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jaggedwolf) wrote2024-01-04 11:23 pm
January Talking Meme Day 4: The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles
For today, I'm reviewing The Great Ace Attorney. It was the final installment in my quest to play every game in the Ace Attorney series, and to be clear, despite always having something to complain about for every game, it's been a ride well-worth the time. Anyway, would recommend TGAA if you're an Ace Attorney fan, it's well-done.
Nature of the game means if I did per-character and per-case thoughts I'd be here till 2025, so instead I'll just do likes, mehs, dislikes.
Likes
As played in its current form, with both Adventures and Resolve available, this is a well-structured story. I can't imagine actually liking Adventures as its own game without the resolutions of Resolve, would've been immensely frustrating.
I got fond of Ryunosuke and Susato quite quickly. Unlike all our other lawyer protagonists, Ryunosuke has no relevant backstory here, he really should just be at the pub! Unfortunately, his best friend dies, and so it goes. Poor guy also has a talent for making dudes deranged about him. His and Susato's lawyer-assistant dynamic feels far more on an even footing than Nick-Maya, Apollo-Trucy, or Edgeworth-Kay, despite retaining the strict demographics of mid-twenties attorney with a sixteen year old girl following him around. It helps, I suppose, that Ryunosuke is still a university student and that more importantly, no one's expectating of him being responsible for her? They're pals :D (I mean the others are pals too but you do get the sense that they're often thinking I Am The Adult, Dear God while Ryunosuke is going What The Fuck Susato Help What The Fuck) Susato herself is so steady, with the occasional fun of Susato Takedowns and stanning over Sholmes.
Sholmes is....so insufferable but so entertaining lmao. Before playing the game I thought it was dumb that he was named Herlock Sholmes, but now I'm like, no, that is the perfect naming scheme for this version of him. I can't believe that the game got me with that Watson twist. They even have Yujin look exactly as you'd expect ACD Watson to once he's in western dress, and I still didn't see it coming! So good, it worked perfectly for me, and it transformed all of his suspicious behavior into instead that of a man who knows how much he's failed as a father, a friend, a mentor.
Gina was a delight, especially in the first game. Again, of course I have a soft spot for the scruffy pickpocket teen who has no idea why Ryunosuke, Iris, and Susato care so much about her not getting convicted, or even believe her. I'm glad she got a cute dog.
Barok won me over, damned gothic vampire. Look, I did enjoy relentlessly mocking his racism, especially as we approached the end of 2-3 (Me, throughout the entire case: WAS IT REALLY JUST THAT BAROK? WAS ONE JAPANESE PERSON A SERIAL KILLER AND THEN YOU WENT OH TIME TO GO FULL RACIST???), but it's the kind of racism and xenophobia that fits the time period and circumstances in a society that is already racist, given the reactions to Natsume's trials. The game doesn't ignore how dangerous his bigotry is even as it sympathizes with his grief, and I dunno, have you taken a look at real life ethnic prejudice and conflict? It's not exactly what one would call based in logic.
I was fine with Ryunosuke and Susato's somewhat impassive reactions to his racism because (1) Ryunosuke going: uhhh bro, I just think people are people wherever you go in the face of Barok's everything is quite funny (2) Susato is very rarely verbally confrontational with anyone IIRC (3) They're Japanese people from Japan who've been in London for less than a year - Barok's bigotry, along with the others', isn't great but...they usually have bigger fish to fry.
Liked the never-made-explicit parallel between Barok and Ryunosuke. This person you thought was amazing and always ahead of you dies and you take their place and you do well at it. But you will always feel like their replacement, a sense of utter wrongness about the world that it is you here and not them. (Even after you stop looking up to them.)
I was really surprised by how well-grounded in its setting the game was while maintaining the classic Ace Attorney tone, considering that every other time Ace Attorney featured foreign countries it's usually the most ridiculous shit. They clearly did a ton of research (and as clearly really wanted to tell us all about it, given the Escapades about the taxes XD)
Found the resolution to the Professor story satisfying, with Genshin having actually killed Klint and Klint having done his own fucked-up shit. Strongheart was an obvious villain from the moment we met him but I didn't mind the journey to that solution.
It is way too funny to me that both Jigoku and Gregson hired Kazuma to kill the other and he went sure, then went just kidding, I'm out, have fun guys. Truly a power move.
Mehs
Ah, Kazuma. Abstractly, all of his stuff makes sense, and as a mystery I love it - figuring out what his real mission is, his connection to the Professor, his sword containing the final answer - but in terms of emotional investment? Meh. I dunno, I never got into it in the moment, and I found it hard to believe it whenever the game kept insisting that post-resurrection Kazuma and Ryunosukes were Best Friends, Definitely, The BFFs. And normally I am all about best friends! But maybe I have higher standards for best friendship in fiction than whatever Kazuma as doing. Also the permanent prosecutor switch? Why. By that point I was going eh, whatever, I'll just enjoy these guys dramatically crossing swords as a visual.
...did he work better for me dead than alive, emotionally? Perhaps, though Genshin's story works better with an alive Kazuma. His not-death was also a bit pathetic to me, guy that keeps yelling about his sword being his soul loses his memory because a 15-year-old girl pushed him while he was looking the other way.
IDK how I feel about Ryunosuke and Susato returning to Japan at the end of the game. It is full circle, makes sense, but I think they should get to have a normal lawyering time in London and also that Susato shouldn't have to spend half a year on boats. And while it fits with their characters, it makes me sad that end of the game Ryunsouke still thinks of himself as a locum and Susato thinks of herself as a bad judicial assistant :( As much as I love Yujin, I wish Susato got to be more cross with him, or at least give him a Susato Takedown. Oh, also dislike having Susato explicitly say that Ryutaro is the last time she'll be a lawyer.
Similarly, I wish Gina got to have more complicated feelings about Gregson from the start of Resolve. I actually buy all of Gregson's actions towards Gina, what a morally compromised guy who would still like to do some good, but I think Gina should have some opinions about being mentored by the guy who did absolutely try to frame her for murder last game. Resolve also dropped any mentions of Gina's fellow orphan buddies in the East End.
Dislikes
Like I said on tumblr I did reach a point towards the end of the game where I was going gosh...this is a lot of dudes duding...
I found it hard to wrap my head around two of the logistical issues vis-a-vis The Professor. The first, which is that the wax statue lady saw Genshin get shot while wearing the iron mask and made a cast of his face...while Strongheart was there? Did he just helpfully unlock the iron mask for her?? Why??? Secondly, the circumstances of Iris's birth. How did Barok know that his sister-in-law died but not that she died in childbirth or that she was pregnant at all? Why did Yujin just accept concealing this infant girl from the Van Zieks and the Baskervilles if he thought Klint was an innocent man? ....Hell, how did Baskervilles find its way as a name into Iris's story if she had no idea of her connection to the Baskervilles... Makes my head hurt trying to understand it.
Finally, they should have let Barok and Iris meet as uncle-and-niece on-screen! Stop leaving family secrets dangling at the end of a story, Shu Takumi, just resolve them in the same piece you introduced them in! You were so close dude! Let Barok be an uncle, I say :(
(you guessed it, its nanoeggroll)
(Anonymous) 2024-01-06 02:32 am (UTC)(link)In my brain full of copium Susato says this every time she pretends to Ryutaro. Yujin and Rei are always finding various convoluted reasons for Susato to don Ryutaro and everytime she's like "I guess I have no choice... but this will be the last time" and proceeds to thoroughly enjoy herself lmao
Re: (you guessed it, its nanoeggroll)