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The Ace Attorney Topic (DS, 3DS, iOS) - News in OP


Agent York

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Now we can get updated autopsy reports as if we’re actually there.

I’m down, this sounds like a neat idea.

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2 hours ago, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

Lol. An Ace Attorney VR game.

 

1 hour ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

Now we can get updated autopsy reports as if we’re actually there.

I’m down, this sounds like a neat idea.

This could be interesting for investigation sections, though I wonder how courtroom battles will be influenced by this gameplay style?

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

https://www.capcom-unity.com/2021/07/13/a-most-miraculous-english-dub/

An amazing piece on how Janet Hsu and company put together an integral cast and manages to record for this game, despite the pandemic.

Honestly, love the enthusiasm and anticipation this game's localization has been generating. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

So I just started playing in the last few minutes. Haven't even gotten to the first cross examination yet, to give you an idea of how early I am into the game. But having avoided all information about the game over the past few years, the first thing that strikes me is the art style. This looks like PL vs AA. The in-game graphics are directly comparable. And they're wonderful. Character models, lighting, animations... So much better than the modern anime style of DD and SoJ. Those games look great for the most part, but this one looks gorgeous.

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8 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

This looks like PL vs AA.

Great Ace Attorney is essentially a spiritual sequel to the crossover, in looks, dynamics, mechanics (but thankfully not story endings, fuck the crossover's), and so much more!

That the graphics got remastered for HD and console ports is a great boon!

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12 minutes ago, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

Great Ace Attorney is essentially a spiritual sequel to the crossover, in looks, dynamics, mechanics (but thankfully not story endings, fuck the crossover's), and so much more!

That the graphics got remastered for HD and console ports is a great boon!

I'm aware of that. DD was the first main game without Takumi's involvement, because he was busy working on the crossover. The crossover was simple and the Layton-esque twist was dumb, but the game felt like an extension of the original trilogy. I'm really eager to see how this game plays out. It just gets off on such a good more.

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I can't help but wonder if the rumors of Shu Takumi taking back the series' helm is true. Would make sense now that he's freed up, as far as we know.

And it would be very welcome if GAA Chronicles is anything to go by!

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2 hours ago, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

I can't help but wonder if the rumors of Shu Takumi taking back the series' helm is true. Would make sense now that he's freed up, as far as we know.

And it would be very welcome if GAA Chronicles is anything to go by!

There are rumours of that? I'd like to see it. The storyline of DD was underwhelming and SOJ was kinda shit. All the nonsense about Apollo's past that kept being pulled out of someone's arse, none of the threads from AJ being tied up at all and in fact they were largely undone or forgotten about... Bleh

Thing is, Takumi doesn't need to come back to fix something that was broken. The main Ace Attorney series needs to give most, if not all, of its existing characters and stories an extended break. Part of the reason why I'm so eager to get stuck into TGAA is because it's a whole new set of characters. No Phoenix, no Apollo, no 11th hour Edgeworth appearances... Just an entirely clean slate.  Anyone can do that, Takumi or otherwise. Don't get me wrong, I'd be most interested in Takumi taking on that challenge because his track record is so strong. But anyone could do it. I want a whole new Ace Attorney world to fall in love with. Bring back other characters much later on if it's necessary or beneficial to the stories to do so, but focus on fresh meat instead.

I don't know what the proper term for it would be. Soft reboot, maybe? I don't want the series to undo or retcon anything. Everything that's already happened should remain totally canon, but those events and the characters involved wouldn't be part of the new story. 

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I've just started playing the Chronicles over the past few days, too, and it just feels so fresh.  Very clearly inspired by Layton vs. AA, too; though hopefully the plot will hang together a little better in the end.  From what I've heard over the years, it's a good thing we're getting both games together in a single collection.  Edit: Additionally, although it's early days for me, the "Herlock Sholmes" localisation feels like a blessing in disguise; it's honestly a better fit for this wacky guy than asking us to consider him as Sherlock.

I am quite agreed that what the main series needs is the soft reboot that Apollo Justice was meant to be before Phoenix had to be shoehorned in again.  Invent some new characters and give us new problems.  It's not that I haven't enjoyed the most recent games (actually, Dual Destinies was my first game; I had a lot to go back to afterwards), but I think their ties to the old games neither ring true nor feel necessary.

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So... I'm up the the fourth case in Chronicles. And I'm not very far into said case yet either. My thoughts on this game are overwhelmingly positive so far. It's great! But I've got some niggles. 
 

The game really shakes up the traditional formula of investigation to court case, and it's a welcome change that I didn't know I wanted. But the downside is that, so far, everything seems a bit long in the tooth. It feels impossible to be ahead of the game or that you might start to put the pieces together as you learn about each case, because you actually don't get the opportunity to do so. The stories flow really nicely and I like seeing how everything develops, plus it feels less hand-holdy than DD and SoJ, but it's still definitely very rail-roaded. The first three cases all started to drag quite a bit when our became clear that you weren't going to get extra time to explore, investigate and learn about the story at your own pace. 

A knock on effect of the above is that, despite being this far into the game, I don't feel like I've had much of an opportunity to learn about Ryunosuke and especially Susato. And who the hell is Baron van Zeiks? I know next to nothing about all of these characters so far. However... Each case so far has left individual plot threads hanging, ones that don't immediately seem to be connected. I like that. 

The art style feels increasingly like the Edgeworth side games, which always felt like a natural evolution of the original series style instead of the simplified anime shift that we got in DD. I love this. It's just looks fantastic. The character animations and behaviours are neither too OTT or too restrained. 

That's it really. Not sure what the point of this post is. Just putting down my thoughts. Can't wait to get home and keep playing tonight.

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18 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

The game really shakes up the traditional formula of investigation to court case, and it's a welcome change that I didn't know I wanted. But the downside is that, so far, everything seems a bit long in the tooth. It feels impossible to be ahead of the game or that you might start to put the pieces together as you learn about each case, because you actually don't get the opportunity to do so. The stories flow really nicely and I like seeing how everything develops, plus it feels less hand-holdy than DD and SoJ, but it's still definitely very rail-roaded. The first three cases all started to drag quite a bit when our became clear that you weren't going to get extra time to explore, investigate and learn about the story at your own pace. 

A knock on effect of the above is that, despite being this far into the game, I don't feel like I've had much of an opportunity to learn about Ryunosuke and especially Susato. And who the hell is Baron van Zeiks? I know next to nothing about all of these characters so far. However... Each case so far has left individual plot threads hanging, ones that don't immediately seem to be connected. I like that. 

Without spoiling, one criticism I'm familiar with, regarding the first Great Ace Attorney game is that it feels more like a prologue to the actual main adventure than anything else. ANd given how back in 2015, there was no sure sign of a sequel, I can see why some may have viewed it negatively back then.

I can't say for certain, but I do think we ended up getting GAA Chronicles in the best state possible with both of its "halves" packaged together into one big mega game as Shu Takumi apparently originally intended for it to be.

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Yes, this is the criticism I was familiar with (and alluding to) earlier - I seem to be playing at exactly the same rate as @Blue Blood, I'm also in the opening stages of Case 4.  It's very obvious by now that not everything is going to be resolved by the end of Adventures, because the things that need resolving haven't even finished being set up yet.  I only just met one of the major characters of the game.  It's really rather odd.  The (perhaps controversial) analogy I was anticipating making in my eventual review was to, of all things, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn - another game that was quite obviously a Part 1 setting up for a Part 2 it had no guarantee of getting (and indeed didn't get, though thankfully that's not the case for GAA).

But at the same time, I am intrigued by the game's willingness to chuck the formula out of the window, and it's plainly in service to a greater narrative which I am assuming will be worth it.  (Sure wouldn't have been if we'd never gotten a sequel, though!)  And considering that the game was originally made for the 3DS, the graphics hold up astonishingly well; this is a really beautiful title, and the animations are fantastic.  The only character design which jars with me is, rather unfortunately, Iris.  I'm not entirely sure why it is, but I find there to be something rather uncanny valley about her, something that doesn't seem to fit with the other characters; like she's a sort of strange doll introduced among humans.  Perhaps it's that she's just a tad too overdesigned, much though that was clearly very much intentional for both her and Sholmes.

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I'm up to the final case in Adventures now, just at the beginning of at the trial. This game definitely isn't perfect, but I'm still absolutely loving it. It's my favourite game in the series since the original trilogy for sure. 

My main criticism is still just how much it leans into the visual-novel aspect. There's really very little for you to do as the player. It's so much less free-form that the original trilogy. If I was to use the "autoplay" mode in this game, I don't know if I'd really be missing out on much. There's never much evidence to find or present, whether that's in court or in the investigation portions. And the deduction sections are... ngl they're a nice idea but wholly pointless in practice. You don't use any of your own intuition in them. They happen entirely at the pace that the game decides and you're told exactly when and how to proceed. The logic system from the Edgeworth games was a similar system, but far better realised. You put the pieces together as you investigated, and connected your thoughts when you were satisfied that you had worked out what was going, or how to connect things. Here however, Sholmes starts the deductions when he wants to and information that was previously hidden to the player is suddenly put out in full view. It's a bit shit tbh.

Oh and I'm absolutely craving some fish and chips thanks to this game. 

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I'm a little behind (though probably only a little); I just hit the part where you remember that this game was made for the 3DS.

It is rather linear, you're right; there's a clearly prescribed order for you to rattle about rather than you having the freedom to tackle sites of interest in your preferred sequence, and although there's a "Present" option in the Investigation parts, you're very rarely called upon to use it - in fact, the last bit I played, I was sure they were prompting me to present something... but then the game just did it for me.  My main criticisms of the game are all, broadly speaking, structural.

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Spoiler

241573381_144x108.png

Soseki Natsume is my favorite character from the past.

He has Ultimoose energy, with his striking poses.

Also, I love how Stronghart has this sinister presence and an obsession with time...but he's always late to his meetings...

 

On 8/4/2021 at 9:43 AM, Salamander said:

The only character design which jars with me is, rather unfortunately, Iris.  I'm not entirely sure why it is, but I find there to be something rather uncanny valley about her, something that doesn't seem to fit with the other characters; like she's a sort of strange doll introduced among humans.  Perhaps it's that she's just a tad too overdesigned, much though that was clearly very much intentional for both her and Sholmes.

Spoiler

In one of the cases in part 2, she wears a different outfit. At first, I thought she was dressing up as a ninja, but I think it's actually an aviator outfit.

I'm also curious how she does her pigtails...

 

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And that's Adventures wrapped.  A very promising start to the duology!  It's strange to think that the last Ace Attorney title I played, Spirit Of Justice, was way back in 2016; but it's been very, very easy to get back into.  My only (non-plot-related) criticism is that the series now fully eliminates text speed controls, so everything advances exactly as fast as the choreography wants it to.  This is something I understand... but a lot of the time the text is just a bit too slow-paced for me, with the result that I actually ended up putting on the automatic text advance so I wouldn't have to button at marginally too infrequent intervals.  I got used to it, but this was the one jarring point at the start.  (I did decrease the end-line pauses to the minimum.)

Of course, the graphics are displaying at a higher resolution, but it's so easy to forget that this started out as a 3DS title as the style feels perfectly suited to HD; the character designs and backgrounds are neither too cluttered nor too sparse, and overall the look is very charming.  The animations themselves seem better than ever, with so much movement and flow; a lot of series have a rather awkward jump to 3D, but this game in particular really sells it, particularly with the way mechanics like the Dance of Deduction play with space - and examining the evidence from all angles has never been so full-blooded.

And on a mechanical level, this game feels full of interactions beyond merely advancing the text.  The interrupt/pursue system originating in the Layton crossover remains a fun way of developing character and plot on the stand, the perspective-switching, idea-substituting Dance of Deduction oozes style and confidence, and the Summation Examinations make excellent use of the jury system, which could easily have been a narrative-only device.  The game is surprisingly elegant in how it handles having an additional six mostly fresh characters in court the entire time, and it's always fun simply seeing the reveal of the six lunatics you'll be having to defend your client to this time.  Reminiscent of how the original Ace Attorney games were partly a commentary on the Japanese justice system, the use of the jury in these games feels like a parody of the English-derived justice system, too.  My one criticism is that sometimes the game appears to forget about them for a while.

On a note of the game's writing, the game's localisation is fantastic and gives an extraordinary sense of moment and place to both its Eastern and Western settings.  It's not just window-dressing; the period is vital to the development of the plot, the way the characters interact, even the nature of the cases.  Obviously, the Victorian era is not exactly a novel setting - but it feels very fresh for Ace Attorney and is approached with relish.  The use of racism in the characterisation (almost entirely anti-Asian, though there's some British and western stereotyping in the first chapter as well) is something of a bold decision for a series that's usually so cartoonish, and I gather it's spurred debate in some places.  If anyone genuinely felt uncomfortable reading it, I can't fault that; for myself, the fact that it's in a historical setting, and most importantly that the story is Asian-authored, justifies it.  It's a Japanese view of anti-Japanese chauvinism; can we dispute their right to write this?  (It's also, I understand, somewhat toned down in the localisation; how you translate this into English, especially in a period of rising anti-Asian racism, is a little more problematic.)  I'm British myself, but took no offence at the characterisation of historical Britain as being bigoted at worst, deeply ignorant about Japan at best; it's period-appropriate and difficult to overlook in writing a historical East-meets-West narrative - and frankly, I think at times it's meant to be darkly comic, too.  But I am interested in hearing how other people responded.

My remaining comments, positive and negative, are all plot-related or structure-related (which in this game especially is interwoven with plot), and so I'll relegate them to a spoiler tag:

Spoiler

I think there's no question, really, that the wait was worth it to get the game in this particular format.  Adventures is, no doubt about it, Volume I; we're not just talking about a sequel hook here, we're talking about massive motivating elements of the whole story which are still unexplained.  Adventures manages to sort of have a main plot, in the continuity of cases 3 and 5 and the way Ryunosuke develops as a lawyer; but the entire context of case 1, and to a certain extent case 5, remains mysterious.  In the context of this compilation release, one can't really complain, of course; but I understand entirely the complaints of the Japanese fandom when Adventures first released on 3DS, with no hint that it was anything but stand-alone - and no guarantee that it would ever get the sequel it needed to complete its story.  It's risky, doing a multi-part story in a non-literary format (to some extent, in any format).  I've already compared this game to Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, a game which is a Part I dedicated to setting up a Part II which never came; I gather that The Great Ace Attorney was very nearly another example, so I'm thankful that the risk paid off.  Though I hope the lesson isn't that they just do it again!

This two-volume structure has a knock-on effect through the first game's cases, though, in that it seems you spend a good half the game in the tutorial (having already made the comparison to Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, am I really willing to risk a comparison to Mario & Luigi: Dream Team Bros.?).  The first case tutorialises you on a basic trial.  The second case tutorialises you on the Dance of Deduction.  The third case tutorialises you on a jury trial.  Considering that we have "Ace Attorney" right there in the title, having a case with no trial is quite a risk, and while it allows for a change of setting, I'm not overall sure that it was worth it.

And in general this means that the game has rather weird pacing, at once breakneck and plodding.  Four straight cases we're thrown straight into the business of murder (or, erm, non-lethal assault - I presume this is to underline the oddness of Van Zieks taking such a trivial case, which foreshadows the fact that he is taking cases involving Naruhodo?), and it takes until the final case for us to get an example of what I think of as typical Ace Attorney case structure - with some slice-of-life before we come to the murder itself.  I genuinely think this is important downtime which helps blow off some steam between high-tension detection bouts, and I missed it here.  This also, I suspect, has a lot to do with why it takes so long for a major character like Iris to be introduced; it feels like we don't even really know her until, again, Case 5, despite her being ostensibly a main character.

I was also surprised by the fact that the game had not a single two-day case; I wonder if this is an attempt to streamline the storyline and avoid a second day of mostly going over old ground?  But handling things like this also risks the investigation and trial segments dragging on a bit.  I felt that a number of the trials had issues in the delivery of new information, with there being quite a lot which felt like we were straining to prove things we already knew - which is far less exciting.  Perhaps it's just that, while I've read relatively little Sherlock Holmes, I've read an awful lot of Golden Age detective fiction, and couldn't help recognising the solutions to John Dickson Carr's The Red Widow Murders and Margery Allingham's The Border-Line Case.  Shu Takumi has good taste!  I also think it means that, in general, we're in the area of having too few characters for there to be much of a mystery about culpability in any case, though it's not that bad.

(This does, however, remind me of that random Shakespeare-themed character who showed up near the end of Case 4's investigation, babbled a bit, and then vanished without leaving their name, never to return.  What was all that about?  I'm sure they'll show up again in Resolve, but in practice it's just odd.)

I do have to congratulate the game for not (yet!) resorting to the tired old Ace Attorney trope of "the female lead is the defendant", even if it's at the cost of having Ryunosuke as the defendant twice in a row (though this does seem to fit his status as a bit of a punching bag).  I had my doubts about her characterisation at first; she's not as initially bizarre as the spirit channeler or the stage magician (or, for that matter, the phantom thief or even the fugitive detective), and I was worried that she would be the staid and proper Japanese maiden throughout.  A foolish concern; her boundless enthusiasm, passion for literature and learning, and ability to switch registers at the drop of a hat bring her to life.

Here's hoping that Resolve also manages to buck the stale tropes, then - and not just the heroine tropes.  Mael Stronghart has "THE BADDY" tattooed on his forehead in great glowing letters.  I confess I will be a little disappointed if I come to 2-5 and find that, oh look, he's the prosecutor and also the killer.  Please, anything else - make him the judge and the killer, go ahead and make him the victim!  But for heaven's sake, don't do the obvious.  (This is precisely why I was glad of Gregson's role in case 5, where he felt almost as much the final boss as Graydon did.)

Addendum: I also played through the full eight Escapades - if you can call it "played"; they are each 5-10 minute short stories with no gameplay, and are by and large just a bit of fun which slightly expands on the worldbuilding.  ...Apparently these were originally paid DLC for the 3DS version - individually priced, even - which I understand was another thing which ticked off Japanese fans.

So!  I've gone on a bit, but I think I've said everything I want to say about Adventures.  Roll on Resolve, which I hope will answer many questions, preferably including "How on Earth do you pronounce Van Zieks?"  But that will have to wait a while.  I'm fond of Ace Attorney, but the games also leave me fatigued by the end - and this is very much two games - so Resolve is going to have to wait for a while.  Hopefully not, as was the case with the 3DS original, for two years...

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  • 2 months later...

Some two months later, I'm finally back in the world of the Great Ace Attorney!  A couple of cases into Resolve, in fact.  It's really off to a flying start; after the rather stuttering pace of Adventures up until past the halfway point, I'm rather pleased that this is so far proving to be a bit more full-on an experience.  ...I also continue to be impressed by the breadth of Shu Takumi's reading of classic detective fiction.  I recognised G.K. Chesterton's The Oracle of the Dog the moment I heard that a beach hut was involved, but I really wasn't expecting Thomas Burke's The Hands of Mr. Ottermole... which Resolve rather spoils in its entirety.  But if you're enough of a devotee to have heard of the book in the first place, then you'll be good enough to anticipate the solution without needing to read a single page, so perhaps it doesn't matter.

Slightly more spoilerific thoughts, Cases 1 and 2 and the beginning of Case 3:

Spoiler

I'd actually heard about the premise, as it were, of 2-1 years ago, when the game was first released on 3DS - but really, Susato masquerading as male in order to appear as a lawyer in the Japanese courts is pulled off well enough that I could honestly play a full game's worth of it.  A thought for a future game with a female protagonist, perhaps?

2-2 I really wasn't expecting; it somewhat continues the structural weirdness of the series to have a flashback to a previously unknown case taking place during the previous game, and with a kind of metafictional twist to explain why we never heard about it.  But it's pulled off so skilfully that it retroactively improves 1-4!  It's a very neat bit of work, effectively a two-part case that you could almost see working bundled together as a case 5 in a different game.  Fully justifies both 1-4 and 2-2 itself in centring on an attempted rather than a successful murder, too, and even puts a pair of attempted murderers from what are really two different cases on the stand together!  Such an elegant bit of construction.

I also find it quite fascinating that, after going the entirety of Adventures without a single multi-day case and coming to the conclusion that they had been streamlined out of existence... the second case of Resolve is a multi-day.  A chunky case 2; are there any previous second cases in the series this elaborate?  Resolve really is, absolutely, a second part to the story rather than a sequel per se; they're scarcely troubling to roll back the difficulty to starting levels, they're just ramping it on up!

And judging from the way 2-3 is going, it's all killer and no filler, too.  The one thing I missed from Adventures was a properly bonkers Ace Attorney plotline, something high-concept and with a lot of moving parts.  I'm impressed by how grounded the cases have tended to be so far - carriages, gas meters, pawn shops - but I couldn't have gone two whole games without something as insane as this is looking.

I never intended to be away from the story this long, but as I said last time, at least it wasn't the two years the original Japanese players had to wait.  And at least we got it at all.  Bundling both games together in a single package really is how they're meant to be played.

Edit: Finished Case 3.  Now that was an Ace Attorney case; I can see why I've seen people uphold it as one of the best cases in the series.  It could easily have been a finale, in some respects.  Some amazing character designs and animations for this chapter, too...  I probably won't post again until I've finished the game, but just for now, I'm in the early stages of Case 4 - and wow, there really is no filler in Great Ace Attorney, is there?

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  • 2 weeks later...

And that's a wrap; on Resolve, and Great Ace Attorney Chronicles as a whole (including a good browse through the gallery and promotional videos etc., which I also recommend).  What a great experience; it's going to be very difficult for the next mainline game to top this, though that's partly as it has the advantage of having boldly gone for a two-game structure.  Structuring the story as two games telling a single long story affords a lot of advantages in terms of long-term plotting and cluing, but also in terms of capitalising on character appearances, drawing more out of a single character and bringing others back for an extended showing; but that was very much at the risk of not getting a sequel at all, which is precisely why it's to be such a hard act to follow.  Mainline games can bring back the same characters over and over again, sure, but they can't leave their stories quite so open-ended or outright unresolved at the end of each title.  With that said, it's not as if tighter storytelling is a sin, either; and speaking as somebody who tends to find Ace Attorney pacing a bit fatiguing by the end, playing two whole games, even a month or so apart, was exhausting.  But it is going to be weird going back to an Ace Attorney game that just tells a single story... whenever that may happen to be.

Spoiler-heavy details:

Spoiler

Of course, Resolve is really a four-case story despite being presented as five cases, but on balance, I'm okay with that; the final trial is just so massive that it would've been overbearing as part of a still longer story, and in any case, 2-4/5 really are multiple cases, both the Gregson case and the Professor cases.

I want to say there's some rumour that the developers might have been considering a trilogy, but the lacklustre reception to the first game (which barely scored them a sequel) put them off.  I think 2-3 could easily have been the finale to a middle entry in a trilogy, for example, with Courtney Sithe built up over longer; not dissimilarly, Maria Gorey comes across as a character who feels like her development should have taken longer.  A third game could perhaps have spent a little longer on the Professor; he's already an overbearing figure, of course, but in some ways the breakdown of the case feels a bit rushed.  Separating the case from the Gregson murder and allowing us to have a more in-depth investigation of the Professor background wouldn't have hurt, I think, albeit not in the context of the two-game structure we ended up with.

Also... why was the historical serial killer called "the Professor"?  There's some idea that it might've been a red herring indicating the involvement of Holmes nemesis Professor Moriarty, but it's not something I associate with dogs ripping people's throats out, I have to say; and it strikes me as unusually memory-unfriendly to be introducing such a figure in a case which already involves another titled professor, Professor Harebrayne.  At least spend a sentence or two rationalising it; say that he was so dubbed because it was thought he had to be a genius to get so close to his privileged victims, maybe.

I had previously called for Mael Stronghart not to be the villain, simply because he was so unbelievably obvious; but in the final analysis, I think there was enough originality to the presentation for it to be carried off.  I gather that Ace Attorney fans have been calling for years for a case with an evil judge; and 2-5 gives us that in spades with not just one but two!  As regards which I sense that they're doing something similar to 1-5 in terms of mitigating the obviousness of the culprit by including a kind of secondary culprit who is considerably more surprising - 1-5 had Gregson, and 2-5 has Jigoku.  Both characters we previously regarded as allies and very much on the side of the law, but who now appear in a rather more sinister and antagonistic light - they really worked to alleviate the sense of predictability in events.  ...In general, I did feel that Resolve had serious predictability issues, though.  Maybe I've just read too much classic detective fiction, but I tended to anticipate 90% of a case within the first five minutes of each trial, so there wasn't much in the way of suspense.

One element of Resolve I would count as a major misstep is its handling of juries... specifically, the more or less lack of them.  I wonder if the Japanese fanbase didn't like them, in Adventures, and so they were scaled back?  Because out of five chapters, Resolve only gives us two jury trials - and one of those juries is near-identical to a case in Adventures!  The juryless "closed trial" of the final chapters make narrative sense, but not so much gameplay sense; and it's less fun, too.  Seeing which wacky characters (some of them familiar and seen in a new light) showed up for the jury was one of the highlights of Adventures, but in Resolve that's just not there; the one fresh jury we get, for 2-3, also strike me as having generally more serious designs on the whole and if anything are actively useful.  I think they really needed to find a way to bring in a jury for at least one of the remaining chapters; for example, you could start off with a normal jury for 2-4 and then have Stronghart boot them out for a jury of judges only for 2-5!

Overall, though, a fantastic experience... which can never be repeated.  Here's hoping that Great Ace Attorney Chronicles got the kind of sales it needed for Capcom to just let Shu Takumi do whatever he wants for the next game.

And indeed, what is the next game?  Ace Attorney 7?  Or another Great Ace Attorney?  I believe there's some suggestion that the latter might be on the cards, and as the most recent project of the returning head of the series there are a lot of reasons why it's an obvious starting point.  I do think that Great Ace Attorney Chronicles as a whole wraps up so well that to have a third game would be a bit awkward; but that might be avoided if it's positioned as very much a different story rather than an extension to what we've already experienced.  I have an idea that the former might be what they're considering... at least, if I'm correct in interpreting the numerous references to France in Resolve as hints.  Arsène Lupin vs. Herlock Sholmes, here we go!

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Well, it's certainly nice to see that despite a severe lack of updates in recent time (unless you count the new Ghost Trick remaster) that the series is continuing to earn its keep with good sales.

Still though Capcom, a bit of an update on SOMETHING sure wouldn't hurt.

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7 hours ago, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

Well, it's certainly nice to see that despite a severe lack of updates in recent time (unless you count the new Ghost Trick remaster) that the series is continuing to earn its keep with good sales.

Still though Capcom, a bit of an update on SOMETHING sure wouldn't hurt.

There was a teppen announcement the other day about an event staring apollo justice. That's about it though.

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