I don’t even know if anyone reads this, but this is where I always talked about the games, so it seemed as good a place as any to dump all my thoughts out.
I guess there are spoilers…I’ll mark any big reveals, but some obvious things (or things you learn in like the first five minutes of play) are unmarked.
- What’s new about AA5?
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3D. The 3D is pretty cool, I guess. It makes some of the courtroom theatrics more dynamic, and it allows us to examine scenes during investigations from several angles. The 3D characters themselves appear to be 2D drawings imposed upon 3D models, somehow; I noticed that the 2D portraits used in the court record are almost identical to the way they look in 3D.
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New “sidekick”, Athena Cykes. Unlike previous sidekicks who had no business being your sidebar, Cykes is actually an attorney. In fact, you even play an entire case from her perspective, which is pretty cool. As most people probably know, we also play some cases from the perspective of Phoenix and Apollo.
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Athena’s special ability: The Mood Matrix. This is a computer she uses to read peoples’ emotions during testimony. So, when listening to certain testimony, we look for emotions that exist which shouldn’t, or emotions that don’t register even though they ought to.
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Anime cutscenes. …They are anime cutscenes. I’m not sure what else to say about them.
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Tons of little conveniences, such as notes on evidence that say if there are multiple parts or pages to them, a transcript that goes back a decent amount of time, two save slots, et al.
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- What I liked?
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Playing from the perspective of many attorneys. It’s cool to play as Phoenix, but I also really liked Apollo and was hoping that, even with so much focus on Phoenix as the main character, Apollo would not be brushed aside. I’m happy to say that wasn’t the case. And, even though Athena is only playable in one case, she is the sidebar in most cases, so she gets a lot of development, in spite of being new and sharing the spotlight with two other lead characters.
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Development for Apollo, and even Athena. One of the things that made me revile Ace Attorney 4 is that the entire game was about Phoenix. If you’ll recall, the overarching story of AA4 was aboutPhoenix’s disbarment, and his contrived, ridiculously elaborate plan to expose the fact that his disbarment was a setup. Phoenix solves basically every case for you, and you even spend a large amount of time in the final case playing as just him. Apollo is hardly developed at all and frankly doesn’t do shit, which seemed annoying. While Phoenix is a playable character in this game, the story focuses mainly on Apollo and Athena, which I was happy for.
- What I didn’t like?
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Investigations were oversimplified. Only specific scenes can be examined, which means that a lot of the investigation phases were just on-rails reading. We occasionally used Apollo’s “Perceive” ability from AA4, wherein he finds lies in statements based on their involuntary twitches and movements; and Phoenix’s “Psyche-Locks”, hidden secrets that witnesses have, which need to be dug out with evidence; but, there’s no penalty (i.e loss of “life”) for getting the answers wrong on these parts, meaning that we can just cycle through every piece of evidence without having to think much. There’s still no presenting of witness profiles anymore, and the investigations just feel as braindead as the original. I’m not sure yet why the main series hasn’t taken any queues from Ace Attorney Investigations, which actually made the Investigation phases a lot of fun.
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Too many of the “hype” moments are for Phoenix. I understand that Phoenix is probably the favorite of most people, but to me, his time has come and gone. Instead, he steals the scene any time he’s around. The most awesome (and, conversely, a lot of the most pointless) cameos come characters from Phoenix’s original story arc. I would have liked to see Apollo have some more moments like this. Am I the only one who gets hype for Klavier Gavin? I enjoyed Apollo and Klavier’s courtroom dynamic a lot.
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The overarching story arc is a tad bit ridiculous. It deals with the current time period, which is known as “The Dark age of Law”. The reason for this “Dark Age” coming about… (major spoilers for AA4 and AA5!) is that no one has faith in the court system, because of two particular cases, and because of these cases, defense attorneys and prosecutors drum up false charges and false evidence to earn victories rather than find the truth. The two cases in question are the case where Phoenix was disbarred, and one a year later involving this game’s Prosecutor, Simon Blackquill, confessing to murder. A lot of it doesn’t make much sense. People don’t trust the courtroom because of fake charges and evidence, and fake charges and evidence are made because no one trusts the system anyways. Or something. It seemed circular. Not to mention, the whole premise behind the game is wrapping up Blackquill’s case, because how could an attorney be convicted for murder? It’s almost like everyone forgot about Kristoph Gavin, and how he, an attorney, was indicted in the place of Phoenix? Why doesn’t THAT matter, but Blackquill’s case does?
Overall, it was a pretty good game, and the individual cases were fun. I just really hope the next AA game gives some more TLC to Apollo and Athena.