Ace Attorney Nick and Maya [@omen_hohoho] |
- Nick and Maya [@omen_hohoho]
- behind the scenes
- Something To Keep You Guys Occupied On A Rainy Day
- Whiteboard Phoenix Wright
- Eat your hamburgers, Apollo!
- Hi everyone Happy 4th July Day Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney Series THANK YOU AMERICA FLAG WONDERFUL DAY PEACE!!
- mr. wellington loves large bananas
- Gregory Edgeworth is too pure
- Blushing meme
- After seven months I've played through all the cases, truly one of the best things I've ever done!
- Rating every Ace Attorney Villain: Trials and Tribulations
- The Miser Brothers but the Gavin Brothers
- Battle of the Lawyers
- Is the Turnabout collection coming to the USA?
- (Objection.lol) Phoenix Wright: Bird Lawyer
- You guys are the best
- Muppetworth AU Art! (all usernames listed pertain to tumblr)
- Who do you think is the greatest character of all time?
- Thoughts about Phoenix x thalassa
- 40 Cases, 40 Days - Day 18: Turnabout Succession
| Posted: 04 Jul 2021 09:41 AM PDT
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| Posted: 04 Jul 2021 02:52 PM PDT
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| Something To Keep You Guys Occupied On A Rainy Day Posted: 04 Jul 2021 02:28 AM PDT
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| Posted: 04 Jul 2021 02:31 PM PDT
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| Posted: 04 Jul 2021 06:56 AM PDT
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| Posted: 04 Jul 2021 11:01 AM PDT
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| mr. wellington loves large bananas Posted: 04 Jul 2021 12:35 PM PDT
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| Posted: 04 Jul 2021 08:17 AM PDT He's arguably the best parent in the game! He's not super serious like his son, but he's still a force to be reckoned with and he's so sweet. In the third case of AAI2, he kept thinking about his son and wondering how he was doing. His wholesomeness clashes with Manfred's authoritarianism so perfectly Greg was too good for this world [link] [comments] | ||
| Posted: 04 Jul 2021 03:12 AM PDT
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| After seven months I've played through all the cases, truly one of the best things I've ever done! Posted: 04 Jul 2021 02:30 PM PDT
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| Rating every Ace Attorney Villain: Trials and Tribulations Posted: 04 Jul 2021 11:09 PM PDT | ||
| The Miser Brothers but the Gavin Brothers Posted: 04 Jul 2021 10:55 AM PDT
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| Posted: 04 Jul 2021 11:51 AM PDT | ||
| Is the Turnabout collection coming to the USA? Posted: 04 Jul 2021 08:45 PM PDT I read on Twitter that it was releasing on the same date as the Great Ace Attorney Chronicles. Is that true? Is it just in the US? What's the deal with this? [link] [comments] | ||
| (Objection.lol) Phoenix Wright: Bird Lawyer Posted: 04 Jul 2021 02:27 PM PDT
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| Posted: 04 Jul 2021 02:12 AM PDT Out of all the fandoms. You guys are the chillest fandom out of all of em. Whenever someone states an opinion in other fandoms. The replys and comments are always "You dumbass, X is clearly better than Y" or "Y is better than X, you idiot!". But in this fandom, I don't feel that way (But the ship wars can be a little toxic tbh), but other than that. You guys are the chillest one yet. I love discussing with you guys on "Why you like this" "Why you don't like that" "Why you hate this" "Why you love that", because of how calm and collective y'all are. You guys are the fucking best. Period [link] [comments] | ||
| Muppetworth AU Art! (all usernames listed pertain to tumblr) Posted: 04 Jul 2021 03:37 AM PDT
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| Who do you think is the greatest character of all time? Posted: 04 Jul 2021 09:39 AM PDT IMO it's gonna be Phoenix Wright because of how brave and tough he is during court and also how many lives he changed over the course of his career which to me seems pretty awesome if you ask me. But anyways who do you think is the greatest character of all time in the ace attorney universe? [link] [comments] | ||
| Thoughts about Phoenix x thalassa Posted: 04 Jul 2021 11:50 PM PDT | ||
| 40 Cases, 40 Days - Day 18: Turnabout Succession Posted: 04 Jul 2021 04:43 AM PDT Turnabout Succession was a mistake.
This case, this so-called "ending" to Apollo Justice, the direction it chose to take for the story and the characters within, the things it chose to focus on and include vs. what it ignored and left out, is the reason for every setback to ever befall this series and its fandom. No, I'm not exaggerating. It single-handedly sucked all the inherent goodwill out of the Japanese side of the fandom. The resulting poor performance of subsequent titles in Japan is part of what scared Capcom out of translating some of them into English, which nearly killed the western fanbase. (I still remember the day they said AAI2 would not be getting a western release, and the immediate collective fear that the series would be Japan-only from here on out.) The necessary change to a new director after this point in the series became a boogeyman that people use to this day to insist the later games are de facto worse than the original trilogy. And many of the problems people have with the games under this director, like sending the series into prequel-spinoff limbo, rebooting it a second time, giving Apollo a bunch of out-of-nowhere extra backstories, and throwing Beanix directly into the garbage and pretending he never existed, were in fact direct and necessary attempts to get around or fix legitimately poor writing in Apollo Justice and/or address valid complaints from the Japanese side of the fandom. And yes, while you could attribute this to Apollo Justice as a whole, it is ultimately Succession's fault. At the end of the day, any of the plot threads or characters that people might've had a problem with in Apollo Justice, either in the intro or in the background of the two filler cases, could have been cleaned up and made more compelling if the finale was done differently. For example, Investigations 2 actually had two major characters that likely would've been total base-breaking hate sinks if a) the game was actually widely released in English and b) they didn't develop them astoundingly well in the last two cases.
Phoenix's drastic character change in this game was a mistake. While I understand the appeal of creating a Phoenix that would "shock" the player on his initial reveal, the circumstances that led him there that are covered in this case don't make a whole lot of sense, and go directly against the character that they had literally just established in T&T. (Fun Fact: Phoenix actually didn't have much in the way of a personality in the first two Ace Attorney games in the original Japanese. His personality in our versions of PW:AA and JFA was largely a woolseyism created by the localization team. T&T is the game that changed that and made Phoenix his own man with his own desires separate from the player's. Big thanks to a reader for DMing me a translated writeup from a JP fan that covers this quite well.) The Phoenix I know from the original trilogy would've fought with all his might to get his badge back and restore his good name. He would've gotten help from Edgeworth, Maya, Gumshoe, Franziska, Larry, maybe Ema or even Iris, to try and overturn the court's decision. Failing that, he would've at least stayed in touch with them, and gotten one of them to help him raise this 8 year old kid that fell into his lap. He'd never do what Phoenix apparently does in this game: give up on his badge, then lie in wait for 7 years to spring some chessmaster's scheme on the person who did this to him, while letting his friendships and career rot and be forgotten. There are multiple ways to do the "Phoenix Wright is no longer practicing law and is a different person than you remember from T&T" concept without making him a poverty-stricken single dad with no friends with a sudden genius-level intellect capable of thinking over half a decade ahead. He could have simply retired over some tragedy or scandal, or he could've passed away from old age by the time Apollo Justice starts and been a part of the story via spirit channeling by a descendant of Maya or Pearl. The path Takumi and the gang chose for Phoenix in this game almost feels like the deliberate worst option.
Letting this awful version of Phoenix take the spotlight over Apollo Justice, the titular hero, was a mistake. Do you know why Apollo has three backstories? Because his first one sucks ass and tells us nothing about him as a person. He's revealed as Trucy's half-brother in this case, as a way of explaining his Gramarye powers of Perception, and… that's it. Why does he want to be a lawyer? Who were his friends before becoming one? These aspects and more are left completely unanswered. We could have gone more into Apollo's past and motivations in this case, but for some reason, the true main character in Succession is Beanix, not Apollo. You don't have time to see the reboot's main character come into his own, silly! What, you thought there'd be some succession in a case called Turnabout Succession? Psh. Nah. What you need to do is spend over half this case's runtime as Phoenix, playing through a trial from the past whose outcome was already heavily explained in exposition, and then playing through a completely non-canon investigation segment in the fucking Matrix. We'll let Apollo take the final court segment, though. But, uh, Phoenix will still be there, of course. And it's only like one or two testimonies long in terms of gameplay, the rest is just exposition. And you'll only get a Guilty verdict because of the Jurist System Phoenix created and pushed to use in this trial. And because the jury is biased in favor of Phoenix's point of view because he walked them through the crime personally through that Matrix thingy. But it's ok, the player gets to be a jurist and choose the verdict themselves! Not Apollo, though. He doesn't get to affect the outcome at all. His whole confrontation with Kristoph didn't matter at all, actually. Jurists deciding the truth for themselves instead of with evidence is way better anyway.
Most of the side characters in this case were a mistake. The men of the Gramarye clan are essentially painted as a bunch of shifty, toxic assholes, which could've been written into something interesting and served as a stark contrast to the women of the Fey clan, except the writing treats them as if their objectively terrible behavior is merely eccentric. Zak especially is a fucking worthless deadbeat (and not the good, supportive, "Dead Beats lurking now" type) who, among other terrible things, leaves his only daughter, who loved him more than anything, to rot in Japanifornia without him while he fucked off to Russiaslavia or wherever the hell he goes after his trial goes to shit. Valant and Magnifi aren't exempt from this, either. Valant's tomfuckery is more obvious, being that he manipulated the scene of his mentor's death to make it look like Zak killed him, though his acts are almost noble compared to Zak's. And Magnifi isn't much better. Because of the order of the visits he'd planned, the way he chose to carry out his final day on earth would've fucked Valant out of the family performance rights virtually no matter what transpired. What's more, choosing to kill himself right after speaking with Valant immediately shifts a ton of suspicion onto him, for seemingly no good reason other than "I liked Zak better". In a similar fashion, Drew Misham is painted (hah) in a sympathetic light despite being the one technically responsible for Phoenix's disbarring and manipulating his daughter into committing crimes without her knowledge. And the bit with him having sketches of Apollo's cases is hyped up to be this big thing in the intro to this case and Turnabout Trump, but after finding them the game barely even mentions it. Spark Brushel makes me crave death and he has the worst Perceive section in the game. And last, but certainly not least: Why in the fresh hell is one of the small handful of returning original trilogy characters Mike fucking Meekins?
The Gavin brothers were a mistake. Do you remember in Turnabout Trump, when I said that the biggest question it left unanswered was Kristoph's reason for killing Shadi Smith? Even after playing Succession multiple times, I still can't confidently say I know the answer. Kristoph's supposed motive for doing all this to Phoenix and Zak is the most nonsensically petty thing in the world. His problem wasn't with Phoenix outdoing him in court, or securing the first win over his younger brother, but the simple act of Zak choosing Phoenix over Kristoph to represent him, and the way he chose to do it. That's… it. He concocted a scheme to get Phoenix disbarred and murder all of the loose ends without getting caught because Phoenix is a better poker player than him and Zak is a fickle, eccentric jerk. Excuse me, what? Is this just his default response to getting screwed by an idiot customer? How has he gone his whole adult life without killing someone if he jumps straight to fraud and murder at the slightest inconvenience? And what's the deal with his relationship with Klavier? Their interaction in court has always left my head scratching, it feels like there's something more there than what we see on the surface, but it's left completely unspecified.
Rushing this case was a mistake. This is the big one and ties directly into the aforementioned issue with the Gavin brothers. Supposedly there was a great big backstory for Kristoph and Gavin planned that would've given more info into Kristoph's character and their relationship as brothers, but they ran out of time to include it. That alone would have done wonders for this case, but I'm convinced there's even more missing: about 1-2 hours of story, to be exact. Don't believe me? Here's my evidence. I looked into the average length of Ace Attorney's finale cases, using YouTube longplays as a quick guide, and learned some interesting things. First of all, I owe Rise from the Ashes an apology: while its pacing (and its massive Court Record) can make it seem like a very long case, it is actually just as long as most finales in the series, the average length of which tends to be 7-8 hours, counting the credits and post-credits scenes. There are, in fact, only four outliers to this trend. The only finale that is notably longer than this 7-8 hour range is SoJ's Turnabout Revolution, which clocks in at about 12 hours (good lord). Meanwhile, there are three that are shorter than 7 hours. One is Turnabout Goodbyes, the shortest finale, at only 4 hours. This is likely a result of early installment weirdness, as this 4 hour mark is the average for non-finale, non-intro cases. Rather than giving the ending special treatment, they likely just wrote it as if it was a normal case. The second is Turnabout for Tomorrow from DD, clocking in at 5; but, incidentally, combining it with its sister case that covers the same incident, The Cosmic Turnabout, brings its total runtime up to 8 hours, i.e. right in the average range. And the only other exception, the only final case to clock in at less than 7 hours without mitigating circumstances? Turnabout Succession, at just under 6. I am 100% convinced that more was planned for this story, more than likely for the otherwise-disappointing final trial segment. If that lost plotline was written back in and combined with some minor rewrites on the more easily-fixed questionable parts, then I think Succession would have actually been a decent ending.
The only thing in this case that is not a mistake, in my opinion, is Vera Misham. She is delightfully cute, both as a teenager and as Lil' Vera in the flashback scenes, her design is simple but aesthetically pleasing, and her drawing gimmick is fun. Something I really appreciate about Vera (that I missed when playing this case as a teen) is that she's clearly written in a way that implies she's on the Autism spectrum in some way, but without directly saying as such. She's mostly nonverbal, she has hyper-specific interests, is unreasonably skilled at certain types of tasks, and she has trouble opening up with most people, but can sometimes manage to do so even with complete strangers so long as they talk to her gently and positively about the things she likes. It's really nice to see neurodivergent characters portrayed in a positive light, especially considering this game was written 14 goddamn years ago and modern pushes for representation in media weren't a thing yet. (That said, she's not the only Ace Attorney character that I believe to be on the spectrum who is generally portrayed positively. The other would be Edgeworth, but y'all ain't ready for that conversation yet.) Vera's a breath of fresh air, and the one truly salvageable aspect of a case that otherwise does nothing but dredge up bad memories and hard feelings for me.
Apollo Justice was my first Ace Attorney game, but even without any frame of reference, I could always tell something about Turnabout Succession was off. When I eventually picked up the earlier games, those finales made me realize what that problem was: these endings actually cared about their main character. I felt secondhand embarrassment for poor Apollo, who wasn't allowed to be the hero in his own story, playing second fiddle to a poker-genius homeless man pretending to be Phoenix Wright. Combine that with a lot of uncertainty floating around in the community around that time, fears about a new director and the drastically different gameplay style of Ace Attorney Investigations (at the time only known by its JP name, Gyakuten Kenji), and I wound up walking away from Ace Attorney for a while. Thankfully, it wouldn't last, because my eternally-based mom bought me AAI as a gift, even though I'd never asked for it or mentioned it to her. And when I finally got around to playing it, I found my love for the series again. Even though it didn't hit the same highs as the original trilogy, it was Miles better (hah) than AJ as an overall experience, and the ending actually felt like an ending where the main character did something. And so, even though AJ was my very first Ace Attorney game, the bleak future it seemed to promise for the series almost managed to kill my love and optimism for it, just like it did the Japanese fan base. While there are parts of AJ I will always love and respect, the ending to this case makes me feel nothing but sadness, disappointment, and hate. While some of the writing is up to objectively good standards (it's leagues better than Serenade, like it's not even close), and I really like Vera and some isolated aspects of Kristoph's convoluted-ass murder plot, I can't just… let go of how this case makes me feel.
Overall Score - 1 / 5 [link] [comments] |
![Nick and Maya [@omen_hohoho]](https://external-preview.redd.it/Nv0aCUeDI4VlKN1ckSCFBNLmZCUCw5_jdY7QHhGtsu0.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=3810ac7d2df56f23e459c0ffb3bedc21058a9a7c "Nick and Maya [@omen_hohoho]")
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