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rionaleonhart) wrote2020-01-29 08:31 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2020-01-29 08:31 pm
Entry tags:
Unnecessary Evidence Has Disappeared Into Trucy's Magic Panties.
The Ace Attorney series isn't my favourite series of weird videogames about murder; I generally like them a bit darker and with stupider plot twists. I demand time loops and alternate universes and the absolute nonsense at the end of Danganronpa V3! But Ace Attorney is still good fun, and I think it paved the way for a lot of other games I love.
I particularly like the trial segments; I've played a lot of games about murder, but relatively few where you actually get to solve murders in the course of gameplay. (Even though you're not a detective! You're a lawyer! THIS ISN'T YOUR JOB, PHOENIX, CALM DOWN.)
Anyway, AI: The Somnium Files left me in the mood for more weird murder videogames, and I suddenly remembered there were some Ace Attorney titles I'd never played, so I managed to pick up Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies and Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice when they were heavily discounted. I'm on the third case of Dual Destinies!
The Ace Attorney series has a lot of endearing characters and dynamics. The central relationships of the games tend to be variants on 'passionate, awkward, inexperienced young lawyer teams up with a quirky, energetic teenage girl', but it's a fun formula, and it's nice to have a series that's swimming in male-female friendships when they can sometimes be hard to find in fiction.
In Dual Destinies, for a change, the quirky, energetic teenage girl is also a passionate, awkward, inexperienced young lawyer. I sort of enjoy that Ace Attorney keeps going 'damn, the inexperienced young lawyer is too experienced now, better bring a new one in' but retaining the previous characters, so the cast gradually expands and their little law family gets steadily weirder. Phoenix is going to end up pseudo-adopting every lawyer inJapan America.
(I love that you can feel the desperation of the localisation team when cases are very obviously set in Japan. 'Here's a case all about yokai, set in a village full of Japanese architecture! Because, er, because the village was... the village was... founded by... Japanese immigrants?')
The prosecutor in this game is a convicted murderer with a pet hawk that attacks everyone in the courtroom, and I'm absolutely delighted by how silly this is.
I'm fonder of Apollo than I remembered; I think I might like him more than Phoenix, actually, and I like Phoenix a fair bit. Apollo reminds me a little of Hajime Hinata, the protagonist of Danganronpa 2, who's one of my all-time favourite characters. (I suppose Hinata has an advantage over Apollo in my affections, if not in life, because he goes through more traumatic experiences.)
Early into Dual Destinies, I found myself thinking 'wait, Apollo and Trucy don't know about their relationship to each other, right?' and double-checked, and nope. Someone please inform them, I'm begging you. They have great chemistry and no idea they're half-siblings. There's a disaster on the horizon and it needs to be averted.
I particularly like the trial segments; I've played a lot of games about murder, but relatively few where you actually get to solve murders in the course of gameplay. (Even though you're not a detective! You're a lawyer! THIS ISN'T YOUR JOB, PHOENIX, CALM DOWN.)
Anyway, AI: The Somnium Files left me in the mood for more weird murder videogames, and I suddenly remembered there were some Ace Attorney titles I'd never played, so I managed to pick up Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies and Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice when they were heavily discounted. I'm on the third case of Dual Destinies!
The Ace Attorney series has a lot of endearing characters and dynamics. The central relationships of the games tend to be variants on 'passionate, awkward, inexperienced young lawyer teams up with a quirky, energetic teenage girl', but it's a fun formula, and it's nice to have a series that's swimming in male-female friendships when they can sometimes be hard to find in fiction.
In Dual Destinies, for a change, the quirky, energetic teenage girl is also a passionate, awkward, inexperienced young lawyer. I sort of enjoy that Ace Attorney keeps going 'damn, the inexperienced young lawyer is too experienced now, better bring a new one in' but retaining the previous characters, so the cast gradually expands and their little law family gets steadily weirder. Phoenix is going to end up pseudo-adopting every lawyer in
(I love that you can feel the desperation of the localisation team when cases are very obviously set in Japan. 'Here's a case all about yokai, set in a village full of Japanese architecture! Because, er, because the village was... the village was... founded by... Japanese immigrants?')
The prosecutor in this game is a convicted murderer with a pet hawk that attacks everyone in the courtroom, and I'm absolutely delighted by how silly this is.
I'm fonder of Apollo than I remembered; I think I might like him more than Phoenix, actually, and I like Phoenix a fair bit. Apollo reminds me a little of Hajime Hinata, the protagonist of Danganronpa 2, who's one of my all-time favourite characters. (I suppose Hinata has an advantage over Apollo in my affections, if not in life, because he goes through more traumatic experiences.)
Early into Dual Destinies, I found myself thinking 'wait, Apollo and Trucy don't know about their relationship to each other, right?' and double-checked, and nope. Someone please inform them, I'm begging you. They have great chemistry and no idea they're half-siblings. There's a disaster on the horizon and it needs to be averted.