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Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations
Man, Ace Attorney 2 really had me thinking "I am getting too fed up with the bad parts of this that the good parts aren't enough to cancel it out, I am going to finish the trilogy and then I am done with the franchise completely" but ACE ATTORNEY 3 WAS SO GOOD THAT I REALLY DON'T KNOW?????
This is honestly mostly about the mechanics of the series overall and when they work and when they don't and then I start getting into story spoilers at the end. Once I start screaming a lot...spoilers.
There's a push/pull in all Ace Attorney games where the story is on rails, but you have to be able to guess where those rails are heading to be able to progress. This is not (at least in the three early installments I've played, god knows what they look like these days) a series that anticipates the actions you might want to take and plans for each of them, it's a series that says "these are the specific beats I need you to hit in order to advance the story." And when the game is at its best, this feels seamless! You interview a witness and you think "I'd really like to see if they have anything to say about this one piece of evidence" and you show it to them and it turns out they do have something to say, and the information they provide is really helpful. When the game's not on that level, you might end up just blindly showing people every piece of evidence you have in the hopes that something will happen to show you your path forward.
And when the game is at its worst, you end up repeating 30 minutes of dialogue multiple times because you weren't able to intuit that you were supposed to press for information on three specific statements in a particular order and then present some evidence that maybe you didn't figure out the relevance of. And that mistake on its own wouldn't result in a game over, but unfortunately you used up all your wrong guesses on hunches that were good and correct, but weren't the hunch the game wanted you to have in that moment.
Things I've been penalized for include:
1. Showing the weather report to a guy who falsely claimed to have been looking at the stars, because what I was supposed to do was ask him to elaborate and get him to admit the lie himself.
2. Trying to point out how odd it was that a witness had only heard one gunshot, not two - the game didn't want me doing anything about that until the next scene.
3. Trying to ask a witness why he hadn't seen a man get up and start yelling - something the game explains later, but never brings up as a testimony issue.
So it just sucks to rack up a bunch of penalties on technicalities, then be in a position where I don't quite know what the game wants from me but I've used up all my guesses and the next wrong answer is game over. For the most part I just relied on walkthroughs when I was at risk like that, and it's great to have that fallback but also just! Deeply annoying to need it! THE PENALTY SYSTEM SHOULDN'T EXIST!
HOWEVER. IN GENERAL. Trials and Tribulations, after its second case anyway, felt much closer to Ace Attorney at its best than at its worst. For the last case in particular - a huge sprawling story, as Final Cases usually are - I was really just vibing through all the investigation stuff, the case was progressing just based off my strongest impulses so I felt less and less of a need to do even the basic CYA "check everything" stuff that at this point is habit.
And not getting frustrated with the mechanics of the game meant I could focus on the story, which is convenient because THE STORY IN THIS GAME FUCKING RULES????? The last case in particular was just fucking bonkers in the absolute best way. AT ONE POINT A CHARACTER SAID HE HAD CLAWED HIS WAY BACK TO THIS WORLD FROM HELL AND I FOUND MYSELF WANTING TO BELIEVE HIM? THEN I FELT STUPID FOR NOT BELIEVING HIM WHEN I REMEMBERED THAT CANONICALLY IN THE ACE ATTORNEY UNIVERSE THE SPIRIT LIVES ON FOREVER AND IS NEVER GONE? For a while my leading theory was that a little girl, possessed by the spirit of her dead mother, had committed a murder????? I spent so long B E G G I N G Phoenix to stop being such a stupid himbo and realize that the girl who seems to have been in two places at once and has an uncanny resemblance to someone Phoenix once knew IS IN FACT A TWIN that I was fucking BLINDSIDED when I found out who the twins' parents were????? And on top of all this: PHOENIX HOSPITALIZED...EDGEWORTH BOOKING A PRIVATE JET TO RUSH HOME FROM ANOTHER COUNTRY BECAUSE PHOENIX IS HURT...EDGEWORTH FINALLY ABANDONING THE COP SHIT TO STAND IN FOR PHOENIX AS DEFENSE ATTORNEY...and also Franziska was there! I LOVE FRANZISKA AS FRIEND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! God this game/case fucking RULED the one thing I didn't love about it is that Maya was so absent towards the end, which, I get it! The story required it! But I missed her! OH ALSO I WAS MAD EDGEWORTH WASN'T IN THE CREDITS? I THOUGHT THEY WERE HOLDING HIM UNTIL THE END SO THEY COULD DO SOME GREAT SHIT BUT THEN...THEY DID NOT.
Also huge spoilers but it's so fucking funny and stupid that Misty died because she was like "if Pearl channels the homicidal spirit someone will die, so the best way to stop that is for ME to channel the homicidal spirit." I thought there would be something about how Misty was so powerful they thought she could restrain Dahlia or something but NO??????????? SHE JUST...SUMMONED THE MURDER GHOST??????? WHAT DID SHE THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN? Like damn just have ONE CONVERSATION WITH YOUR DAUGHTER and then y'all can explain to Pearl why she shouldn't do any channeling?????? ABSOLUTELY WILD BEHAVIOR.
God. Trials and Tribulations is such a good execution of the Ace Attorney formula that I'm literally sitting here like "I know I said I was done after this game but what if I played the remaining eight games in the series. WHAT....IF." WHAT IF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is honestly mostly about the mechanics of the series overall and when they work and when they don't and then I start getting into story spoilers at the end. Once I start screaming a lot...spoilers.
There's a push/pull in all Ace Attorney games where the story is on rails, but you have to be able to guess where those rails are heading to be able to progress. This is not (at least in the three early installments I've played, god knows what they look like these days) a series that anticipates the actions you might want to take and plans for each of them, it's a series that says "these are the specific beats I need you to hit in order to advance the story." And when the game is at its best, this feels seamless! You interview a witness and you think "I'd really like to see if they have anything to say about this one piece of evidence" and you show it to them and it turns out they do have something to say, and the information they provide is really helpful. When the game's not on that level, you might end up just blindly showing people every piece of evidence you have in the hopes that something will happen to show you your path forward.
And when the game is at its worst, you end up repeating 30 minutes of dialogue multiple times because you weren't able to intuit that you were supposed to press for information on three specific statements in a particular order and then present some evidence that maybe you didn't figure out the relevance of. And that mistake on its own wouldn't result in a game over, but unfortunately you used up all your wrong guesses on hunches that were good and correct, but weren't the hunch the game wanted you to have in that moment.
Things I've been penalized for include:
1. Showing the weather report to a guy who falsely claimed to have been looking at the stars, because what I was supposed to do was ask him to elaborate and get him to admit the lie himself.
2. Trying to point out how odd it was that a witness had only heard one gunshot, not two - the game didn't want me doing anything about that until the next scene.
3. Trying to ask a witness why he hadn't seen a man get up and start yelling - something the game explains later, but never brings up as a testimony issue.
So it just sucks to rack up a bunch of penalties on technicalities, then be in a position where I don't quite know what the game wants from me but I've used up all my guesses and the next wrong answer is game over. For the most part I just relied on walkthroughs when I was at risk like that, and it's great to have that fallback but also just! Deeply annoying to need it! THE PENALTY SYSTEM SHOULDN'T EXIST!
HOWEVER. IN GENERAL. Trials and Tribulations, after its second case anyway, felt much closer to Ace Attorney at its best than at its worst. For the last case in particular - a huge sprawling story, as Final Cases usually are - I was really just vibing through all the investigation stuff, the case was progressing just based off my strongest impulses so I felt less and less of a need to do even the basic CYA "check everything" stuff that at this point is habit.
And not getting frustrated with the mechanics of the game meant I could focus on the story, which is convenient because THE STORY IN THIS GAME FUCKING RULES????? The last case in particular was just fucking bonkers in the absolute best way. AT ONE POINT A CHARACTER SAID HE HAD CLAWED HIS WAY BACK TO THIS WORLD FROM HELL AND I FOUND MYSELF WANTING TO BELIEVE HIM? THEN I FELT STUPID FOR NOT BELIEVING HIM WHEN I REMEMBERED THAT CANONICALLY IN THE ACE ATTORNEY UNIVERSE THE SPIRIT LIVES ON FOREVER AND IS NEVER GONE? For a while my leading theory was that a little girl, possessed by the spirit of her dead mother, had committed a murder????? I spent so long B E G G I N G Phoenix to stop being such a stupid himbo and realize that the girl who seems to have been in two places at once and has an uncanny resemblance to someone Phoenix once knew IS IN FACT A TWIN that I was fucking BLINDSIDED when I found out who the twins' parents were????? And on top of all this: PHOENIX HOSPITALIZED...EDGEWORTH BOOKING A PRIVATE JET TO RUSH HOME FROM ANOTHER COUNTRY BECAUSE PHOENIX IS HURT...EDGEWORTH FINALLY ABANDONING THE COP SHIT TO STAND IN FOR PHOENIX AS DEFENSE ATTORNEY...and also Franziska was there! I LOVE FRANZISKA AS FRIEND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! God this game/case fucking RULED the one thing I didn't love about it is that Maya was so absent towards the end, which, I get it! The story required it! But I missed her! OH ALSO I WAS MAD EDGEWORTH WASN'T IN THE CREDITS? I THOUGHT THEY WERE HOLDING HIM UNTIL THE END SO THEY COULD DO SOME GREAT SHIT BUT THEN...THEY DID NOT.
Also huge spoilers but it's so fucking funny and stupid that Misty died because she was like "if Pearl channels the homicidal spirit someone will die, so the best way to stop that is for ME to channel the homicidal spirit." I thought there would be something about how Misty was so powerful they thought she could restrain Dahlia or something but NO??????????? SHE JUST...SUMMONED THE MURDER GHOST??????? WHAT DID SHE THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN? Like damn just have ONE CONVERSATION WITH YOUR DAUGHTER and then y'all can explain to Pearl why she shouldn't do any channeling?????? ABSOLUTELY WILD BEHAVIOR.
God. Trials and Tribulations is such a good execution of the Ace Attorney formula that I'm literally sitting here like "I know I said I was done after this game but what if I played the remaining eight games in the series. WHAT....IF." WHAT IF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!