusion are behind the discord. Widget’s BYE BYE screen is cute and creepy.
Juniper as a childhood friend works here too, where they are not estranged (they both mention writing letters to each other, I believe) but it is weird for Juniper to see someone for the first time in years in a situation where her persona is so different from what Athena would remember. In retrospect, to Juniper, Athena is herself quite different.
Phoenix is such a nicer, more encouraging boss to Athena that it wraps around to being funny. How the fuck does Apollo watch this and not contemplate about all the ways Phoenix was and continues to be deranged to him. Athena is out here yelling in court that her boss is no coward and meanwhile Apollo’s yeah, that guy? Never know if he has an actual court case or wants me to babysit his kid and clean his toilet, and oh yeah, he’s never going to tell me that mom’s still around and that I have a sister.
My one major complaint about Athena is that if you are going to make UR-1 both the logical and emotional crux of the game, which I obviously see the appeal of...she needs to be the most prominent playable character. It has to be her game, not a game where she only leads two cases for the same defendant and panics halfway through both of them. Doesn’t fully work for me as is.
New Prosecutor
An antagonistic prosecutor in court that I like? It’s been a minute! As with Athena, consult the tumblr post for how much I enjoyed the inciting incident for him.
First, what a fucking weeb. Did he and Metis bond over being weebs? I hope so. Second, did Edgeworth had to sign paperwork to let him bring his sword into court? Third, Taka having a tiny jailbird scarf of his own, A+. Fourth, I kept forgetting about the existence of his ponytail.
Because I am the way that I am, I went into a spiral of self-analysis about why Blackquill’s prosecutor-typical ability to get away with shit in court + comical violence didn’t annoy me the way it did for Franziska and Godot, other than the obvious answers of “you like him more” or “you like his angsty backstory better than the other two’s”. I mean, yes, duh, but I liked him more before the reveal too. I think it has to do with the constraints on him? He is a prisoner, even if Japanifornia makes its shackles out of cardboard, and Fulbright can electrocute him whenever.
I suppose I’m instinctively annoyed if the antagonistic character I’m supposed to like at the end always has the upper hand, hmm. It does not endear them to me. (It’s great for proper villains like those of 1-4 and 1-5.)
+1 to him not even telling his sister about his suspicions on UR-1.
My complaints with him are smaller than with Athena. The execution date being the day after 5-5 is a bit much, makes both Simon and Athena come across as idiots, and is a consequence of other bad story choices in that case. On a more minor note, it would be nice to have encountered him in investigation or in the courtroom lobbies. Yes, he’s a prisoner, but we’re already stretching what that means, and the DLC case features him in an investigation scene for no reason.
Characters From Previous Games
Phoenix
He or Apollo shouldn’t have been a playable character in this game, there I said it. Three is too many. As with AA4 I’d heard rumours of a drastic personality shift, this time in reverse, except once more I did not have that takeaway. He is still fully bonkers and not telling people shit. If he knew about UR-1 from the start did he know what Athena was up to, what the hell.
Enjoys flirting with Edgeworth in court. 80% of the reason he got his badge back IMO, which I didn’t mind either. Man’s gotta eat. The chain to his pocket being the locket with Trucy’s photo is a cute detail.
It took me till the DLC case to remember that Sam Riegel voices him, which I’m glad for because otherwise I would have been distracted by the Critical Role of it all. One Halloween the CR actors dressed as characters they’ve played. I was shaken by this revelation and at how bad the wig was.
Apollo
Once I was done with this game, I couldn’t help but wonder: what was the point of Apollo here? I cannot bring myself to care about Clay who only exists as a corpse, nor his internal conflict over Athena. IDK, they are fun coworkers, but that’s not enough to feel any kind of way about him suspecting her.
And again, if you’re not going to address the Lamiroir revelation, what’s the point of him? Why are we adding a dead friend to Apollo if we’re not going to pick up the loose thread? To be fair, this is AA4’s fault too, which I’ll get into later.
Liked him in the mock trial. Am imagining him and Clay somehow never meeting Athena and Junie despite all the Space Center visits. Do buy this, new people would’ve been a dislike for Athena. Do not buy the original space team including Clay in their team photo?? He’s a random-ass kid at that point y’all.
Trucy
I’m fine with her being sidelined in this game but (A) why did they have to repeat the magic panties joke ten times, I hate it (B) how do you have Nick be a lawyer again and never have his daughter be his weird girl assistant in court. (I see people calling Athena the weird girl assistant of this game, and imo she does not count - she’s one of the defense attorneys.) Her kidnapping was stupid.
Edgeworth
They have perfected the correct amount of Edgeworth to have in the games after AA1, no notes. They understand that he needs to show up at the end, offer some help, be repressed, and flirt with Wright. He accomplishes all of this, now with glasses. Love him trying to convince everyone that a kid killed her mom. Doesn’t remind him of anything.
Klavier
When he showed up and did his stupid pose my immediate thought was: He wants Apollo to fuck him so bad. Enjoyed his very extra finger-snapping animation. These games dunking on Klavier and going away before he can fully feel bad about it is such a choice that I can’t even criticize it. Bye bye mentor! Is he going to lose a pet in the next game or what. Maybe another guitar will burn.
Pearl
Did not mind this cameo, aw, though it took me till the DLC case to realize she’s a year younger than Athena. I... Perhaps I shall always think of her as a child, they could have had more fun with changing up her design. How many 17 year olds are that similar to when they were 10, y’know?
Can’t believe she had to remind Wright to do forensicking. That is much less endearing a misspelling coming from a 17 year old. Am shocked she attends school.
Ema
I know she isn’t in this game but she deserves an entry. For when Bobby Fulbright showed up, I went WHERE IS EMA WHERE IS EMA WHERE IS EMA. I want my grumpy detective back. She would have fun antagonizing Blackquill. Maybe have one (1) emotion about Blackquill doing what her sister did.
Though now that I’ve put her here, it...does feel obvious that AA4 was way more comfortable with taking previous characters and giving them different vibes that are still natural extensions of their younger selves. Dislike the possibility that the later games are reluctant to do that because of Beanie!Nick backlash. (And here I have another tangential thought that it would’ve been interesting to have the younger versions of Athena and Simon in different color schemes/designs than their older selves.)
Gameplay
A lot easier and more hand-holdy. Did have moments of guessing, but was never driven to a guide as in some of the previous games.
The inside-head portions at the final part of a case reminded me of when I watched my friend play Danganronpa V3.
Enjoyed the rotating views in some rooms, that is a great use of having 3D models.
Case-by-case thoughts
5-1: Turnabout Countdown
The case itself is fine. Ted Tonate is a classic tutorial villain. Apollo walking around dressed as a shonen character is a choice, as is the game making his attack look like they fricking killed off the previous protagonist.
However, the case doesn’t work in the context of the overall timeline. Athena panicking in the first case we see her lead, while defending someone she knows and trusts didn’t do it, to the point where Phoenix has to take over, works...if this was the first case in chronological order. But 5-1 takes place in the middle of 5-4. This isn’t her first case, it’s not even her first case defending Juniper from almost-certain evidence. She rallied better in 5-3 than she does here.
Nick’s alright here, though he doesn’t add much with his presence, other than his bewilderment at people talking about Apollo like he’s dead.
5-2: Monstrous Turnabout
The least interesting case to me. Mayor Tenma’s gimmick of wanting to break out for his daughter and Apollo having to be like bro chill was funny to me, unlike poor Apollo getting called the demon lawyer a billion times. Showing the murderer in the opening cutscene makes it all more boring - that should be reserved for tutorial cases.
Did enjoy the game psyching me out by making me wonder why the characters were taking so long to realize who the wrestler was, and then going wait, no, you were wrong. Did not like that they used that to have the murderer disguise himself as the defendant, given the timeline and requirements. (He grabbed the mayor’s spare set of clothes?? The mayor doesn’t even live here bro why does he have extra clothes around.)
5-3: Turnabout Academy
Fun enough. We get a small but entertaining amount of Klavier, the three friends are believable enough when not starring in the cringiest anime cutscene of the entire game, and I can’t believe Hugh’s confession was going to be “I lied about my age and am bad at school. Sorry.”
Never know what to think of reveals like Robin’s. Okay, sure, I guess that’s a twist but what does it add. A solution to the recording of a female voice going “You’re a goner”?? Not helpful. Was annoyed we could never argue that the voice was the victim’s, with her threatening to kick the person (student or teacher) out of the school. I liked the murderer’s breakdown involving a chalkboard where he lectures people, and bought people not considering his attendance of the mock trial.
Athena and Blackquill have some fun back-and-forths here. Since this is the game series of repressed lawyers, I didn’t feel that the game cheated by not having them openly react to each other’s presence, like I’ve seen some people say. Their exchanges make it obvious enough, and Blackquill does one of his funny turnarounds, this time of “oh come on the person you want to save doesn’t want you to save them” to “come on Athena, get out of this panic if you want to save that person” when she starts faltering.
5-4: The Cosmic Turnabout
Again, I cannot care about Clay. He is a corpse. It’s like when AA4 mentions that Apollo is an orphan in its final case, why didn’t you tell me this earlier? I like the idea of the swaparound of launch pads, but the museum being an area open to the public makes it hard to buy. Sebastian is a decent defendant though, and this case has a fun cast of characters.
I did like Wright managing to acquit his defendant only for his employee to get charged instead.
5-5: Turnabout For Tomorrow
Ahhhhh, what a fun inciting incident and mostly good Trial Part I. And what an ehhhh everything else.
Bonkers to me that the final case is about UR-1 and that Athena isn’t the lawyer for any section of it. We have a Mood Matrix interrogation of Blackquil but it’s Nick and not Athena doing the probing and searching for inconsistencies? Why.
Of course, this is because Aura insists on a trial of UR-1 with Athena as the defendant, which she gets because she’s kidnapped a bunch of people because Simon’s execution date is the next day. It’s so convoluted and Trucy exists more in this case only to get kidnapped. I like Aura being bitter about the incident, possibly even being the person who long-term never gets over it, but these plot mechanics don’t work for me.
Look man, it would be way more fun for Athena to use the trial as an excuse to finally be able to talk to Blackquill in a way he cannot escape from and to identify the discord in his heart she detected so long ago. When the discord drops to 0%, boom, she’s shaken up by the possibility she did it, Nick takes over for the next part of the trial, she loops back in at the end to spring the trap Blackquill lays as she does in the game.
That brings us to the other big problem in this case which is that the villain sucks. God, he’s so bad. No one cares about an international spy who doesn’t know who he is. There’s no interesting tragedy, no horrifying villainy, no real cleverness in cornering him. This is of course made worse by the decision to have the last trial cover UR-1 before it does Clay’s case. The former is personal in the way the latter isn’t. It reminds me of the mistake AAI1 makes with the ordering of the final villains in its last case. We, or at least I, don’t care about international intrigue, I care about the characters we’ve been following during the game and what the answers mean for them.
Twists that people we know are the villain are fine, and in fact two previous AA games do this brilliantly. But god, even if it was Fulbright as Fulbright, it would’ve felt weak to me. Fulbright has so much opportunity to stop Blackquill’s plotting that it gets hard to buy.
(I did have a moment where I was comparing the chin in the security cam footage with all the profiles and went “holy shit is it Aura that would be fucked up”. I’m not saying she would be a good villain either, and we did “older sibling of the prosecutor is the big villain” in AA4, but it’s dissatisfying for the answer to UR-1 to be oh yeah, someone no one knew.)
Did like the moon rock being sent off the planet for seven years.
5-DLC: Turnabout Reclaimed
The one case where I was spoiled for the killer in advance, because I stupidly looked stuff up after finishing the main game. It was fun, love Nick cross-examining an orca even though it exacerbates the problem of him leading so many cases in this game.
As other people have said, it’s Turnabout Big Top but better. Mostly. Both animal trainers having the same heart condition and there being two orcas felt a bit silly, but this is an inherently silly case, so who cares, y’know.
Messy story structure
How does one begin to disentangle this.
As I said, AA4 shares a little bit of the blame for AA5 feeling weird, especially when it comes to Apollo and Trucy. For all that the Phoenix Wright trilogy works as a trilogy, each game is self-contained. AA1 and AA2 each leave us with no dangling questions or unresolved secrets between the characters. That’s great. It meant AA2 or AA3 could go in any direction.
But AA4 tells us that Lamiroir is the mother of Apollo and Trucy, without letting them, the main characters, discover that information. It burdens all future games with this question, when the most natural resolution point was back in AA4. So silly. IMO, any fixing of AA5 works best when assuming AA4 is fixed to resolve that plot point.
Okay, so now that Apollo and Trucy are unburdened of this, what does one do with AA5? You can focus on Apollo and Trucy as the new lawyer-assistant pair and given him a present-day story, in which case introducing Athena is unnecessary. The other option is keeping UR-1 as the endgame, with Athena and Blackquill, in which case you uh, have to give them time for that. Either pick Apollo or Nick to be the other playable lawyer, depending on the story you want to tell.
The dark age of law makes no sense. Yeah, everyone’s shocked by Nick forging evidence, but how does the conviction of Blackquill a new prosecutor act as a tipping point? At this point we’ve had at least 4 senior people in the prosecutor’s office be convicted of crimes, Blackquill’s nothing.
Question on series order
Till now, I’ve been playing the games in order of original release date, hence the detour post-AA4.
If I were to stick with that, I’d go TGAA1 -> AA6 -> TGAA2. However, I’ve read that TGAA makes far more sense as a two-parter, thus I’m inclined to play AA6 first. (I admit, it would make fic-reading less complicated.) If anyone has played the games and has opinions on how much TGAA is hurt or helped by playing its installments close together, do share.
Of course all of this is moot for right now, because we’re off to Uncharted 4 first.
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Date: 2023-09-19 03:32 am (UTC)I'm so convinced that this is what's happening. The same day Phoenix picks Athena up from the airport he tells Apollo he has a job for him without telling him the job is babysitting Trucy and not a lawyer job. In the DLC case when Apollo tries to join in on the fun he gets this for his troubles, and at some point Nick dumps a pile of unneeded evidence onto him. Meanwhile, Athena and Nick's dynamic kind of reminds me of Nick and Mia's in its...earnestness while mutually keeping secrets?
(And again, all of this is without considering that Phoenix isn't telling Apollo about his very-alive mom and very-alive sister!)
...would you believe me if i said i uh. fixated on this detail way too hard last time i played the game & now have this whole elaborate headcanon of The Political Economy Of Kurain (spoilers: dying town with a sort of weird insular religious group does not a good public school make)
Amazing. Kurain must be so messed up, honestly. I get that the game series would never have Maya or Pearl ditch it, but whenever it came up I could not blame Mia for running off.
YES YES YES god i want this so much. it's a shame the writing in this game is so... uneven... because some of the bones there are so good and promising ahhh
RIGHT. I was just waiting the whole game for her to do that.
Okay, yeah, AA6 will be the next up then for me, that matches what I've seen everyone say about TGAA the two-parters.