the more i think about it, the more this case doesn't make sense. first of all, i don't think there was any decisive evidence. it probably would have worked perfectly fine if juniper was found guilty. the whole "body wrapped in a cloth" thing was utter bullshit, the parts didn't come together well enough. and if means was guilty, why did he allow athena to be juniper's lawyer...? he certainly didn't seem to try too hard. and if he wanted to forge evidence, he didn't do a good job of it, like, all he could do was make a tape that was clearly fabricated? and why didn't juniper remember saying "you're a goner!" and testify against it??
also the whole situation with robin was ridiculous. like, her voice doesn't change whether you perceive her as a girl or a boy, so i don't get why they had to make her a girl just to say "yup she could've been a suspect!". like, boys can have feminine voices anyway... and then she starts acting completely different afterwards anyway which is dumb. and why did her parents make her act like a boy again? to be a prosecutor? why can't girls be prosecutors? i'm so confused by the logic behind that twist
So, I finished the Dual Destinies main storyline. I still don't get why it's called Dual Destinies.
tfw no feels
also, aura and metis were totally lovers and no one can tell me otherwise
i'll post my full thoughts on the game at some other time, since i have a lot of them. overall, i felt it was way too linear to really be that fun. i'd rate the games 1>3>4>5>2.
So this game... it felt like Capcom was just trying to churn out a bunch of cases so that they could create a new Ace Attorney game without really caring about the quality of the game. For the most part, the evidence felt really obvious and deliberate, so that I could tell as soon as they picked something up that THIS IS INCRIMINATING EVIDENCE BLAH BLAH BLAH. And I think the cases were a lot less funny, too. Maybe because the other games were more slapstick-y and over-the-top, whereas this, most of the time, just felt a little silly. The Monstrous Turnabout was pretty funny, but that was it. And why were 4 out of the 5 cases stabbings??
As I said, everything felt too linear. The game basically handheld you during the investigations, not letting you examine anything unless you needed to. If you needed to present something, it'd tell you. Otherwise, it was just tapping the screen to advance the text for a bunch of hours. The trials too felt less interactive - it felt like there were a lot less cross-examinations, maybe 2 or 3 per trial, and when there were, it was always really obvious what the contradiction was.
Also, three protagonists felt like too much. I didn't really feel like Athena was a necessary addition. The Mood Matrix felt like total BS. I know this game has always been silly, so it's not a major complaint, but it just didn't feel very logical. Like, Psyche-Locks just told Phoenix if someone was hiding something, he still had to use evidence to find it out. Apollo's tells made sense. But listening to your heart? Nope. And also, having three gimmicks - the Mood Matrix, the bracelet, and the Psyche Locks - felt like too much, because they kept swapping between them and none of them got used too much, except I guess the Mood Matrix. And they shoehorned in a bunch of cameos, too. I don't want to complain about Klavier, Pearls, and Edgeworth being in the game, but they felt really out of place. ESPECIALLY Pearls, who really just appeared so that Trucy could get kidnapped, I guess? I'm not sure. She barely had any lines, besides saying "haha maya's too busy to come" which felt like a big middle finger from capcom. Also, Juniper Woods was boring.
And uh yeah, I guess the cases didn't really feel too interesting. The last cases of each game have always been intense, but this one felt really lackluster. Partly because it was a portmanteau of end cases from the other games [Hostages - AA2. Prosecutor defending younger person - AA1 (Rise From the Ashes). Retrying case from many years ago AA1 AND AA4 (though it felt more reminiscent of AA4).] Probably some other stuff, too, but I'm not going to look too much into it. And why the fuck did they have to make Fulbright the phantom? Fulbright was one of my favorite new characters, and it feels like he's ruined now that I know he was the villain... Anyway, the final case also felt like it dragged on too long, because it was super obvious that he was the phantom yet they kept making you put up with all of his stupid claims.
also, professor means scares me
uh yeah i guess that's probably it. as i've mentioned before, the third case felt kinda bullshitty. overall, the game felt alright, but it just wasn't all too fun...
I want to rant about the Layton/Phoenix crossover.
To start off, all of the "new" gameplay gimmicks are seriously overhyped. There's this big deal made about there being multiple witnesses on trial at the same time, but this mostly just means that, instead of having one guy say five thing, you have five people saying one thing each. Functionally, there's no difference, but there's so much emphasis put on the "OMG MORE PEOPLE" thing that you'd expect there to be so much more. Later, there's a genuinely new mechanic that involves witnesses thinking of something when other witnesses talk: when you interrogate a witness, the people around them often react to what they said, either because they thought of something new or what the other person said didn't sound right. This had the opportunity to be similar to Apollo's Perceive gimmick, where you have to pay attention to the others for small cues, but that was screwed up royally.
When you're interrogating someone and going through their dialogue, not only is the relevant dialogue unskippable, and not only is there a loud audio cue for each person, but everyone who reacts has a giant thought bubble above their head. There's literally no challenge to it. This is "balanced" by the fact that there are often dummy reactions that don't lead to anything useful, but it turns it into what could have been an interesting challenge to an exercise in tedium. Also, the Grand Grimoire (a book of every magic spell), which is heavily hyped as this fascinating new way of uncovering lies in testimonies, is basically just a second set of evidence, and I feel like having a whole book of magic spells and doing nothing much with it is a crime.
This is only my problems with the trials. After all, this is a crossover between Ace Attorney and Professor Layton, whose main gameplay involves solving puzzles. Basically, this means that the game is divided between exploring for puzzles then a trial. I wouldn't mind this so much except that a lot of the puzzles... aren't really anything special. There are quite a few interesting and challenging (in a fair way) ones that can be found by talking to the right people, but a lot of the main ones feel really easy. I don't have much experience withe Layton series, but there were so many puzzles, especially in the later game, that didn't feel like puzzles are more like just simple paying attention. There was one puzzle where they made this massive deal about it requiring Phoenix's "unique" skills, and it was set up so that he was objecting and presenting facts... but it was the most blitheringly obvious thing in the world, and the amount of presentation they put into it was really weird and disappointing.
About the story... I'll be general. It starts off very strong, with many avenues of intrigue and a bunch of cool surprises. However...
there's a huge twist near the finale that ruins everything. It not only demolishes everything that's happened throughout the entire story, comes straight out of left field, and creates an enormous amount of plot holes, it makes the remainder of the game feel so freaking stupid.
A lot of it is build-up from the fact that Phoenix and co. have to deal with the fact that in the universe they're in, magic is something that's real, and even though they know magic can't be real, they have to act accordingly with the logic of the world. However, when the big reveal that magic isn't real is finally revealed, Layton is like, "No shit, things like that can't happen." This is in the same universe where there are spirit mediums running around all willy-nilly, possessing people and being channeled and stuff, but making yourself invisible? Heavens no, that's impossible!
Oh, and I think I forgot to say this, but 3D models don't suit the Ace Attorney series. They didn't look too awful, but like Professor Layton, the game has a significant aesthetic value that's lost by upgrading to 3D. For no good reason, too. like, if you're not using 3d for aesthetic and the gameplay doesn't r
