Ace Attorney Not quite the mythical creature I imagined when I heard "Phoenix", but this little bird will have to do |
- Not quite the mythical creature I imagined when I heard "Phoenix", but this little bird will have to do
- Haven’t gotten to AA4 yet but Trucy has such a great design, I had to draw her!
- Happy Valentines, AA Reddit!
- ...
- Triliio and Benuigi
- Made my bullet journal weekly spread with my two favourite lawyers!
- have a pearls redesign since i am very disappointed with her "teenager" design
- Getting Better At Drawing Phoenix (Practice)
- happy valentines day!!
- A Little Klapollo for Valentine's Day!
- Maya in [JFA-4 Spoilers] in a nutshell
- My Big Review of Spirit of Justice
- I don’t have any cool drawings for Valentine’s Day so take a shitty meme instead
- POV: you're on a date with Phoenix and you're sharing a beer. happy Valentine's ��
- If you were to revive one Ace Attorney victim, who would it be?
- So, I homebrewed a D&D spell based off of Apollo's ability.
- Would you play a game about the characters just living their lives?
- Northward, Turnabout Express demo
- Which option did you pick in Justice for All? (Also Happy Valentines Day!)
- Do you want another "guilty" client in Ace Attorney 7?
- Is there a site where I can get DGS voice clips, speech bubbles and profiles?
- What's something that's been consistently good/bad about the series and how do you feel AA7 should handle this?
- Why did the first localization team set Ace Attorney in Los Angeles when they knew about Kurain Village and Hazakura Temple?
- Anyone else think that Zoom cat incident is something that'd happen in the AA universe?
| Posted: 14 Feb 2021 01:56 PM PST
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| Haven’t gotten to AA4 yet but Trucy has such a great design, I had to draw her! Posted: 14 Feb 2021 03:04 PM PST
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| Posted: 14 Feb 2021 06:46 AM PST
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| Posted: 14 Feb 2021 06:29 PM PST
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| Posted: 14 Feb 2021 06:29 AM PST
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| Made my bullet journal weekly spread with my two favourite lawyers! Posted: 14 Feb 2021 01:24 PM PST
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| have a pearls redesign since i am very disappointed with her "teenager" design Posted: 14 Feb 2021 02:25 AM PST
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| Getting Better At Drawing Phoenix (Practice) Posted: 14 Feb 2021 05:15 PM PST
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| Posted: 14 Feb 2021 10:14 PM PST
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| A Little Klapollo for Valentine's Day! Posted: 14 Feb 2021 01:13 PM PST
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| Maya in [JFA-4 Spoilers] in a nutshell Posted: 14 Feb 2021 07:35 PM PST | ||
| My Big Review of Spirit of Justice Posted: 14 Feb 2021 05:14 PM PST "It's only natural for living creatures to fight to protect their own lives. But what makes us human is that we fight for others. But who do you fight for? How hard must you fight...? That's the true measure of what human life is worth. We defense attorneys are warriors who are constantly challenged by that question. Even when the battle is over, and the bonds that connect us are severed... We always return... Time and time again. Mia, Maya, Pearls, Mr. Armando... ...and Maya's mother, too... I learned that... from all of them." It's kind of incredible to think about the emotional impact Ace Attorney 3 has on people. Despite being a GBA game made on a cart of about 12 MB with a staff of maybe 12 people, the game is consistently the entry in the Ace Attorney franchise that people talk about the most. The game, and the original trilogy as a whole, is something people well over a decade removed from its release still discuss and debate over with a clear passion and engagement for the material. The characters, the mysteries, the twists, these are things people keep coming back to because it resonated with them, and it shows just how much fiction can stick with people. Reflecting on AA personally, I find it fascinating how my procession from dismissing the franchise to once again respecting it came. Even though I recall vividly large amounts of buzz regarding AA6 labelling it perhaps the best in the franchise but, while I did enjoy parts, I rather quickly drifted from the game the moment I finished it, and for years dismissed the franchise as disposable in favour of something like Danganronpa. It was only years later that, returning to it, I honestly realized just how good Takumi's writing really was...and came to dislike 5 and 6 even more, as they did nothing but confirm my feelings on them. This review, in a sense, can be seen as my personal reflections. What is it about AA6 that left is so hollow in my heart? I hope, reading it, I come to my conclusions, and it might enlighten people in their own ways too. ~~ 1. This Is A Good Video Game So, let's get this out of the way. No matter how much I will complain about AA6, I genuinely think it is a good game, and it is undeniable plenty of people like it. I think it's important to discuss then what makes people get attached to it, and really delve into what makes it work. So, how about we do that? Well, Athena, in the words of a great philosopher, all girls have **** in their hearts. First off, we need to talk about SoJ's without question strongest feature, its puzzle design. Each case of Spirit of Justice is designed like a puzzle-box. It lays out this almost airtight stage as its baseline, a few actors, and asks the player a simple, question; what answer might there be except the defendant being the killer? The player is then forced to slowly dissect various aspects which may seem "off" about the box; perhaps an object is somewhere it shouldn't be, or something someone said doesn't add up with the facts. With each new contradiction, the box slowly begins to look very different, with new revelations creating their spins on the scenario. Making this all the stronger is that the game avoids creating devices which feel like "cheats". Every case is properly designed with what feel like natural extensions to the initial presentation. The magic show utilizes the surrounding spaces of the backstage, under-stage and rafter areas. The ritual murder requires you to accurately memorise the placement of two characters in accommodation to their surroundings. A locked room puzzle uses a proper scaling insofar as time combined with the series established spirit channelling technique to alter your perspective of character movements. It's all very intricate, intellectual stuff, varied enough to where it never feels repetitive. This is capped off by one other thing which counts as major, the removal of perhaps the franchises biggest faultline; gag witnesses. Since the very first game, AA has had a long-standing with essentially freezing case direction to force players into endless debate with comic relief characters, who usually turn out to be either mostly extraneous or just plain wasting time. With just one exception, Spirit of Justice consistently doesn't do that. It always makes each person to take the stand act like an active participant, and rather than force you into up to 20 minutes with just a minor conclusions, uses each perspective to unwind the facts. Unlike before, no one and nothing feels there for the hell of it. All this put together, AA6's trials become far and away the best in the franchise on a technical level. They move to the rhythm of thought and action, not slowing down or forgetting where they are. Every time you crack the puzzle-box, it feels earned, and the cases feel genuinely fair. It is Ace Attorney at it's most fully realized, you are the detective presented with the initial lie, and are here to find the undeniable truth. The game gives people this, and yet fans still insist on shipping Maya/Fransizka. The strengths can be felt also in terms of the character writing. While there are substantial issues with the cast that I will get into, on a conceptual level, AA6 demonstrates itself as actually doing something DD continually missed the mark on; actually creating characters who feel like they belong in Takumi's world. The characters, while eccentric, aren't written to be full on cartoon characters, and the villains act like people and not one-dimensional puppets, and in the time they get actually do get to express themselves act like real people would (the non-Khura'in ones, anyway). I'd daresay a couple of them are among my personal favourites. This is aided by Fuse's art. While I'm not one to usually get into presentation stuff (mostly because it's so often meaningless), AA6 looks stunning. The game uses the 3D engine masterfully, manipulating the camera in ways you wouldn't think possible, and often creating specific, highly detailed animations for just select moments. Nearly every character is rendered with an exceptional visual design that is able to brilliantly transform based on context. While at times the game can get a bit...overdone, how I should put it, it's all incredibly strong. Oh, an in case you haven't realized it yet, The Magical Turnabout is excellent. Retinz, you are too cool for this game. The second case of the game is a simple premise; during her big official debut as a performer, Trucy is accused of killing a fellow performer, who also happens to have been a former, long-exiled disciple of Trope Gramarye. Apollo, of course, takes on Trucy's defence, but it's clear something is going on behind the scenes, as it's revealed that Trucy was somehow tricked into signing a contract which will utterly bankrupt the Wright's should her charge not be receded. If this fails, they're all going down. What makes Magical work is in how it avoids virtually every pitfall 5/6's cases consistently suffer from. The premise is genuinely strong and it actually sticks to it, not swerving off-track on something far less interesting. The puzzle is fantastically designed and actually solvable if you put the pieces together yourself. There are actual real, human stakes involved that feel like natural parts of the characters. It finally actually plays off Trucy's character in a way AA4 genuinely never did. Its new characters are all engaging, and the villain specifically is fantastic, entertaining, charismatic and genuinely interesting. While it might not be as good as it could've possibly been (more on that later), what Magical does right, it does right, and more crucially it's the only case in 5/6 that genuinely feels like an evolution of Takumi's writing. It's a captivating and well-framed scenario without much in the way or significant holes to burden it, and it's something I can easily come to and enjoy independent of the rest of the game itself. It's a true magic trick. When you combine this with all the obvious points of "appeal" AA6 pulls off (bringing back Maya, giving Apollo the protagonist role, actually developing Trucy...) and the more "epic" tone, I think it's fully understandable why a lot of people would say they deeply enjoyed the game. And that...is perfectly fine. Trust me, no matter how much I critique the game from here on out, I am only to open up critical discussion, not tell people they're wrong. Keep that all in mind from here on out, okay? ~~ 2. The Hollow Land of Khura'in And, unfortunately, this is where my compliments to AA6 end, because, while it may have the enjoyability under-pat, the game, in terms of actual narrative construction, is a fucking trainwreck. To go into why, let's talk about that country the game is supposed to be about. The problem with Khura'in is that it's not a setting; it is a playground. It is a "country" which has an entire cultural revolution built around a single law with essentially outlaws lawyers, where all the most important people in the nation are in some directly related to the legal system (up to the literal queen). It is also the origin of the Kurain channelling technique and has its entire culture built around, ironically while contradicting virtually every bit of lore in the original trilogy about that very subject. It is also also the country where Apollo spent his childhood in, with his foster father being a lawyer as well as the rebel leader and the husband of the previous queen, and his brother being the countries best prosecutor as well as the royal prince. Reading all this out, it doesn't take a genius to see the problem. Nothing about Khura'in is designed in a way which makes it feel like a real place. This is demonstrated early on, where the game indulges in a trope it at once mocks of using a treasure box to solve the mystery, and sure enough every bit of the countries culture is just a glorified tool in the puzzle-boxes the game provides. It's story is contrived so it makes the protagonists "matter", and its entire structure is so hopelessly inorganic that it actually becomes slightly laughable. It doesn't help with how tiny Khura'in feels. The vast majority of the country are just three maps of a few areas each, with just two areas outside of that besides the courthouse and detention center. You only meet a total of ten characters from the country itself, which includes the high priest and his wife, the rebel leader and his second in command, and the royal family, leaving the nine-year-old kid as the sole representative of a normal person in the entire country. You've got supposedly the entire countries fate riding on your shoulder by the climax, but for all they give you you might as well be defending someone's backyard. And that's without getting into the issue of managing a narrative arc. Even though Khura'in is supposed be the focus of the game, all it gets is the first case, the third, and the finale. As the first case is establishment, and the final case is based around...a lot of things, this essentially gives Khura'in one case to act in the name of any kind of narrative establishment. Rite is over eight hours long, but shockingly little of that is devoted to actual story, it's all random exposition as the game scrambles to find some way of making you care about this random fantasy kingdom and its non-existent people. Khura'in's lack of anything has a knock-on effect in how it hurts Rayfa, nominally the games new heroine. While the idea of a unpleasant brat with a hidden better side is at least a decent break from a line of genki girls and lovable tricksters, Rayfa is a character brutally limited because there's so little to really explore with her. Despite being a main character, she's in less than half the game, and the majority of that screentime is spent with her either yelling "Barb-head" at Phoenix ad-nauseum, giving exposition (so much exposition) and occasionally sulking. The lack of diverse scenarios means her character is never explored in satisfying or interesting way, and she ends up basically getting handed a happy ending after doing little if anything to really justify it. Moreover, Rayfa is a semblance of a larger issue, which that, inherently, Khura'in is a setting which simply cannot work within AA's setting or format. Ace Attorney, as a franchise, is designed around a fairly stripped down format. Each case is designed around a cluster of areas and a relatively small cast of characters, usually reaching a dozen at most, and how the specific events effected the people involved. This is kind of a necessary story model for an ADV like it, because there's really only so much you can do when you're limited to conversations in limited rooms and court trials. Khura'in, meanwhile, is basically a setting written in complete ignorance of how Ace Attorney is designed. Despite its format limiting the country to such a small space, it tries to tell this wide, all-encompassing story of a rebellion against a corrupt monarch. It frankly seems designed way more for a low-rent JRPG, complete with a bad macguffin hunt which takes up more time than it should, despite the fact that a lot of what makes JRPG plots interesting can't be done or shown. You can't have an epic battle against a variety of corrupt foes when basically all the action is confined to a single room, and any attempt to make it look like this is a natural occurrence just looks forced beyond recognition. Ladies and gentlemen, the worst line in the history of Ace Attorney. This all comes to full force in the latter half of Rite. The case is supposed to make you understand why the rebellion is necessary, about how the Ga'ran regime is evil, and DC Act is a abhorrent. By the end the end of the case, the player sees the tragedy that befell the Innme's, and decide they will never let this happen again... Only, if you actually pay attention, nothing about what the game argues really makes sense. It's argued that, were it not for the DC Act, Beh'leeb could've gotten a defence lawyer and proven she killed in self-defence...only in order to do that, it would require saying Beh'leeb was in the hideout, exposing her as a rebel. The only logical option would've been to run, but they didn't do that (despite Beh'leeb doing just that at the end of the case), and instead Tahrust choose the most convoluted method possible...just to justify this as some kind of thing related to the court procedures. Because that's the thing. Despite Khura'in being run by a dictatorship with state-sanctioned assassinations, the only thing people seem to give a shit about is the legal system. When Datz explains the rebellion to Phoenix, the thing he chooses to focus on is that the divination séance was "just a piece of evidence", not the myriad of better reasons. Tahrust blames the DC Act more than the assassin who was living in his home. Rayfa is legitimately more upset that her seances were manipulated than that her father is killing people. All of it is done to make the protagonists seem "important", even though it makes the words of literally all characters seem ingenuine. And that epitomizes the problem with Khura'in, it is a setting which does not exist outside the very narrow POV of the player. Never once does it feel like there's a living, breathing country you're involved in the story of, rather it just exists as this nebulous space through which the protagonists can mess around in without having to deal with actual consequences to their own lives (despite the threats of execution). There's never the impression anyone really cares about what's going on, when Phoenix is marked for death his response is essentially "Well that kinda sucks", and the story that's being told is one which the protagonists at once have too much and too little influence in. It's a game setting devoid of story. And speaking of that... ~~ 3. Database Animalia It's around this point I must address a specific pointer than comes up surrounding AA. The franchise, after Takumi's departure from the main series, has been namely labelled the work of Takeshi Yamazaki. Yamazaki was one of the additions to the game staff after the expansion with AA4, working as a planner, before being made director with the first Investigations. Yamazaki is a name people often like to throw around when discussing AA's post-Takumi quality, but the important thing to remember is that he wasn't the actual full director with 5 or 6. His position is listed as scenario director, similar to that of Takumi's for AA4 (of which there is evidence suggesting he had a smaller input). While the exact input of Yamazaki with either game is unknown, it's widely reported he had been severely burnt out by AA5 (likely because of the games frequent rewrites) and had to be outright coaxed to return for the sixth mainline game. Consequently, Yamazaki left a large amount of the work of the games development on Takuro Fuse, the lead art and more importantly gameplay director...and that is where a lot of the problems come through. To explain what I'm talking about, let's talk about Armie. Miu truly was so innocent back then... "Sarge"/Armie is introduced partway into the investigation of Revolution Part 1, and within less than ten minutes of meeting her, she suddenly goes into her tragic backstory of witnessing her mother die in an arson attack. This backstory, complete with the games stock "sad" music" comes out of literally nowhere, has zero natural placement in the story, and is barely tied into what's happening beyond a super tenuous attempt at pathos with Apollo's parental situation (because apparently never knowing your biological parents is the same as them dying suddenly when you're 12?). It's only there because of the backstories use later, and how this is the only place it could be fit, as this is literally the only time we meet Armie before the trial, and there are no other characters provided to communicate her story. Its worth noting as well that literally the only purpose of any of this is so to justify Armie passing out at the crime scene due to her pyrophobia, thus justifying the "trick" where Atishon is revealed due to the fingerprints on her wheelchair. This tragic backstory about her mother dying protecting her is literally superfluous outside of this very specific use, and nothing else. The reason I highlight this is because the handling of Armie is illustrative of one of AA6's largest creative problems; it is made to be a video game far more than it is a work of fiction. The effects of this can be felt everywhere, but most pressingly in the games structure. After the first game, Takumi set up the franchise to generally work on a two day structure of investigations and trials, allowing for a flow of establishment, discussion, revelations, climax. This, while routine, is an extremely solid format, and provides a strong skeleton to creating what feels like an interactive mystery novel. This does not happen in AA6, however. With the exception of the DLC case, every trial is designed around a separate murder (even the two day case!) and unpacking it completely, with no thoughts given to downtime or narrative flow. Even Magical suffers this. While the case is still very strong, an actual analysis of it shows it really doesn't have a narrative arc, it's all built on the puzzle-box and character writing to carry it, and not much else. This process also causes the broader writing to suffer, because virtually everything ends up just being about how the murder played out, never some larger storyline. Some characters are designed entirely around puzzle gimmicks, while others are just given them when it's convenient (such as Geiru's never-before-mentioned buckwheat allergy, just there to give Storyteller a climax). When cases end, it doesn't feel like you reached some kind of meaningful narrative conclusion, it's just "that was cool, next". There's nothing strong in terms of lasting impact. Which, actually, kinda leads into the next part of this... ~~ 4. A Girl Named Maya Fey Maya Fey is one of my favourite fictional characters. Despite being designed on the base as the "quirky assistant girl" in the vein of much of Japanese mystery fiction, Shu Takumi did something truly special with how he designed Maya, crafting a character who honestly was both endearing and even more-so unmistakably human. She was in many ways the heart and soul of the original trilogy, her story and emotional reactions feeding into nearly scenario of the game, and she's someone who you genuinely come to cherish. I'm making this clear, because AA6's version of Maya is terrible. The problem with Maya in AA6 is that, even though the creators went to the trouble of bringing her back and heavily promoting her, they seemed to be utterly averse to actually doing anything with her. For starters, despite heavy promotion, Maya is barely in the game. She debuts in the third case...as a defendant (ignoring that her being accused of murder wasn't a "tradition", it was scenario based), and spends long stretches completely absent from the events. After that, her only appearance (outside of a lazy role in the creatively bankrupt DLC case) is a single testimony in the final trial. She has no actual influence on the narrative arc, even in the case she's the defendant of, and indeed seems to be only in the game as a glorified plot device for the spirit channelling scenarios. She never once even interacts with any characters outside of Phoenix and brief encounters with Rayfa and Apollo, the latter of which is mostly character-less, and doesn't even mention Phoenix's own daughter. Even the Innme's, who's she said to have lived with for two years, she never even mentions in her dialogue. This becomes all the more obvious when one considers how virtually all of Maya's dialogue is essentially just transplanted straight from the original trilogy with zero nuance. Outside of exposition, all Maya speaks with are stock "funny" quips designed to recall how she acted when she was a teenager (despite being now 28), comments about eating (which was just a minor recurring gag in the trilogy) and her being a fan of Steel Samurai (which was also just a minor recurring gag). The last one is especially offensive because the writers build an entire plot point off this one quirk, as if the only ways to make Maya relevant come confined to ideas which are as risk-free as possible. I've made a point of saying much of the post-Takumi AA material feels like mediocre fanfic, and the handling of Maya exemplifies it. We learn that Maya was in Khura'in for two years, a line which is clearly included to explain her absence from the prior two main series games. Except...Maya doesn't need that kind of explanation, because any actually good writer could just give the most reasonable explanation that she was off being the leader of her village. The only reason why such line exists is because the writers lack the ability to think Maya would have any life outside of being a medium, and Phoenix's funny assistant. And the thing is, a lot of AA6 is like this. Incredibly superficial and meaningless attempts to bring back older material, all while actually ignoring the actually engaging things that material had to say. Take, for instance, the use of Kurain Village. Either half the village was disappeared, or someone forgot what Kurain is actually like. Despite never really being physically explored, Kurain is without question one of the most interesting and important settings in the original trilogy. A small, incredibly isolated mountain village filled with spirit mediums under the Fey Clan, a lot was done to make what was a very fantastical setting feel like a real part of Takumi's world. AA3 especially would expand on this as it rather uniquely demonstrated the village as a completely matriarchal setting where women have all societal power, with this being a crucial plot point with major influence on the story. Kurain Village is visited in the first half of AA6's final case, but it is almost completely unrecognizable. What was once a mystical matriarchal village isolated from the world is now a random rural Japanese community with an asshole politician for a villain (Atishon is funny, but he still shouldn't be there). Nothing about the way Kurain is portrayed remotely matches the trilogy, complete with them acting like Maya and Pearl are the only mediums in the village, when it was previously made pretty clear all women could in the trilogy, we just never saw others. This isn't the only case of the game just ignoring settings like that. While it is still very good, Magical completely forgoes any kind of actual references to the story of Trope Gramarye as given in AA4, never even mentioning the names of the the disciples, and portrays Magnifi as just Trucy's really cool grandpa, rather than the immoral, cold-hearted manipulator so devoted to his craft he blackmailed his own students with false information, and took his own life when it proved unnecessary. Simon Blackquill shows up in Case 4, and while it's cool to actually see his and Athena's relationship, there's never a word about his years behind bars, or the actual history the two share. This is kind of perfectly demonstrated in how the game includes the scroll Pearl stained with gravy from Bridge, even though Pearl cleaned it at the end of that very case. This speaks to the core problem, rather than actually playing off the stories the prior games told and use the return to Kurain for the myriad of opportunities it gives, they instead include a reference that flat out doesn't work within continuity just because it's something people "remember". And that basically ties into the bigger problem here. AA6's writing is thin. Thin stories, thin settings, thin continuity, nothing about it feels remotely designed for an actual continuation of a narrative game franchise. It's all written for puzzle-junkies, those who want a sugar-high about solving the latest devilish trick. And yes, those tricks are very strong, but the adrenaline is something which just fades with time, and all it leaves in its wake is dissatisfaction. ~~ 5. Use Your Keyblade, Apollo And so we get to the biggest, and most important part of AA6, Turnabout Revolution. After entering a foreign country, learning about a battle between the despotic government and rebel organization, reuniting with Maya, learning about the dark truths of this society, unveiling a deep tragedy, and kickstarting a full-scale cultural revolution, the story of Phoenix Wright in Khura'in will now be about...Apollo and his foster father we never knew he had? Why does this father-son moment have the artistic framing of a yaoi doujin? Yeah, in case you might've noticed, Revolution has a bit of a problem right off the bat. After spending the first 60% of the game essentially framing Phoenix's plot as the "main" arc of the game, and having Apollo and company off doing random filler stuff, suddenly the entire story is about Apollo and his relationship with his foster father Dhurke. There's basically nothing to build this sudden drastic shift in direction up outside of a single brief scene which is basically just to establish Apollo as Dhurke's adopted son, and yet out of nowhere we're supposed to now believe this whole thing has been Apollo's family story this whole time. Credit to the game, despite the myriad of terrible ideas that went into it, I do genuinely think the relationship between Apollo and Dhurke works, and Dhurke despite being having no deal being in Takumi's world is a really likable and captivating character (even if the game makes him almost too perfect), but the scenario still stumbles because the game essentially is left trying to assert Dhurke as the defining figure in Apollo's life. While AA had to great success in the past worked in new characters into the framework of existing ones, what Pearl, Fransizka, Godot, the Hawthorne twins and Ray all had is that they didn't overwrite what those characters were established as, while Dhurke essentially transforms Apollo into something impossible to associate with the protagonist of the fourth game. Even Retinz from the same game feels like a more natural addition to the lore. The incredibly clumsy attempts to assert Apollo as the "hero" continue with the infamous "civil trial" segment, where Apollo and Phoenix square off in court over the one-note macguffin Dhurke is after. While an interesting idea on paper, it falls flat as the entire situation becomes a pointlessly artificial mess where you can see literally the entire outcome from the very first line, and Phoenix is basically reduced to a panicking wreck who barely can give Apollo a challenge. While there are two entertaining additional characters thrown into the fray, nothing about the civil trial is remotely entertaining as it devolves into an attempt to show how much Apollo has "grown" while Phoenix is revealed to being forced by Maya's kidnapping (another trilogy plot point regurgitated sans all emotional context), and the trial ends up changing very little. In the end, it just feels like a lot of glorified padding. Pictured: Everything wrong with the 3DS Ace Attorney Things don't improve once we get to the latter half in Khura'in. While the game does try to set a level of stakes, and there is a genuinely really good and shocking twist in Dhurke's death, the problems the game has start to really, fatally settle in the moment the trial starts, as the games main villain Queen Ga'ran takes center stage, and completely decimates any tone the game set up. Looking at Ga'ran, I can't help but laugh at how utterly Ace Attorney has fallen. Whereas Dahlia, the iconic central villain of AA3, was simply a young woman who embodied malice who in her words and actions, Ga'ran is none of those things. She is as if someone turned the Dragonlord into a visual novel villain, an amorphous blob of "evil" traits with zero strong motivation or meaning behind them while flaunting a hideous design which makes her look like a rejected Tetsuya Nomura design. And yet, the game still genuinely acts like there's somehow a question to her villainy, honestly wanting you to think the thought to be dead Amara is the culprit. This despite the fact that Amara has no motive, is not the character the game has built up as the main villain, has zero buildup as the villain period, that the games story would literally have no resolution if she were the final boss, and the only thing preventing it does nothing from a narrative POV (hint to the game, if you want to make an alibi a proper distraction, don't build an entire case climax on breaking a perfect alibi). The puzzle-box is really, really good, one of the best in the franchise, but that does little to distract what is essentially reduced to an exercise in tedium. More than anything, Revolution is a case which makes one wonder what really went wrong with Takumi's world. While Takumi made his finales the cases which were the most complex on an emotional and narrative level, Revolution feels no different from any of the cases you've been through, just longer and with more artificial stakes. All exposition is yet more just in service of the mystery, to the point that major motivations (most notably Inga) which are superfluous to puzzles are just discarded. Again, it all feels artificial. Whereas AA2 outright called out the player for viewing themselves as the hero, forcing them to accept their limits as detectives, AA6 relishes in the ideas of heroism. While Takumi outed Godot as the killer to force players to despair and accept, all Dhurke's death is used for is as a tool to inspire and push forward. Not once does the revolution suffer a single lasting setback or sacrifice, outside of Dhurke's heroic passing everything is awarded as a perfect happy ending. There is no shades of grey, no acceptance, no pain, it is just the valiant hero and the evil villain. No longer is this franchise a serious mystery story with an eccentric charm, it is now little more than a mediocre shonen manga. Truly, a parody of itself. And at the heart of this is a final question; Who are the brothers Apollo Justice and Nahyuta Sahdmadhi? Nahyuta says this right after doing just that for five years. Nahyuta is a character who has received a lot of criticism from the fandom, and for good reason. His motivations are contradictory and ill-suited for the franchise, his personality in the courtroom is stiff and consists of the same few phrases repeated over and over, he is heavily underdeveloped, and is considered perfectly innocent even though he probably got a lot of innocent people killed. I'm not really interested in that, though. I don't think much is gathered on why Nahyuta is a bad character, anymore than his defenders. I think the much more constructive question is why those problems exist in the first place, and how they are illustrative of everything AA6 does wrong. Nahyuta is a character caught in SoJ's own design, it could be said. He is a character who is designed to represent a setting which exists only for a few puzzle-boxes and little else, who has no strong relationships to build because the games structure prevents it. He is someone who cannot be a character because the game is so utterly uninvolved in creating them, instead forced to just sit on the sidelines until the next turn in the puzzle-box. This is demonstrated perfectly in the games climax. The idea, on paper, is not bad. Dhurke's sons, long-estranged, come together to carry their father's will together. The problem being that, after the trial they first reunited in, Nahyuta has barely spoken to Apollo until the climax itself. The event instead becomes this bizarre, artificial farce because the game was never really interested in creating story which would actually involve the characters in any way. And this reflects on the games use of Apollo. Apollo in Revolution is not the character Takumi created, no matter how hard it tries to make it seem so. Nothing about what we have experienced with him, even in the same game, factors into the character we see here. While Bridge was written in accordance to Phoenix and the people around him, all Revolution does is essentially take a character with the name, appearance and rough personality of Apollo, and transplants him into a story he was never designed to carry. He is a nothing character fighting for a nothing setting in a nothing story. Everything about this game is hollow. When Bridge closes, it's as if your life has changed. You've been this with the characters, accepted the truth, and can live with that forever. In Revolution, though, there's just a half-hearted heroes cheer, which fades from memory within seconds. A life changed, it does nothing. A work of fiction, it is all forgotten. ~~ 6. Conclusion It is interesting for me contrasting AA6 with another high-profile mystery ADV released just six months later; that being Danganronpa V3, and the reception is garnered initially and long-term. V3 was a game given an intensely controversial reception when it first released. I vividly remember people outright swearing off Kodaka as a writer for some of the creative decisions he made me, or calling it one of the worst things they had ever seen. Now, though, while a small group of opposers still exist, the dust has settled and, with people now seeing the game as Kodaka intended, it's easily one of the most popular and acclaimed VNs ever made, its creators masterpiece and a work of fiction which people vividly discuss to this day. Spirit of Justice, on the other hand, had a slew of fans outright calling it one of if not the best game in the entire franchise upon its release...only that sure didn't last. Nowadays, people seem to discuss it less than almost any other game in the franchise. In spite of Trilogy continuing to garner more discussion, more people who find meaning in it, all AA6 is is a random curiosity. I think that speaks to the meaning of fiction. We value the things which stick with us, because art, in its true form, is about people's demonstration of emotion to others. Ace Attorney has, ever since that brilliant moment, been a franchise ever-chasing its own legacy, in spite of its inability to understand what made that fiction work, or stick with people. It just reduces itself to cheap entertainment, when it could, and in the past was, so much more. In a way, it is a testament to fiction, that we continue to speak about something. For, should the story change people's hearts, should be something that is never forgotten... [link] [comments] | ||
| I don’t have any cool drawings for Valentine’s Day so take a shitty meme instead Posted: 14 Feb 2021 04:22 PM PST
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| POV: you're on a date with Phoenix and you're sharing a beer. happy Valentine's �� Posted: 14 Feb 2021 08:59 AM PST
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| If you were to revive one Ace Attorney victim, who would it be? Posted: 14 Feb 2021 08:14 PM PST AA6 SPOILERS:>! I would revive Dhurke if the Dragon Balls were existent in the Ace Attorney world.!< [link] [comments] | ||
| So, I homebrewed a D&D spell based off of Apollo's ability. Posted: 14 Feb 2021 07:31 AM PST
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| Would you play a game about the characters just living their lives? Posted: 14 Feb 2021 08:45 PM PST Outside of the poll, would you want it to be canon or non canon? [link] [comments] | ||
| Northward, Turnabout Express demo Posted: 14 Feb 2021 02:59 PM PST
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| Which option did you pick in Justice for All? (Also Happy Valentines Day!) Posted: 14 Feb 2021 07:14 PM PST | ||
| Do you want another "guilty" client in Ace Attorney 7? Posted: 14 Feb 2021 06:55 PM PST The main problems that people have with Spirit of Justice and even Dual Destinies are the defendants, and how the Wright Anything Agency takes on those defendants like it's "Black and White morality". But the key here is that Phoenix Wright is unstoppable at this point, being labeled as the "Turnabout Terror" is one thing. But all of Wright's including his protege's clients are SO guaranteed to be innocent that it feels that it's inevitable they'll win anyway. It doesn't matter how MUCH the prosecution nor the true culprit can handle, Wright and his protégé figure out how the villain is bested and the case is won to theirs on the white side. So I think that if Ace Attorney 7 were to be more morally grey, does anyone want an already "guilty" client who is the true culprit. But the client of Phoenix Wright, Apollo Justice, and Athena Cykes if Ace Attorney 7 comes into play. So that the stakes are lifted to morally grey stances rather than "you lose, the bad guys wins creating more chaos in the legal world" kind of thing. [link] [comments] | ||
| Is there a site where I can get DGS voice clips, speech bubbles and profiles? Posted: 14 Feb 2021 11:00 PM PST | ||
| Posted: 14 Feb 2021 07:07 PM PST Whether it's the stories, characters, gameplay, art design, music, or something else, what's something that's always been high or low quality throughout each game? How do you think these will carry over in future games and what changes could be made to make it better? [link] [comments] | ||
| Posted: 14 Feb 2021 06:52 PM PST We all know the story about how the localization team for the first Ace Attorney game set the game in Los Angeles due to the time zone plot point of the first case. While we all know it's a ridiculous decision because of the explicitly Japanese settings/scenarios in future games, some would argue that the localizers at the time couldn't have known about future cases such as The Monstrous Turnabout (5-2) or Turnabout Storyteller (6-4). My counterargument to that would be that the first localization team knew about future locations such as Kurain Village in JfA and Hazakura Temple in T&T. For those who don't know, the original Gyakuten Saiban trilogy came out on GBA in 2001, 2002, & 2004 (all JP-only). Eventually, the games got rereleased on DS, and Capcom used this opportunity to release the games outside of Japan. The first game, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, was localized and released on DS in 2005 alongside a brand new case (that being Rise from the Ashes). Basically, the translators had the entire trilogy as reference when they translated the first game. When localizing the first game, Capcom knew that the sequels would include Kurain Village and Hazakura Temple, which were so obviously Japanese in their aesthetic. Even your average American kid at the time could tell this game was set in Japan. Hell, as a dumb kid playing these games, I could tell it was a Japanese game purely through its anime design alone. Sure, the first game didn't have any explicitly Japanese settings, so the localizers knew they could sort of get away with "Los Angeles" there; however, they should have known that would clash with the settings in the next two games. Even the opening scene of Bridge to the Turnabout is dedicated to the Shichishito, a relic of Japanese lore. While you can't blame the initial localization team for future cases such as 5-2 & 6-4, did they simply not know about the locations in JfA & T&T? If not, why didn't anyone else at Capcom raise an objection (no pun intended)? It's just funny how Janet Hsu was brought in to localize the second game onwards, and she mentions how that decision from the first game (which was already localized before she arrived) essentially wrote them into a corner. P.S. The change of Maya's favorite food from ramen to burgers was also an odd change. I understand localizing Japanese dishes that your average Westerner wouldn't know, but why change ramen? It's the most commonly recognized Japanese dish outside of sushi that everyone in the world knows about. [link] [comments] | ||
| Anyone else think that Zoom cat incident is something that'd happen in the AA universe? Posted: 14 Feb 2021 09:05 PM PST I mean, if the coronavirus pandemic happened in the AAU, then I could see an incident like this happening, but since it'd occur while Phoenix is disbarred, I guess it'd happen to Edgeworth. [link] [comments] |
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