#i am the phantom ace attorney having a breakdown

[the-legendaryphoenix]

I am taking notes of my gates playthrough and I am not past Desolate Canyon. Send help

[apollotomyicarus]

alright i just beat spirit of justice and this is gonna be long and full of spoilers

tldr: lots of missed opportunities, i love apollo, and maya and athena got done dirty.

i think my biggest take away was that it felt like a missed opportunity. cases 1-3 were rather boring and case 4, which i liked, felt like a dlc case. case 5 was incredible, i liked that it deviated from the norm in its structure and leaned heavily in the visual novel aspect of the game in the first section, as well as how we got to see the WAA taking a case other than criminal law. i also liked that they did away with the twist villain. we already knew ga'ran was an antagonistic force so her reveal felt less like a twist and more like a breakdown. which was a good change of pace from the previous game(s).

apollo is my favorite ace attorney character, and i think this could have been ace attorney: apollo justice 2. particularly in regards to the final case, but also the magical turnabout. when a theme in the game is found family vs blood relatives it could have been a great time to reveal how apollo and trucy are half siblings, which could then cause more turmoil at the end when apollo has to choose being the WAA and kura'in. because choosing between work and your fathers legacy is kinda lame the way the game posed it. if they presented it as family vs family, it leaves the door open for further character growth from apollo.

one trend that i am really getting bored of is when culprits have a heel faced turn where they change their appearance. mannerisms makes sense, but a whole change in aesthetic is getting boring. between means (who i think was the first? i dont remember any earlier than dual destinies), the phantom, andistan'dhin, bonny/betty (to a degree), amara and ga'ran, the trend has been beaten to death. it also dehumanizes the characters who do it. thinking about means, who i think is the most disappointing case of this, and how he gets the mohawk. which 1, doesnt make sense for the established character and 2 doesnt align with the theme hes supposed to represent as a teacher and his desire for order. it makes him less compelling as a real person compared to say, april may who has a similar facade of rather pleasant but trying to hide her true feelings and anger. so when she snaps, it feels more authentic in how we can anticipate it coming with both her words and her expression instead of only one.

i also just think spider motifs are cool and i want gar'an to have them in her royal attire too, even if subtle, instead of just her prosecutor wear.

another thing that disappointed me was how so many of the female characters didnt feel like they did anything. athena was treated so poorly, she gets one case (no dlc case afaik) and its a filler and is co-counsel in the other filler case. shes treated better than trucy, but not by much. i was really disappointed that she got the gallery treatment in the final trial, she is supposed to be a main character and yet she got pushed to the wayside. but the character who got treated the dirtiest was maya. she plays the role of the sexy lamp. the accused in one case that she isnt present for most of it because shes unconscious by channeling. and shes kidnapped in another. im sick of maya being accused of murder, although when she starts being defensive in the 5th case about possibly being accused i thought that was a charming nod to how often she is accused. i liked that ema was back, of all the unchanged character designs from aa 1-4 i think she translates best into the 3ds style (trucy, apollo and klavier do not look like themselves). i thought emas relationship with nahyuta was interesting and i was happy to see her back from aa4.

i know a big gripe people have with the game is the colonial/imperialist undertones which i do see. i however think they werent intentional but the writers were aware of them and tried to minimize it as much as possible while keeping to the theme of revolution and succession in the game. namely in how it was never the japanese/american characters who lead the ideas of revolution, and for much of the game, seemed rather neutral to it and had to be pulled into support of the revolution. they could have explicitly made jove kurainese and that would minimize some of the backlash from the colonial themes and the overall "whiteness" of the ace attorney games (i know pheonix is japanese but no other character has a canonical ethnicity and everyone else in the main cast is very light skinned) and i know im rambling at this point but i think the revolution could have been handled with more grace.

the biggest highlight of the game was rayfa. i generally like bratty characters and she was no exception. watching her grow throughout the game was very sweet and she reminds me a lot of franziska with her brave face and how she deals with the expectations others have put onto her. i really liked her relationship with pheonix and how she grew rather attached to him. her desperation in the final case reminded me of the final case of dd and apollos desperation to be proven wrong. i wish we got to see more of her and apollo interact outside of just the final case because i think they would butt heads a lot but care a lot for each other, like siblings.

this is getting really long and its 2am so i dont know how much of this actually makes sense and i probably have more thoughts but im gonna leave it here for now

[no-hetsplanation-for-aa]

thoughts on ace attorney: dual destinies

wow, surprisingly it’s only been two months and we’ve already blazed through another game (faster than last time!!). i went into this one expecting the worst, but it turned out very differently. more about that under the cut: 

-everybody said this game was going to be bad. like....really really bad, but nearly everything that i’ve seen criticized exceeded my expectations, for once. i was super impressed with this game, i think it’s easily one of my top favorites now

-the graphics are one of the aforementioned criticisms, and honestly....it’s not so bad?? like at all? like, i’m a sucker for the classic pixel sprites, and i’ll stick by my preference for them, but regardless? the 3d models are nice. i like that they’re stylized to look like fully-rendered drawings, with the shading already painted on and cartoon lines. plus, the animations are so expressive!

-i really miss being able to investigate every area!! i suppose it would have been a bit excessive to have to make every single room rotatable, but part of the charm of ace attorney games is getting to point and click EVERYTHING you can find

-the music was alright. some of it was charming, some was just okay. i think aura’s theme was my favorite, though

-this game had a significant amount of filler, but overall felt both necessary for establishing characters, relationships and setting up the main storyline. the fillers were extremely fun--my favorite was turnabout academy but every case had a cast of lovable characters you just get attached to

-story progression-wise......even though there was setup in the fillers, it basically did what aai did in terms of every other case being a flashback and leading up to the present case (which were the first and last two cases). i’m personally not a fan of setting up the story this way, i kind of wish we could have more linear cases with a few flashbacks but it’s not a huge problem. just me being picky

-I MISS YOU, BOBBY FULBRIGHT. I’LL NEVER FORGET YOU YOU FUNKY LITTLE DETECTIVE

-smiles mcgoo

-capcom spoiled us so much with lesbians in this game, like it wasn’t even subtle: juniper and athena, juniper and robin, trucy and jinxie, aura and metis......sasha too

-but speaking of things that aren’t subtle, another thing i love about this game is that it’s more obvious/up front about mental illness and neurodivergency! athena’s (at least, in my eyes) very meant-to-be autism symptoms aren’t addressed by any particular name, but we have schizophrenia and anxiety addressed by name here, as well as acknowledging the character’s deep traumas. it’s really, really great. we got a little taste of this sort of thing back in the first two aa games, but they weren’t afraid to say things here, and i’m glad for it

-i am seriously tired of the trucy’s panties joke, also can we please just ditch this gag??? i’m begging you it’s not funny or appropriate

-i’m also upset that trucy wasn’t given more lawyering time in this game!! like, it makes sense story-wise, since the entire reason she couldn’t always be present/shut down and had flashbacks mid-trial was because of her trauma and fear of courtrooms as a result, but......it’s sad that in a game mainly about her we still have to have phoenix take the spotlight. i like you a lot phoenix but like, we can have someone else be the star now

-aura and metis’s story broke my heart....not just because i’m a lesbian, but hearing how much aura cried over her death made me feel something in the pits of my heart and. ow

-i wish clay’s history with apollo, or just his story was fleshed out just a little bit more. i have nothing against the character, but compared to metis’s death, and the rest of 5-4 and 5-5 it felt like small potatoes in comparison. i don’t feel like we got enough time to get attached to this character enough to care about him

-the phantom/”bobby” had one of the most awesome breakdowns in the entire series. i was a bit miffed because i had this part of the game spoiled a long time ago (which is my fault for not using a blacklist, though), but the payoff was still worth it

anyways....that’s all, i think. i hope you enjoyed the latest wacky attorney adventure, and that you’ll tune in very very soon for my next playthrough!