#which reminds me i need to replay neo twewy

[akisyu]

sigh I'm afraid her girlfailure energy has captivated me

[morphogenetic]

Mediaposting 2024, #6: Dai Gyakuten Saiban 2/The Great Ace Attorney Resolve

Completed: April 21st, 2024 (/i still have to watch the DLC episodes that didn't get released with the official loc, I guess but I'm not playing it any more so ?? lol)

Time spent: 49.5 hours (will be like 50.5 after the DLC stuff)

Rating: 9/10 (more objectively. but a very biased 9.5 in my heart.)

ohhhhh my god alright where do i even start with this. i guess i also have to talk about dgs1 a little bit in this review/mini completion log but I will TRY and keep it to just 2. [editor's note: somehow succeeded with this! lfg]

first, to get the non-spoiler parts of this out of the way:

please for the love of god play this fucking game if you've played the original AA trilogy but not the DGS duology. i can not stress this enough. i would not recommend playing them as your FIRST aa games because a) they will set your bar way too high (and too low simultaneously bc wow dgs1 still has whack as hell pacing) b) there are a few details, especially in this particular game, that will evoke no reaction in you if you haven't played at least the main three games but WILL cause you to start gnawing on drywood if you have Knowledge Of The Future

the whole dgs duology - and specifically as a duology, bc 2 makes no sense without 1 but 1 by itself is not on this level - is absolutely in my top 3/4 AA games now. i admittedly have not replayed the original trilogy in quite a while, buuuuuut T&T/AAI2/DGS1+2 are my new top 3. not necessarily in that order, give me a bit to think about it lol.

im going to be thinking about this game for the rest of my life probably. i can see why my best friend wanted me to play it for uh. seven years. because yeah it really is that good.

i want to cosplay four different designs from it. i have not wanted to cosplay anything new (to me) since neo twewy came out three years ago. take that as you will.

music still slaps. obviously. my favorite new song is absolutely partners (IYKYK) but agh. the new theme(s) that characters get are all so fucking good. clenches fist. the leitmotifs

definitely becomes relevant in retrospect in a few places where capcom obviously cut the hell out of the budget but they saved it for where it matters so i dont care. im also uh. very used to low budget VNs so frankly even 3D models are better than I'm used to LMFAO. i also you know. didn't realize that they did that until after the fact. so. they hid it well

if you havent played this go and play it (after playing the original AA trilogy). please for the love of god im on my hands and knees.

everything below the cut (i.e. below this point) has blatant unfiltered spoilers. you have been warned.

okay so welcome you've presumably played all of dgs2 if you're reading this. i have THOUGHTS. a lot of these will come off as critical/negative but i need to strongly emphasize that these are the only reasons that this game is not a 10/10 for me and otherwise i'm in love with it. it is fucking CLOSE. i am not talking a lot about the things i really love because that is.............................a lot of the game for me and we'd be here all day. the critiques are much more limited in number. but. you know.

dgs2 absolutely has much, Much better pacing than dgs1 does overall. it does not take 3 cases to get past a bunch of tutorial cases. this is a good thing. however..............the first two cases are still very slow. i won't call them pure filler, because a) reminding us about yuujin was a very good idea, b) they contribute to the Themes of the game. and im glad hosonaga was there again and (of all of the side characters we could have had) seeing souseki was good. i like them. but they really didn't need to be there to fulfill the themes of the game. case 2 in particular feels like a filler case, which I do not love given how tight the rest of the plot feels. if anything i feel like they should have done an interim flashback case without susato, as much as I adore susato, because as-is it's canon that ryuu had 3 cases in the span of a week. which feels INSANE

speaking of better pacing: im so glad dgs2 remembered that AA games can take investigation breaks between courtroom shit because running through ALL of the trial after ALL of the investigation in 1-5 was. let's say. taxing. the 'finding their footing' aspect of the first game

i do kind of wish we got One more case with the masked apprentice where susato wasn't there at all for the entire case. if only because then the delay between ryuu Thinking It and susato Knowing it would be even more painful. but i do really appreciate that they don't try to make it a woah big reveal as much as a painful "i know who you are but you don't." really adds a certain je nai se quois or however the fuck you spell that. idr. its 1 am when im typing this

also hey asougi can we fucking unpack how susato (the girl you were raised with to some extent, probably not like your sister but your weird younger cousin) called your name and you didn't remember who you were but you DID remember when you saw a wax reconstruction of your dead dad. can we fucking talk about that for a minute. can w

speaking of asougi. my god. they did such a good job with him. i think i wouldn't have cared nearly as much about him if all we had was the dgs1 stuff but his extreme motivation for the truth almost turning him into a violent attack dog is. aaaaaaaaaah. god. and the parallels between him and his father's followers (read: the von karmas) that one has from playing the mainline AA games. truly brainworm material

speaking of this: i can absolutely tell they did NOT think about writing the professor stuff with this game until they added in the masked apprentice - before he got turned into asougi - even though the reaper was obviously something that was planned. i do not care personally about this, because game dev is weird as hell and it REALLY works with asougi and van zieks' character arcs. in the same way that i don't think [SPOILER CHARACTER] from vlr would have been as good without the knowledge of 999, i think if barok had been foiled against a new character it wouldn't have worked as well. all that said. it sure is obvious they didn't know what they were doing. this makes me even more impressed that that they got it to work at all

the same is true of everything with the hound of the baskervilles but im really glad that they took it in the direction that they did.

also man it is so obvious that they probably wanted to have this be a proper trilogy like the original trilogy but then budget happened. because 2-3 through 2-5 all slap but they feel so fucking weird next to 2-1 and 2-2. like i dont feel that theres anything missing per se but a little more time for character growth would have been nice. hell even adding in an extra case (and/or editing 2-2....)

the only writing thing, aside from. 2-2 being like that. and the other weird pacing issues..that extensively is off to me is the whole assassin trading plot. i do think it is Very stupid and that they clearly wrote themselves into a corner with 1-5 on how to deal with it because they just...proceed to not deal with it until 2-4 and 2-5. however. even with that said. i actually kind of like that it is so stupid. because stronghart definitely feels SO obsessed with his version of justice that he wouldn't think through the potential downsides of having two free-roaming assassins running around and maybe coming to get his ass. obvious flaw that would not occur to him because of his insane ass behavior

its still dumb. but it's ace attorney dumb. so i can excuse it a little bit

stronghart being a damon gant expy was funny but goddamnit was it predictable. making him be so obssessed with justice that he talks to ryuu about it for 4 hours was funny as hell though and absolutely adds to him as a character. still dont like him that much Personally but hes definitely a character

his breakdown was peak. by the way. top 3 breakdowns in the series

jigoku being like that kills me. also. the way he just let genshin

g. genshin impact (sorry)

i dont care that sherlock's bullshit was a deus ex machina bc honestly.....electricity was real at that point. its fine

also. holy shit i love ryuunosuke in this game even more. 'i'm not doing this for you, kazuma. i'm doing it for the truth.' BANGER!!!!!!!!!!!! his growth across these two games is really good but especially in this one he shines so brightly

however..........this game made the glaring lack of ryuu's parents even more obvious. its not like i Need it or anything but considering how he very literally refers to yuujin/susato/sherlock/iris as his family in 2-4.....where are your parents!!!! what was your childhood like!!!!!! I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS THAT I WISH COULD BE ANSWERED!!!!!!!!!

and asougi. i could write an essay on asougi alone i think. but i adore how both he and ryuu are like 'you've changed' at each other and neither of them are wrong but then by the end they're like 'wow you're the same as before.' theyre so fucking gay. anyway

and sherlock (WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU WHY DO YOU LIE FOR FUN LIKE THIS????????)

and yuujin (partners ~ game is afoot starts playing and i start crying). obsessed with how they only had to write the dynamic for a single case and you can believe all of it because they can just go. lol. ACD canon. anyway

and susato

and, most surprisingly of all for me.....fucking barok van zieks. i would not call myself a Fan of him in the way i am a Fan of asougi and ryuu, but i am obsessed with him. he did so many things wrong but realizes he genuinely fucked up and wants to atone for it. he gets genuinely upset in prison when he can't join the red-headed league. he's a professional alcoholic. he has bats in his office (???). what is wrong with him. (i know the answer is 'literally everything that could be wrong with a person.' but still

i love every single character in this game (or i hate them but because they were written to be hated)??? how did they manage this again. dgs1 helps so much here because the character growth.

argh. the character parallels with everyone realizing their parent / mentor figure was fucked up and/or hiding shit from them in some way. thinking emoji rotating in a circle goes here

wow that magically became way less critical as i was writing it. i thought it was going to be a lot stronger of a critique. its still weird pacing stuff basically that bothers me but i have very minor complaints that im forgetting aside from this

UHHHHHHHHHHHHHH YEAH HI GUYS IM BRAIN ROTTING NOW FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SORRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this has had almost the same brain impact on me (as evidenced by the 1 million words about it) as raging loop i think and thats never a good sign since i still think about raging loop at least once a week despite the fact that i played it 3 goddamn years ago

[rainbow-nijisaki]

2 and 20 !

2. current favorite character(s)?

...do you really have to ask?

Jokes aside, TWEWY and NTWEWY both have such fun casts, I do genuinely like most of the characters. But the Hachiko Squad (Neku, Shiki, Joshua, Beat, Rhyme) will always far and above be the most special to me, I think. They are some of my favorite characters ever, not just from TWEWY, but from any media. They're an excellent group that for me, is also covered in a heavy coat of nostalgia paint.

If you're asking about my literal fave though, singular?

...really, you need to ask...?

20. favorite quote(s)?

Oh boy, this one's tough because there's far, far too many great quotes. I'm of course a fan of Hanekoma's classic:

"The world ends with you. If you want to enjoy life, expand your world. You gotta push your horizons out as far as they'll go."

...as well as most of Hanekoma's life advice quotes honestly, because they truly do capture the message of the game. Even "Enjoy the moment," in all it's simplicity, is a great reminder to myself whenever I start getting lost in the noise. Special shout out to Secret Report 18 (Section: "Why does individuality exist?") and Secret Report 20 ("Accept society as an ever changing thing...")

Also:

"Only by allowing strangers in, can we find new ways to be ourselves."

I really could go on and on and end up quoting a good portion of the game because this doesn't even scratch the surface nor cover the breadth of lines that I enjoy simply because they made me laugh out loud. And doesn't even get into NEO (which I need to replay). Iirc, I enjoyed Nagi's little speech on humanity and communication (despite it ringing a bit odd with how dismissive she is of Fret from the outset).

But I'm going to close this with one that's probably a bit more obscure:

"Nothing we do in life is ever truly a waste."

Spoken by none other than Shrimp, our favorite hapless Reaper Creeper guinea pig RG businessman. It's such a simple quote, and optional, too, but it speaks volumes to me. I remind myself of it often.

[dazais-guardian-angel]

the neo twewy demo was sooooo good!!!