Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice
Oct. 14th, 2023 12:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jaggedwolfI uh, have way less affection for this game than I did AA5. Possibly less so than all the other mainline games?
New Characters
Nahyuta
He sucks. Worst prosecutor. Only saved from being below Godot because at the end of AA3 I was pissed off with Godot, while at the end of AA5 I was going "What is the point of you?" about Nahyuta. The one good thing about him is Matt Mercer and I have a billion better ways to hear Mercer's voice.
To take a step back, the basic structure of his arc is one that I shouldn't have objections to. He's a very antagonistic prosecutor who is that way because he is trying to protect his sister and his mother. Lana Skye is one of my favorite AA characters despite showing up in only one case, and is blackmailed for a shorter amount of time than Nahyuta is. Blackquill's reveal in Dual Destinies was great and no one even forced him to lie! But Lana and Simon have something that Nahyuta painfully lacks.
You can tell early on who they care about. Or even that they care about someone at all. Lana is dismissive throughout her first conversation with Phoenix. But once Ema accuses her of being selfish and says she hates Lana, Lana tersely lets Phoenix defends her. Blackquill's arc is stretched out over the course of the game, and by virtue of gameplay is more of an antagonist to us, but 5-3 gives us a peek by having him challenge Athena to rise to the occasion instead of crumbling in court. Whereas with Nahyuta we don't get any indication that there's anyone he gives two fucks about until the latter half of 6-5. What we do get is lots of characters (Dhurke, Apollo, Ema, Datz) telling us that he was or used to be a good guy. It reminds me of this post, where the game thinks it's more important what people say about Nahyuta than what he does.
Tying into that, Lana and Simon's games aren't afraid to have them be vulnerable before their final reveals. You have people tell us that Skye used to be a good cop, yeah, but those same NPCs (like Angel and Jake) get to be genuinely pissed with her in a way that feels different from how characters that have history with Nahyuta talk about him. Blackquill is a prisoner, even when he engages in the usual prosecutorial shenanigans, and gets electrocuted in court sometimes. Whereas Nahyuta feels like he has so much free reign, including being invited to be a part of Edgeworth's non-shitty prosecutors roster and Ema continuing to speak highly of him even after he threatens and tricks her.
And maybe that's why the constraint of the blackmail doesn't work for me, because way too many people seem to know about it? That it's very unclear why Nahyuta and Amara can't fuck off with Rayfa and tell everyone what happened? IDK, I just know when he triumphantly says "The Dragon never yields!" in the final case, all I can think is dude, all you've been doing is yielding.
In conclusion, he sucks, I dislike that he's popular to ship with Ema and Blackquill, who both deserve better.
Dhurke
Weirdly worked for me in the moment. The reveal of his death was the gut punch it was designed to be. It feels very fitting for Apollo to have to deal with a father figure who laughs freely and saves his life and says nothing about sending him away while Apollo quietly thinks to himself that Apollo doesn't know what fathers are for and never will.
Doesn't work if I spend more than two seconds thinking about him because then I'm wondering why he tried to rescue Maya with zero weapons, didn't tell anyone that Maya was safe, and oh yeah, put Maya's body through all those risks.
Rayfa
A weird girl....but antagonist! I liked her for most of the game - her being a teenage princess thrust into this role makes it easier for me to turn around her. Don't like the parent reveal for her, she's way more interesting in the context of Inga and Ga'ran than Dhurke and Amara.
Ga'ran
Way too obvious and powerful a baddy. Von Karma and Gant were kind of obvious, if I remember right, but it made sense that Wright could outsmart them because their powers weren't limitless. Ga'ran is the literal sovereign, that she doesn't execute Wright and Apollo, let alone all the other ways to dispose of them...makes her a very boring opponent.
Amara
What a nothingburger of a character. Automatically believes her sister when she says her husband tries to murder her, doesn't try to escape with her kids, is apparently content to just hang out forever as her sister's channeling puppet. Would be more interesting if it was her pulling the strings.
Characters From Previous Games
Ehhh, I'm not sure he needed to be playable here, outside of the DLC case. Liked him remembering the classroom trial in 6-1, hanging out with Maya, being paggro with Edgeworth, and needling Rayfa. Don't like how the trial against Apollo was set up as MAY THE BEST LAWYER WIN NO KID GLOVES ON as if he's ever treated Apollo with kid gloves.
Don't like how the game has him forget he's a dad. He doesn't think of Trucy any of the times he almost dies or when his lineage is cursed (instead he thinks of Apollo and Athena), he goes to Khurain two weeks before he can see Maya and thus he misses Trucy's big televised debut, it's pretty bad. Every game that has him not tell Apollo and Trucy that they're related makes him seem a worse person in canon.
Apollo
Apollo getting another backstory was as weird as everyone said it would be. I liked it better when he was a random-ass orphan in LA, albeit with an amnesias famous performer mom. It's funny that the game which has him get along with Wright best has him do possibly the most callous thing to Wright, which is not tell him how terrible Khurain is about lawyers. A bit different than Wright or Athena not telling anyone about their prosecutors you know.
6-2 is a very fun case for him, and I liked all his interactions with Trucy and Athena there. 6-5 makes it all weird with the civil trial and Khurain stuff, also has him cross-examining Rayfa when it's Nick we've been watching build a rapport with her.
Liked him leaving WAA, though not that it was for Khurain.
Maya
I don't like how this game used her. While Maya in danger was used to motivate Nick in the trilogy sometimes, I was okay with it then because she had screentime outside of that. I don't like that she spends one case as the defendant and the other as a kidnapping victim (as far as we know), and I don't like that it's seven years later and she's still not the master or certain of her channeling abilities.
In this game, she was most compelling when she was challenging Rayfa on what her duty as princess really meant. Did enjoy her channeling the priest though, that was fun.
Athena
I don't mind her being sidelined in this game since the story isn't about her, but she's best handled in 6-2 as co-counsel. Liked her wanting to beat up Khurainese guards and also being willing to be on the defense's side in 6-5. I'll complain about 6-4 and 6-DLC later in this post.
Ema
I wanted her back but not like this :( I don't mind her being happier now that she's in forensics, as much as AA4 Ema is a fave, and I love that she's happy about it to the point it disturbs even Athena. But then Nahyuta shows up, and UGH. She's such a doormat in this game! They took a character that had no problem being openly unhappy with people or telling Gavin to piss off, and turned her into such a yes-man. They have her call Nahyuta kind-hearted even after he lies about the state of forensics in Kuhra'in and has a bunch of her stuff confiscated at the airport, and be happy to work with him even after he talks to her Like That. Don't like it at all.
(In a version of this game where Nahyuta is more coherent a character and more sympathetic, you could do something with the fact that Ema has experience with blackmailed older siblings. This is not that game, and so I find nothing redeeming about their dynamic.)
Case-by-Case Thoughts
Goes on for too long as a tutorial case. Ahlbi works as a first defendant, and has a very cute dog. Payne finding some other country to run off to cracks me up. Divination Seances are an interesting mechanic, though they give too much away huh.
6-2 Fun! The killer's transformation here is milder than the usual AA-transformation and works all the better for it. I enjoyed all the character dynamics in this case, especially Athena and Apollo both wanting to strangle Nahyuta by the neck. Trucy and Apollo have a cute conversation at the end of the case.
6-3
It's...okay? Liked Maya trolling Nick in her intro, but here's where the whole conceit of Khurain and Maya needing to be here gets a bit silly, especially with convicted Nick wandering around on the second investigation day. The priest and his wife are a little less sympathetic than the game presents them as, but that's fine and how cases sometimes go.
6-4
Incredibly annoyed by how good this case could have been. Rakugo! Noodles! Blackquill trying to out-weeb Nahyuta and then getting hit in the face with a man who clearly reads and memorizes wikipedia articles for fun!
All of this is marred by everyone being so goddamn insistent on talking down to Athena, who also stumbles and staggers at every step of the court case. Like ugh, I liked Blackquill as the weird girl assistant and also grabbing Athena by the collar to bring back her fighting spirit (these two are most compelling to me when insisting that the other isn't allowed to give up), but that could have been a unique moment in the case, when Nahyuta is on his last legs and gets Athena to pay too much attention to the gallery.
Instead, the game wants me to believe that Athena hasn't defended a single case between Dual Destinies and this one, and that Blackquill doesn't trust her to do this from the start. Big meh. Killer's way less sympathetic than meant to be too. Did like that Uendo's fourth personality wasn't just a sociopathic killer.
6-5
Civil trial only redeemed by the existence of Armie Buff and her drone, though the game is a little weird about her wheelchair. Murder trial is....like I said, Ga'ran is too obvious and too powerful. Once you know the victim the killer is pretty obvious IMO. Did like the Dhurke reveal, and Apollo getting to see the final moments of his father's life. And the Edgeworth cameo.
6-DLC
I wish there were more characters in this DLC? It felt more claustrophobic, compared to 5-DLC, and made the killer so obvious. I liked the setting, though, and Maya and Nick actually investigating together. Edgeworth (in his sports car) had his funny moments about marriage and love, but it was a bit silly to have Nick surprised by him pursuing the truth. Loved Ema getting to finally work with Edgeworth, this slightly mollified my annoyance at the main game's handling of her. The joke about Trucy chasing Athena down instead of Athena helping with an actual legal case also got tiring after a while, just let her be busy with her own shit, man.
Would've been nice for Larry to change in the past 7 years, but I guess my fears in the last post were well-founded - other than Nick and Ema in AA4, no one else is going to change much in the timeskip.
Overall Thoughts
I guess it's pretty obvious that I'm meh on this game. Fake countries in Ace Attorney are always a bit too much for me, and they barely get a pass in AA4 and the Investigations games because the countries aren't too centered and we mostly stay in LA. Spirit channeling going from a thing the Feys' tiny village does to something everyone knows the queen of the small Asian nation can do also didn't work for me.
All this game-playing has me think about Ace Attorney in terms of reading/writing fic for it, and I think this game is the only one that I'm just going to uh, mentally excise from my model of canon. What is Khurain? Never heard of her! 6-2 happened and Nick was busy for some other reason, that's it.
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Date: 2025-04-23 06:15 am (UTC)also yeah i should play aai sometime huh lmao
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Date: 2025-07-20 02:37 am (UTC)