Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney
After finally completing the only mainline AA game I had missed out on, I feel overwhelmed by a sense of accomplishment and understanding. AA4 is divisive in the fandom and now I can understand why, because at its core the game is so much darker and experimental than anything that came before it. I just feel so glad I've finally finished all 6 current mainline AA titles.
The story is far darker than that of the original trilogy. A family of troubled magicians takes the place of a family of spirit mediums upon which the plot centralises. Some beloved old characters are taken in saddening directions, Phoenix returns as a mentor stripped of his lawyerly title with a much more ambiguous moral compass; Ema a depressive snackooholic. The villian is pure, utter evil unlike anything in the series. Hell, even the main character Apollo himself is a cynic, his snarky comments on stuff he investigates have a sharp edge in contrast to Phoenix's general bewilderment. The game pulls some heavy punches with the history of the Grammaryes and the developments that occur in each case (Apollo even watches a victim die and is the only one to hear his final words for christs sake). Thankfully, Trucy Wright remains one of the most, if not the only, optimistic characters in the game and series, pulling overtime to keep Apollo and the rest of the cast much brighter.
This was also the last of the AA titles to use sprites (unless Im forgetting investigations again), and it really is a shame to see the updated courtroom and general attention to detail in the pixelated background pictures left behind after only one game. They brought in another company to handle the video effects shown in That Fucking Burning Guitar Video and they were ok. The effects when perceiving were also well handled. What really stood out was the intros for each case which never failed to make me hyped (Case 2's, lorddddddd). Another testimony to this games experimental nature would be all of the forensic science gimmicks that seemed to only stay for one case. It seemed like most of this stuff could only be pulled off because it was the teams second time working with two screens (the first was a single case, this was a whole game) and they wanted to see what would stick and sadly nothing aside from luminol spray and fingerprinting returns again after this.
The game tears down the much simpler walls of the first three games' courtrooms and, in addition to updating their interior design, makes people depressingly self-aware of how unjust their court system can be. Constant hammering of "evidence is all that matters in this court" is the games message, and Apollo, backed by Phoenix, sets out to battle this corrupt system as best he can (though In the end, Phoenix honestly steals the spotlight from Apollo entirely). The plot gets especially tangled and experimental with Case 4, which is set over the course of 7 years and told in fragments for a good amount of it. While Ace Attorney experimented with past case examinations in AA3, and did it extremely well, In contrast I (and a lot of others) found it confusing until a point, and overall undermining to the namesake of the game. I feel this is due to the simultaneous nature in which the events of the present and past are shown, something which breaks the established flow of the series. But, the next two games try to make up for Phoenix in AA4 and succeed so all is well. I'd still call it an incredible last case nonetheless.
So AA4 certainly kickstarts the darker side of Ace Attorney and is followed up by Dual Destinies, which I'm excited to replay in the future.