#and vlr spoilers under the cut lol

[meowsticmarvels]

EVEN MORE ze textposts ahead of the ze anniversary next week. hey. more versions of that first junepei one bc i couldn't decide at the time what sprites to use Under the cut

[morphogenetic]

Mediaposting 2024, #5: Dai Gyakuten Saiban 1/The Great Ace Attorney Adventures

Completed: March 26th (main game) / March 27th (escapades/the bonus video content)

Time spent: 37 hours (main game) / 39 hours (including bonus content stuff)

Rating: 8/10 (but with caveats because of it being the first of a duology) thoughts under the cut because there are many and a lot of them are spoilery. but the tl;dr is that they were clearly still kind of finding their footing with this game but The Game Is Good. and the reasons i'm giving it an 8/10 are mostly because i need to see how dgs2 deals with some of the loose ends before i go higher

first, the positives (and I suppose the neutrals):

first of all, on the game design side of things, the music slaps. as usual for an AA game honestly but there does not seem to be a single miss in this soundtrack which is rare. can't wait to hear the inevitable remixes and reframing of themes in dgs2.

it took me way longer than i expected to warm up to the main cast, but once I really got into the meat of the game, i found that I do really like all of them (and I mean ALL of them, including the more minor characters. except mcgilded but fuck mcgilded). this kind of suprised me because I don't think i've come close to that in any AA game except maybe the first one and t&t. also maybe aai2 but that's pushing it. like this game reminded me why I like AA at all after the absolute slogs of 5 and 6. (and the absolute 'i remember fucking none of this' of apollo justice)

the character design of this game as a whole is INCREDIBLE. there is not a single character design that I don't like in some way. from the really good student uniform designs, to susato's kimono, to iris and sherlock's outfits.....and those are just the main ones. a lot of the witnesses and even some of the jury members are memorable just on character design alone. even the designs i think are kind of ugly (coughs. mcgilded) are clearly ugly by design and not by accident. it's a feat. hope that dgs2 keeps up the good work but based on the one (very big....oops) spoiler that i know, i'd be surprised if it didn't.

the parallel between ashley graydon and gina as kids raised in poverty in the last case. mwah. magnificent. chef's kiss. 10/10 no notes

dgs sherlock is such a good interpretation of the Man The Myth and the Legend

also i really adore ryuu as a protagonist. i can't quite put my finger on why, it might honestly just be because of how fucking distressed he is all the time LOL, but i like him in a way that feels a bit deeper to me than the way in which i like phoenix. he's clearly making the best of a bizarre situation and his Law Skills are more of a matter of natural talent rather than training

the ending is. man. it's good and a very good sequel hook but can you fucking IMAGINE if they had never gotten the money to make a sequel to this game. what a hell world that would be. imagine just dropping a major hint that three characters you already know of are involved in a huge fucking conspiracy and then never getting to explain why. vlr/ztd interface level catastrophe.

and then the few negatives i have which unfortunately drag this down a little bit for me, enough to the 8/10 level...primarily the first one:

this game has WHACK pacing. having essentially 3 separate tutorials is a wild game design choice to make. the pacing felt off to me to the extent that the end of case 4 felt like it was the middle of the game, and case 5 was almost half of my playtime at 16 hours out of 37 so i think it was close to LITERALLY being halfway through. i don't have a good idea on how to fix it, given that this game has to introduce both the new dance of deduction mechanic AND the weird jury summation examination mechanic, but....there should have been something. it really made it difficult for me to fully Care about the characters until i was into case 5. and I'm glad that case 5 was ultimately good enough to make me care about everyone (e.g. i didn't really care about gina in case 3 at all), but it's pretty rough. i genuinely don't know HOW you fix the pacing issue while also keeping the overall plot outline the same, though, especially because cases 2 and 3 are so crucial. the only thing i can really think of is introducing some of the background london information in case 4 instead of 5, but.......still. or making case 4 happen more than a single goddamn day after case 3. just something to make the pace not feel nearly as weird. sighs. idk. it needed substantial tweaking but I don't have a good idea on what tweaks needed to be made. i've heard dgs2 has much better pacing from someone whose opinions i trust on that kind of thing, so i really hope it pulls through there.

more minor critique: a lot of the cases, barring 5, are weirdly easy with very rare (and also weird) spotty difficulty spikes. of course it's always hard to strike the balance in an AA game, and i wasn't expecting the tutorial to be hard, but...case 4 just kind of dragged for me because of how long the trial goes on. 5 actually did have tricky moments for me thanks to eggman graydon wanting to hide the truth and the sheer amount of evidence, but yeah. still far more challenging than the dr games just giving you all of the facts at the very beginning of the trial, though...at least shu takumi knows how to write a mystery LMAO

asougi really needed a little more lead time before getting killed off, because i like him but, without the escapades, it's probably not as much as I think the game wants me to like him, and ryuu being his best friend is not super convincing to me even though he shows that a lot more in later cases. i'm not tooootally sure how i would have fixed that, maybe keeping him alive a bit in the first half of the 2nd case? doing some more slice of life stuff with him and ryuu? or making ryuu's reaction to his death a little bit more shocked? idk. i'm REALLY glad the escapades exist because they help a lot in fleshing him out, but i really think parts of them should have been in the game proper =========== all that said. if a game gets me to write this many fucking words about it..which took me a goddamn HOUR to write jesus christ i just checked my computer clock.... it's clearly doing SOMETHING right. honestly, if the pacing wasn't so bizarre, i'd probably bump it up a full point. i am absolutely playing the second game but im already worried its gonna hit full on zero escape and raging loop level catastrophe fixation (positive) once im done so…i'm honestly putting off starting dgs2 a little bit because i'm worried that it's gonna distract me to the point of my grades/job suffering a little LOL. i haven't had that happen in a while so, at least in that way....congrats dgs you won me over. i will never stop calling you dgs because thats how i was introduced to you 7 years ago as my best friend's first new-fixation when i first became friends with her. sorry it took so long for me to get around to you.

[kokitschi]

im finally through! some thoughts in regards to v3 under the cut bc spoilers for both v3 and ze:vlr. i really recommend zero escape btw, play it!!!

the virus, the "space colonie", humanities last survivors (or are we?), the cult... (and also im pretty sure those books in one of the final scenes spelled "dice" which is just ??? i wasn't able to inspect them though so maybe i read it wrong..)

so the question is... was in-game team danganronpa just ripping the plot of vlr shamelessly? LMAO

and did kokichi recognize what kinda plot they're in because it's...heavily inspired? lol (he's been established as a gamer!)

i think you could interpret this as another point of how unoriginal and tired the franchise became... in-universe i mean (though i guess some people might argue the same for the actual game). after supposedly 53 seasons, nothing hasn't been done before. why not just rip the story of this old game and repackage and butcher it until it's just a bad copy but just original enough to not set off any copyright alarms. it's loveless and superficial. im pretty sure there's already been discussions about the point that kodaka didn't want to do any more danganronpa games because he felt like it's already gotten stale (this is badly paraphrased from memory. i think there was another article that he mightve changed his mind by now anyway.) and this is a pretty direct commentary on it. whether the tv-show narrative is at all true in-universe is secondary for this point imo.

so uh. yeah. i don't think that these references actually mean that zero escape and v3 are in the same universe or that their stories are the same or that this is proof espers and time travel exist in v3 or anything like that. ((bc all of that is based on the information we get from the flashback lights and tsumugi. whove already proven themselves to not be reliable sources of information.) though that could also be fun to theorize about! (actually there already are theories like that and personally, i like them but am not 100% convinced or anything)

anyway i'll be off to play the third zero escape game 👍

im currently playing zero escape: virtues last reward and... man this is definitely what got referenced in v3, no? 🤔

[leaves-of-laurelin]

Am I allowed to ask two for the tag game???

And Baby Makes Four, please :)

(And if it's not to greedy, Soulmate App)

Yes! But I’ll make it two separate posts and tag you.

And Baby Makes Four is meant to be the eventual sequel to Room For You. It involves a baby. “And baby makes three” is an old phrase about a couple having their first baby, but this is throuple so the baby makes four. Yes, clever, thank you, lol.

I’ll summarize the plot, but I guess this will technically have spoilers for the rest of Room For You so I’ll put it under a cut. Hopefully it’s not all to vague and rambling.

Kristoff gets a job at VLR Technologies, which allows him to stay near school and near Anna and Hans. The three decide to become boyfriend/boyfriend/girlfriend. (This is in the final chapter of Room For You.)

Elsa gets a job in Manhattan. Maren gets a job in Westchester. They buy a house in Westchester. Anna starts to stay at their house over breaks as her and Elsa continue to distance themselves from their parents. Elsa and Anna’s parents not attending Elsa and Maren’s wedding is the final nail in the coffin to their relationship. Meanwhile, Hans’s relationship with his mom gets better and better and she is accepting of his relationship with Anna and Kristoff.

When Hans graduates, he gets a job and an apartment in Manhattan. The job is at the company that is the biggest rival to his dad’s company. Hans gets to have a big FU moment with his dad, is finally on his own like he always wanted. But, it’s bittersweet because he’s now so far away from Kristoff and Anna. The year between Hans graduating and Anna graduating tests their relationship. Anna and Kristoff still see each other everyday but they are now long distance with Hans. They hit some bumpy patches but come out stronger.

After Anna graduates she is able to get a job downstate somewhere (haven’t decided where yet). Kristoff is able to get a job at the same company where Maren works. Anna and Kristoff get a house within walking distance of Elsa and Maren’s. This also puts them a short distance away from where Hans is in the city. Hans gifts Sven to Anna and Kristoff as a house warming present. He’s a chocolate lab because Anna loves chocolate.

Hans continues to live in his apartment in the city, but comes to stay at Anna and Kristoff’s house on the weekends and for holidays. Having his own place is still really important to Hans, he’s still dealing with baggage from his relationship with his dad and wants to be financially independent for a while longer. Anna and Kristoff tell him there is an open invitation for him to move in with them whenever he wants.

Hans is the one to first suggest Anna and Kristoff get married. Says that obviously the three of them can’t ever get married all together but that Anna deserves a beautiful white dress and they all deserve a big party and, heck, someone might as well get the tax benefits.

Anna and Kristoff will become wife and husband. Kristoff and Hans will stay boyfriend and boyfriend. Hans and Anna will stay boyfriend and girlfriend. However, they talk about how they will all remain three equal members of the relationship.

On their wedding day, Anna and Kristoff have a surprise for Hans: inscribed on the inside of their wedding rings are three interlocking hearts - a symbol of how he is always with them, even in this. Hans is deeply touched by this, and he also has a surprise for them: he got them both watches with the following inscribed on the back:

For all the time and patience you have shown with me. Love, Hans

Time, get it? Because they’re watches. Anyway.

When they decide to try for a baby, Hans insists on Kristoff being the dad because Kristoff and Anna are married, Kristoff and Anna live together, and there are too many Westergaards anyway. Anna gets pregnant pretty quickly, this becomes an ongoing joke for Hans about Kristoff’s super sperm. “I better be careful or else you’ll get me pregnant too.”

During the pregnancy each of our trio reflect on their own relationships with their parents and what they want to do differently as parents themselves.

Hans has a boss who is willing to bend the rules around parental leave at the company and so Hans is able to get some time off after the baby is born. He moves in with Anna and Kristoff during this time.

Babies are hard! Sleepless nights, diapers, crying, never ending piles of laundry. But through it all Anna, Kristoff, and Hans grow even closer.

When his leave is up Hans has to go back to work and also goes back to living in his apartment; he continues to come stay with Anna, Kristoff, and the baby on the weekends… but the return is so much harder than he ever expected. Every time the weekend ends, and he has to go back to living alone in his apartment, it gets harder and harder. He misses how things were during those weeks he lived with them. He misses seeing Anna and Kristoff and the baby everyday.

One day he breaks down and tells Anna and Kristoff how much he wants to move in with them permanently. And also how he doesn’t want the boyfriend and girlfriend labels with them anymore. That he wants to call them husband and wife, even if they can’t legally make that happen. Hans knows that an “open invitation” was given a while back, but he’s still nervous. Things have been so good for so long, will Anna and Kristoff still be open to this change?

Anna and Kristoff exchange a look and Kristoff goes to fish something out from the back of his sock drawer to give to Hans. It’s a ring box, and inside a wedding ring that’s exactly Hans’s style. On the inside of the ring it has the same inscription of the three interlocking hearts that Anna and Kristoff’s rings have. “When did you get this?” Hans asks, dumbfounded. They tell him they got it the same time they got their own rings. Anna and Kristoff tell him they never wanted to pressure him, but always held out hope that he’d want the ring one day. Tears, hugs, happiness. Hans puts on the ring.

When time comes for trying for a second baby, it’s decided that Hans will be the dad this time. It takes longer for Anna to get pregnant this time, which Kristoff teases Hans about. However, once she is pregnant, they discover its twins. Hans tries to use this to gloat but Kristoff is too happy to care… he’s always wanted a big family .

[luupetitek]

Zero Escape game spoilers on the picture! Not in the description though x'v Aaand another bunch of the stickers! New chapter, new characters~ At least some of them x') Those who played the game certainly noticed changes in characters, but speaking of Virtue's Last Reward, we've changed much more than just them. As the first chapter was amazing and I LOVED it, the VLR was... quite a letdown 😬 (...)

More of my opinion about the game (spoilers free) below the cut!

999 was just excellent in every aspect! Story wise, with interesting characters, shocking plot twists and I was just amazed how PERFECTLY everything fitted, with every small detail. Like ideally cut out puzzle pieces, creating a coherent whole where each thing learnt while playing was important. There was just not too much room for many changes to the gameplay, as... well, they weren't necessary! But the VLR... oh god, it just felt like a very long anime with too many filers, too many... stuff! As if they'd try to throw into this plot EVERYTHING that's ever appeared in sci-fi stories and they glued that together, hoping it will hold to itself. And I'm amazed, but not by the perfection, but how they managed to put there so many things, so many plot twists and reveals and still make it so... empty. Most of the endings were very repetitive, leading to learn some... minor things, that most could be just put together into one timeline, with an exception of the last ending that had a very strong punch, to just leave you emotionally drained and damaged. I guess they just had to fill it with whatever to make the playtime impressive, but... yeah, it visibly lacks the creator's soul from the previous part. And after seeing some game screens and hearing things from the DM, who's played the original, I doubt we'd enjoy playing it the way it was (she didn't, lol) and so the changes were BIG. Both to characters, who were mostly painfully plain, annoying and lacking any depth and logic to their actions, and to the endings that... well, same x'd My kingdom for some logic! That's why we've created many many new things, making the story only lead to the same results, as we had to stick to the main core of the plot for the next chapter. But tbh, we've added and changed so much stuff I believe it's not the same game anymore, lol xV But I really love it this way! Especially with all the fleshed out characters ♥ And I was really sad to say goodbye to them at the end x'C Characters played by me: Ted, Sigma, Mathias Characters played by @RikoIngram: Dio, Rho, Nintendo Characters played by (lovely DM~) @Inai-Nerse: Alice, Juno, K

You can also see 999 set on my blog under the #nonary tag~ _________________________________ You can find me on: (@Luupetitek) Deviantart | Instagram | ArtStation | Ko-Fi donations

[captorcorp]

so my thoughts on 999 so far

i have 2 endings left aka the true ending and what I think is the prerequisite for the true ending? working on that one atm

spoilers for endings besides those 2 under the cut (and one danganronpa spoiler for the first game) (but mostly just rambling from me lol)

first of all i love this game so far

Snake’s my favorite character, it sucked how he died at the beginning though, but then i found out about his arm and I’m wondering... this reminds me a lot of danganronpa (DR SPOILER AHEAD) when Junko was murdered at the start but it turned out to actually be Mukuro and Junko was pulling the strings in secret. So I got to thinking... maybe it’s the same and Snake’s a bad guy? Or just doing weird shit behind the scenes. Dunno. No one spoil anything for me. And if not, then I’m confused how he even got into the 3 room to start.

Oh yeah and also why’s Snake so weird about the lights in the rooms?

Also Seven ended up as one of my faves since my first blind route was matched with him for all the rooms. edit: also Ace grew on me after i did a few endings involving exploring with him

Is the 9th man ever expanded on? He just threatens people and dies. Also I noticed how the coffin end had Snake doing practically the same thing to get into door 9, will be interesting to see how that’s expanded on in the true end (since it goes off of that end right?)

speaking of that end, the coffin is super creepy. Alice in general is super creepy.

who the hell kills everyone in the sub ending??? what was the sub??? why would they kill everyone in the first place??? unless it was like with clover where she stole the bracelets... that was also a weird ending, didn’t expect her to be like that at all

OH RIGHT also: at the end of... i think it was the coffin ending? it said the message “Actually, I’m Santa”. And then it ended, with no explanation.

all the telepathy stuff and the whatever-field stuff is super neat. can’t wait to see how that gets expanded on

edit: also the condition Lotus mentioned about the face blindness, I hope that becomes relevant bc it sounds cool

also NO ONE ANSWER ANY OF THESE QUESTIONS until i finish the true end (or VLR/ZTD if applicable) and still have these

[mortaveritas]

dumping some headcanons about sigma and family, huge spoilers (vlr and ztd) under the cut

first, his home life. In-game, Sigma claims that his family was “average”, he’s not rich (no great ransom), but not poor either. We don’t really get anything more than that, though.

Honestly, I’m kinda conflicted on what I think his family is like. On the one hand, I love the idea of him having a very large family, both because I feel it fits, and I feel like it makes a nice contrast with Phi. On the other, the idea of him having a deadbeat dad (and that being part of why he’s so abysmal as a father) is also quite plausible.

I do see the potential of mixing these HCs, tho. It’s possible that he was raised by his mother, but his extended family was still large. I doubt he’d have contact with his paternal grandparents/family, but his maternal grandparents would still be alive. (perhaps his mom just had a lot of sisters? potential for cousins there.)

Regardless though, I feel like while the family was large, it didn’t get together super often. There’d be a big get together at christmas, and a family reunion in the summer, but other than that? not much, really. And as well, there still weren’t that many positive male role models in his life. He didn’t really see what a dad was supposed to be like.

Sigma and women is a... complicated issue. He’s hopelessly perverted and doesn’t stop making jokes, and yet at the same time, he proves that he does know when to be compassionate, and when to shut up with the quips. He can take things too far, certainly, but he also does(usually) back off when they tell him to.

So, I feel like I’m confident in saying that he had good female role models growing up, mostly in his mother. He probably has a lot of respect for her (considering she raised him on her own). The perversion and stuff is just because he’s a dumb frat boy who talks first and thinks second, usually. he gets better with age.

for kids.... oh god that’s complicated. so fucking complicated.

first, in vlr: Sigma isn’t super awkward around Quark (when he’s awake). He’s definitely not a good role model for a kid, but he cares and he wants to keep quark safe. Hell, look what he does in quark’s ending- he lets himself get betrayed and then severs his fucking arm just to save Quark’s life.

However.... all good things must come to an end. and the good thing that comes to an end here is sigma being ok with kids.

I mentioned in a different post, but I was talking with indigocrash about just random headcanon things about Sigma and Kyle and Diana and Luna, and I really now like the idea that DIana was pregnant (and lost the pregnancy) right around when she died.

so right off the bat, we’ve got Sigma having a very upsetting experience regarding children. He loses his wife and unborn child (probably within the span of a month-2 weeks), and he knows. He knows what’s going to happen, but he pushes it off.

The next thing he does is create Luna, out of loneliness. After time he realizes that he needs to start seeing her as her own person, and not Diana, so he tweaks her personality and voice so that he has to force himself to see her as a separate person. And, it works- Sigma acknowledges that Luna is her own woman, and he starts to see her as a daughter. It’s about then when he gives her the blue bird and tells her the (albeit depressing) story that does with it. It was a symbol- he wanted to tell her that she was capable of being more than just what she was programmed for. That she was capable of becoming her own person, despite her status as a gaulem.

So, he’s got Luna, his daughter. But then, Kyle. Oh, Kyle, my poor poor boy.

I’ve mentioned numerous times about the HC where kyle dies over and over, so I won’t go more into it here. However, that’s what really screws with him, in the end. It sorta puts the final nail in the coffin of him becoming “dr. Klim”, as he distances himself more and more.

I do feel like he’d still talk more to Akane and Luna, but he just can’t bring himself to get close to kyle. In the period where Kyle works with him, I do think it makes him genuinely happy as well- but he knows it can’t last.

When Sigma finds out about Phi in ztd, I feel like he’d almost feel guilty. Because he has Phi, sure, but he’s lost Luna and Kyle.

Hell, it’s possible for him to recreate Luna, and because quantum computers it’s technically possible that he could create a ‘shifted’ copy of her personality, with her memories, and bring it to the good timeline. But kyle... oh, my dear sweet boy. My poor boy.

There’s two options to how Kyle can get to the ZTD true end timeline. One, the idea that I really like and actually do hc: he shifts with the spare carlos, the one that should be there from the transporter. That means that Carlos is “???”, I get to be happy because carlos and junpei meet up again in vlr timeline (and akane too, go to earth and see your tsundere fiance who���s too stubborn to see you), and I also get to be happy because Kyle on the true end. It’s the best-case scenario- Sigma can have his ‘family’, no matter how broken it kinda is. He could introduce Luna and Diana (lol that’d be a fucked up conversation), and Kyle could have an actual mother (although tbh i feel like he’d be really damn reluctant because a) not akane and b) looks like luna).

Now, this would still not be a happy ending- there’s no real ending where Kyle can just forgive Sigma. That’s not gonna happen, not after years and years of parental neglect. However, I do hope that at the very least, there’d be the possibility of some form of reconciliation. The idea that they could at least get along as ‘friends’, although not perhaps good friends.

The second, and far more depressing option, is that Sigma himself shifts with Kyle. There’s a lot to be lost here- depending on theories, it could almost be suicidal. (if you agree that having 2 of the same consciousness in the same timeline aware of each other would fuck things up, like a schrodinger’s cat situation. everything’s fine, until you know there’s two.)

In this case, one of the Sigmas would have to die- if the action of shifting with Kyle didn’t kill one/both of them right off the bat. It would be tragic for Diana, Phi would likely be goddamn pissed at him, and honestly? I don’t think Kyle would want that. It’s a better world, maybe, but it’s a world where he knows nobody apart from Phi. Akane isn’t the same, tenmyouji isn’t tenmyouji, and even Phi knows too much.

the hidden, best option? transporter. Clover and Alice heavily imply that they’re going to use it in the end of VLR, which means that Sigma knows where it is. And, how to still activate it.

My best idea, then? Clover and Alice go first (transporting to the early radical-6 outbreak to meet with Light and the other sois people), then ten months later, it’s Quark and Kyle.

I love this idea the most because a) Quark getting to live through an actual happy world is amazing, and also he gets to see young grandpa and just, a world where junpei doesn’t get to meet quark is kinda sad,,,, and b) Kyle gets to go to the good ending without feeling like he’s stolen anything. Plus, him and Quark can relate to each other about  things- i could almost see him sorta big bothering Quark.

I... I think I lost my train of thought along the line.

but, yeah. let quark and kyle use the transporters 2k74.

[mortaveritas]

vlr spoilers

im just thinking now- it’s gonna be sigma from just after the reactors exploded mentally, physically it’s pre-vlr/ztd, but... what if i said zero iii under companion

sure, he technically hasn’t programmed him yet, but still... if he’s allowed to be freaked out due to no longer having robot arms, then he’s allowed to be freaked out due to his annoying rabbit riding around in a cube.

just, like. “Yaaaaawn. Hey, Siggy.”

and sigma freaks the fuck out like “someone get me a mirror did i jump again” and zero’s just “lol bro i aint got a fuckin clue whats goin on”

that’s, uh. a bit ooc for zero jr there. but you get my drift.

also, bad idea: sigma like “wtf when’d these get abt”, cuts a finger or something, then like “???im bleeding???”

also, sigma just like “oh god i had no idea how much i missed stereoscopic vision. I can see. I won’t run into corners every 5 minutes.”

[mortaveritas]

Anon asked:  ✔,  ▼

vlr spoilers under cut

✔ : What drew you to the character you currently play? What types of characters are you generally drawn to?

What drew me to sigma was just, how interesting he is. He’s a very complicated character, as well as an archetype I hardly look at, so he’s fun and different. As for who I usually play, either girls, or Junpei.

I’d say I’m joking, but the only male OC i’ve rped as literally used Junpei as a partial FC

▼ : Are there popular head canons for your character that you disagree with? Why?

I don’t actually know what headcanons are or aren’t popular, because I avoid fandom. So instead, I’ll just say some potential headcanons I disagree with.

The idea that Sigma actually didn’t like kyle, just anything that has old!sig as a heartless/unfeeling person, stuff that would discredit the fact that he actually is decently intelligent even in vlr

this is all kinda vague, but just. idk? I have no idea what’s popular, lol.