Lurker > Anagram

You didn't put the DK Rap in the rankings you bastard.

Nominate:
The year 2003, which is when MP5 came out

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Started: July 6, 2005

Garden Mode

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Going with Adams

I don't really like a lot of his policies, but he's at least not actively enslaving people, and his criticisms hold more merit.

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You know what

Leon is right, the Dissing of Phoenix Wright is actually great. I shouldve given it more credit.

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Paratroopa1 posted...

I absolutely adore 5-6. I'm really partial to the whole aquarium theme and stuff, but what I really like about it is how it takes its position as a DLC case to play around with the player's expectations of how AA cases work, and it KNOWS it's doing this. Marlon Rimes is beautifully set up to be one of the case's harmless witnesses - he's the first minor character that shows up, and they give him a gimmick so that you don't think there's no reason for him to exist. And then Herman Crab is a great misdirect into making you think that he's going to be the bad guy - he first shows up on day 2 of the case, an AA classic, and he's kind of a jerk and seems like he has ulterior motives (he does but not at all in the way you think). I was legit taken aback when I realized that Crab wasn't the killer, and I wasn't thinking of Rimes at all - I don't normally vocally react to a game like this but when Rimes transformed I audibly laughed in surprise, and everything from that point on was just pure gold, especially when they had the one last swerve at the end where Rimes wasn't the killer at all. All of that stuff, for me, added up to being one of the most memorable cases in the series.

I'll admit that it's possible that I underrated it, and I may reexamine my opinions after beating AA6. But I knew Crab was a misdirect the second I saw him. I knew from the beginning that it was between Rimes and Sasha, though I didn't see the final twist or his transformation coming.

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MrSmartGuy posted...

Hey so uh

You wanted an accident.

Here ya go.

Haha, I forgot about that.

MrSmartGuy posted...

Also WOW that is a low placement for 5-6. When I was saying earlier that 5-2 was my favorite case in the game, I actually wasn't counting the DLC and didn't want to hype it too much. I have 5-6 as my 5th favorite case in the entire series, and 5-2 at 7th.

Haha, looks like we may just have to disagree on that one.

I know absolutely nothing about AA6 except that the prosecutor looks like some kind of Indian enlightenment dude? Well, that and that it's the last game in the series, so I guess that might tell me more about it.

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Leonhart4 posted...

Also, I feel like Blackquill was kind of meant to be a callback to all the previous main prosecutors. He has Edgeworth's cold, cerebral nature. He has Franziska's penchant for physical punishment. He has Godot's love for cheesy and illogical metaphors. And he has Klavier's fondness for, uh, giving everyone nicknames (is that really Klavier's defining trait other than the air guitar?). I think Blackquill is awesome as an opponent and as a character.

Blackquill is great as an individual character and does feel like a legitimate opponent, unlike Franziska or Klavier, and he's got some fun gimmicks that you mentioned. My problem with him is solely that he has no emotional connection to anyone except Athena, and we don't learn that until the end of the game, which means that he's effectively just a random mysterious opponent for almost the entire game. I guess that's technically also true of Godot, though, so I admit some hypocrisy in this analysis.

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I will do AA6 at some point, but not for a couple of weeks at least. I will try to keep this topic up until I finally get around to it, but I may just make a new topic when the time comes.

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Top Tier
3-5
2-4
1-4
3-4

Very High Tier
1-2
3-1
5-5
1-5

High Tier
4-1
E2-3
E2-4
2-2
5-3

Mid-High Tier
5-4
E2-5
4-4
1-3
5-2

Mid-Low
5-1
E2-1
3-2
5-6
E2-2
E1-4
E1-2
E1-1

Low Tier
E1-1
E1-5
3-3
2-3

Bad Tier
2-1
E1-3
4-2
4-3

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I took a walk earlier today, and while I walked, I thought about Phoenix Wright, because I'm a huge dork. And I realized something: Phoenix is done. Becoming an ace attorney is more interesting than being an ace attorney, so Phoenix's story is over when AA3 is over. The original trilogy can sort of be said to have an overarching theme: Mia's death and Phoenix growing into a lawyer. And Phoenix succeeds, so that's basically the end of him as a character.

AA4 is sort of trying to be about "what do you do when someone is too powerful or clever for the law to catch him," and that's an interesting concept even if the execution is botched. It's obvious that AA5 is going for the Dark Age of the Law as a theme, and people not trusting it anymore, and Phoenix is partly responsible for that, but let's be real here: even if you ignore how this was never brought up in AA4, it has zero importance to AA5's plot. It's brought up occasionally, but you need a scene where someone refuses to cooperate with Phoenix because they hate lawyers (even Aura, who does hate lawyers, still cooperates fully). Phoenix doesn't appear to care tremendously about it, either. Edgeworth cares more about it. The Dark Age ending isn't a huge weight off of Phoenix's shoulders, he's just like "cool." I suppose you can't have him take a hard stance against forged evidence after his actions in AA4, though, so there's no way to win here if this is your theme.

To be clear: having Phoenix just show up as the main character who's already mature and competent robs him of that feeling of being up against the impossible. Worse yet, having him have no real involvement in what's going on robs him of any pathos. Avenging Mia by defeating Redd White, proving that truth matters by beating von Karma and Matt Engarde, and moving past Mia's death by defeating Godot are the definitive Phoenix moments because he grows as a character. Obviously, they realized this was a problem in AA4, and that's why they introduced Apollo.

Speaking of Apollo, why is he in this game? I'll tell you why. It's because the writers needed someone to care about what was happening. You would think it would be Athena, you'd think avenging her mother after seven years and bringing her murderer to justice would be her defining moment, but really, she barely helps and she doesn't seem to care very much. She just wants to save Blackquill, which is fine, but at no point is she like "I must defeat Fulbright!" And how do the writers make Apollo care? By introducing his secret best friend who was never mentioned until five seconds ago.

So here's my problem: all three characters just feel like they're along for the ride. We don't have a definite main character and we don't have a power trio of people who work together and share the spotlight, we just have three people who sort of care about what's going on in an abstract way. Athena should have been the main character of 5-5, and Phoenix should have not been in the game at all.

I guess I should also mention how the characters' backstories keep getting more convoluted. In the first game, kid Phoenix was just like "I'm gonna be a lawyer because I hated being wrongfully accused." Now everyone has to have insane tragic backstories. I still don't know Apollo's full backstory with his mother, but I know it comes up eventually, so I assume it's going to show up in AA6 and be even more tragic and ridiculous than Athena's.

Blackquill, okay. Blackquill is probably the best that can be done at this point. Edgeworth has that direct "I am your rival, deal with it" connection, von Karma is the unstoppable juggernaut who represents everything wrong, Franziska is a joke who gets replaced when things get serious, and Godot is the guy who challenges what you believe. All of them have some kind of direct connection to Phoenix that gets you invested. You're like "I really want to beat that guy's ass." Blackquill isn't boring and dumb like Klavier, and he has some actual pathos and character, but he's just not as good as the original trilogies' prosecutors. He has a direct connection to Athena, but you don't even learn about that until the last case. Again, if Athena had been the main character trying to piece together Blackquill's motives while battling him in court and we knew from the beginning their connection, that would have been more interesting than just having him be the "mysterious prosecutor" for five cases.

With all of that said, though, I know what they were going for: they wanted things to go back to the way they were in the original trilogy. This game smacks of being a direct response to AA4 and the AAI games. It just wants to be the original trilogy again, but because Phoenix has nowhere to go, it's just full of random bad guys and one interesting character (Blackquill) with no connection to anyone but Athena. In that regard, it's fine. It's good. It's a good game that accomplishes its mission of being full of fun little adventures, but it's not as good as the original trilogy.

• Games: AA3 > AA1 > AA2 > AA5 > AAI2 > AA4 > AAI
• Prosecutors: Godot > Edgeworth > von Karma > Blackquill > Franziska > Klavier
• Teenage Girl Sidekicks: Maya > Pearl > Trucy > Ema > Kay > Athena

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• Crabs tells me to "focus on the orca's song" instead of just telling me what to do. This is an analogy no one has ever made before, but this reminds me of that episode of Stargate SG-1 where the main character meets an alternate dimension version of himself who tells him to "press the green one" and disappears instead of just explaining what he means. Unfortunately, the show got cancelled after that, so we never learned what the "green one" was.
• So the judge remembers Pearl from eight years ago, but can't tell the difference between El Tigre and Phoenix Wright? Okay.
• Cross-examining a whale yayyy
• Dammit, game, you're not allowed to show me a flip phone with buttons and then have Blackquill talk about apps!
• Yeah, I'd figured out there were two whales a while ago, though not the details of how it worked. Too obvious a trick.
• Quality breakdown from Rimes.
• So... Sasha and Azura just both happened to have the same random heart condition and the same incredibly specific job? Well, okay.

So, this was a nice little random adventure of no real consequence. I realize it's Phoenix getting his badge back, but other than that, it's completely disconnected and pointless, which is okay. It's just a little lighthearted trial with an unusual number of anime cutscenes and five seconds of luminol usage, and that's okay. I liked my idea better of Klavier being the prosecutor.

I will post my full game thoughts soon.

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DK Rap

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I dont hate the AAI games, but I would have preferred one where youre in court and just have some kind of evil defense attorney as the rival, and is otherwise the same as a normal AA game.

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• "HOW DARE YOU slander the noble profession of VETERINARIAN?!"
• Crabs' angry animation of kicking the stand is so mundane compared to all other angry animations that I was more shocked by it than probably anything else the entire game.
• Phoenix, don't worry. This series has already established double jeopardy laws in the Mask deMasque case, Orla is off the hook no matter what.
• "Isn't a lawyer supposed to act in his client's best interests?" Actually, this is a good moment to bring up how in AAI2, no one has any ethical problems with Ray Shields intentionally misrepresenting the warden lady to get her convicted of murder. I mean, she did it, but at least when Phoenix intentionally lost a case, he was being blackmailed into taking it in the first place. Why would she even take Shields' help, anyway?
• I love how the judge is always surprised by perjury.
• Did not expect the transformation.
• "Order! If we don't have order, Prosecutor Blackquill will yell at us!"

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• Holy crap, Athena's VA cannot sing at all.
• Phoenix: "Is that really true?" Phoenix, you're the one who can magically detect lies! You're supposed to be the one to tell me if they're lying!
• I refuse to believe that a sleeping pill designed for humans would meaningfully affect something with an orca's body weight.

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• Wait, so the anime cutscene of the pirate show fighting is supposed to actually be recorded in-universe? Fine, I won't even bother asking where the cameras are located.
• I enjoy the irony of Blackquill chiding the others for "trusting a killer."
• Norma's breakdown animation is pretty bad. Not the worst, but pretty bad.
• "Am I expected to enter Trucy into this 'my kid is better than yours'-apalooza?" Careful, Phoenix, I'm not confident Trucy would beat the whale, hawk, or necklace.
• "What a minute..." Phoenix, get an editor.
• "Cause of death: thought to be from 65-foot fall!" How very specific, I'm very impressed at the medical examiner. Is it weird that in all these games, we've only ever seen one medical examiner, and it was the old lady who barely shows up in AAI2?
• I enjoyed Blackquill ending the happy music by hitting his desk.

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• Dammit, my pet theory was that the prosecutor for this case would be Klavier. That would explain why they bothered making a unique model for someone whose role in 5-3 is completely superfluous. Alas, Fulbright says it's just going to be Blackquill again.

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Do we learn or did we learn how Phoenix helped Athena and convinced her to be a lawyer? I dont recall.

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Episode 5-6? Don't know what it's called.

• Ahhhhh this opening is voiced, why is this one voiced and none of the others?
• I've been to these kinds of amusement park animal shows, this audience wide shot is missing some kids who were dragged here by their parents and want to go home.
• "Animal-assisted therapy is an established psychiatric treatment!" Here's another fact for you: the laws on what counts as an emotional service animal are written so vaguely that my sister got her dog registered as one so she could take it into places that otherwise ban dogs.
• Phoenix reacts to the pirate girl as if this is an unusual client. Phoenix, nothing is ever going to beat the gay French chef from 3-3, you're just going to have to accept that nothing after that qualifies as weird.
• Sasha complains that she already asked several lawyers who turned her down. That must've been some quick requesting, since the murder was just announced on TV.
• Man, that mullet pun, I had to actually look up the non-hair definition of the word.
• Apollo: "Why am I the one who has to stay behind?!" Well, Apollo, in fairness to Phoenix, Athena's power and his don't overlap in quite the same way as yours and his.
• Game, you don't need to make the pun "r-eel-y." "Reel-y" is already a fish pun, ****ing get your ****ing pun game together, man.
• I was holding out for Ema being the detective instead of Fulbright, but I knew in my heart of hearts that they would just reuse Fulbright... because she wasn't on the episode select screen.
• Honestly, I'm not even sure you'd put a whale down for murder. It may be different in Japan, but I distinctly remember a few years ago a whale killing a trainer in an amusement park and nothing being done because the animal was just too valuable.
• "The medical examiner said it wasn't a homicide, so we don't need an autopsy." I realize the story necessity of playing fast and loose with the rules here, but come on, they do autopsies for everything.
• "You two are our lifeboat!" That's really more of a metaphor than a pun, Sasha. And don't say it's a pun about lifesavers, we all know it isn't.
• Gonna be honest here: of all the pop cultural references, I did not see Sharknado coming.
• Man, Athena is way too accepting of Phoenix owning a magical psychic rock.
• I'm not sure if Rimes is racist or not, so I'll be safe and say that I really like the treasure chest benches in the background, that's cute.
• 22 year-old man: "I'm looking for a high school girl." Athena: "Is she your giiiiiiiiiirlfriend?"
• Wait, is there even a high school in that tiny village Maya and Pearl are from?
• I mean, let's be real here, Phoenix is trying to solve a murder mystery and he just happens to stumble into a spirit medium, and he asks her to refill the magatama instead of just channeling the guy's ghost.
• Got to Fulbright telling me no prosecutor will take the case, finally just ran out of time to play right now, so I stopped in the middle of the investigation.

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Paratroopa1 posted...

Well, the less sad way to do it would be for it to just be "Bobby Fulbright is the spy," which is a very subtle little tweak, but it makes his actions a lot more interesting if the personality is just one he completely made up on the fly and has been faking the entire time, as opposed to it being a real person who he is just mimicking perfectly, which offers pretty much no intrigue as far as any of his actions go.

I don't disagree, but I still enjoyed the breakdown itself.

Leonhart4 posted...

Also, I'm surprised you didn't complain about Edgeworth failing to recognize the parallels between Athena's childhood trauma and his own...!

I'm okay with Edgeworth noticing and disregarding them.

ZeldaTPLink posted...

Yeah 5-5 is not as good as other epic cases, but it's pretty solid.

That describes the entirety of AA5, imo. It's the most consistently good game in the series. Not a single case in it is bad. It doesn't quite reach thye same highs other games can reach, though.

I don't know if I'd say this, but I'll get to the post-game write-up after the DLC case.

NFUN posted...

Now re-watch the intro of the first case

That's not Tonate talking about destroying evidence and framing a little girl. It's Fulbright

Well, Tonate still writes Woods' name.

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Rosalina

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Paratroopa1 posted...

Oh you beat the case so I didn't need spoilers

Yeah I'm annoyed that they didn't either make Fulbright just a fake identity made up by someone who was a bad guy all along, OR they actually had the original Fulbright killed off and replaced in between 5-3 and 5-4, because either way it would have made the deception hit a lot harder. Basically nothing he did up until 5-4 was foreshadowing him being a bad guy because he was just apparently acting like the real Fulbright the whole time? But that doesn't matter because we didn't know the real Fulbright. I've complained about this a lot.

That would have been more interesting, yeah. I can see why they wouldn't want to do that, though, since it would be kind of depressing to have a good guy killed.

LordoftheMorons posted...

Space is extremely cold!

I was referring to the photo where the cops laid out all of the bomb debris.

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Cheers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB0nC3BkzPk

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LeonhartFour posted...

From a professional standpoint, it's Klavier because there aren't any other situations where a lawyer is forced to put away someone they're close to, but from a personal standpoint, it's Maya.

Actually, I guess there's also Gumshoe being forced to testify against Maggey in 3-3 despite the fact that he re-opened the case to try to get her acquitted.

Forgot about the Gumshoe one.

_SecretSquirrel posted...

I actually didn't think Means was going to be the villain of 5-3.

Mostly because I figured an educational leader would be the perfect antagonist to be spreading The Dark Age of the Law to future generations, so they're going to do something else here and he will be the antagonist of the final case.

Yes, I thought Means was too obvious, and I felt like he'd be a good "Dark of the Law" antagonist in a philosophical sense whom Phoenix would prove wrong rather than just another random murderer.

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• I've known for a while that it would be Fulbright, just because no one else is plausible, and also he was acting squirrely earlier, and also the way his sunglasses cover his eyes is incredibly suspicious, and because the way he shocks Blackquill is kind of mean, and also because there's no reason to make him 33 except so that he could be 25 when he committed the crime, but I extra knew when we got an emphasis on "the guy doesn't feel emotions like regular people" because Fulbright was subjected to Phoenix's magic powers instead of Athena's psychology. Though, honestly, he's like the killer in Persona 4: alarm bells just went off in my mind the second I saw him. By the way, I am writing all of this before we learn who the killer is, but I'm 100% confident it's him. Again, it's like that AZ comic where Apollo figures it out way before the game does.
• I like how this cross-examination is played up as an epic confrontation between old friends Phoenix and Apollo, but not for one second has Apollo ever seemed like Phoenix's equal.
• "Stop bringing up good points, Edgeworth..."
• I love this epic music of a choir going AH AH AH AH.
• "I can't expect Athena to assist me, now can I? She's the defendant." Said five minutes after Athena assisted him. And let's not even talk about when Maya helped him while she was the defendant. And Maggey. And...
• Apollo throws off his friend's coat, and then Athena just has it. I guess she picked it up off of the floor.
• Yet another "wrong hand" plot. I have to assume that left-handedness is much more common in the AA universe than in real life.
• I didn't see James Bond gadgets coming into play, but here we are.
• You know, you could easily resolve these questions by just having a psychologist run a thing on Fulbright to prove he has no emotions.
• I hope there's a supercut out there of every time in every game someone says "Objection" or "Hold it" or something and the camera flips to each character until it finally gets to the person who said it.
• Oh hey, Athena actually did what I suggested.
• I didn't see the watch wire thing coming.
• Damn, I was wrong about the hunk of gold, but I was right about the asteroid samples. I knew that capsule was going to hold a secret. I'm honestly shocked that hunk of gold never came into play, I was certain it would be important eventually.
• Oh man, I absolutely did not see the face mask rip coming. These extra faces are wonderful, and the music is perfect. I'm not sure it was wise to stop on Professor Means' face for the lengthy dialogue sequence, though, it may not have been the most dramatic one for this and Phoenix doesn't care about Professor Means. Like, clearly you have the lengthy dialogue on either Phoenix's face or Trucy's face to screw with him.
• I refuse to believe that you can get DNA off of a blood sample that's seven years old, was subjected to an explosion, and not stored in a cold area.
• The game simultaneously presents the moon rock as a rare object worthy of study and something that can't be told apart from normal Earth rocks. Like I get that they want to bring back Athena's earring (it's obviously going to be the last piece of evidence to present), but come on, the game itself drew attention to the moon rock as having special properties distinct from Earth rocks, and now the Phantom is claiming you can't tell them apart and no one calls him on it?
• Scared "Phoenix" face is great.
• I like the concept of the spy going through all of his faces and not knowing which one is real, but I especially love him somehow having Ted Tonate's helmet. I'm sad we didn't get to see his real face, though, because I had the perfect joke planned: "Finally, he takes off his mask and reveals his true identity: some guy." I was going to make a Legend of Korra joke and everything, it's a huge shame.

So! I'm going to save my game wrap-up analysis for after I finish the DLC case, but I can talk about 5-5 itself. It's a very good case. That's it.

Okay, fine. A lot of it felt like they were just trying to squeeze everyone into not enough story (Apollo, Pearl, and Trucy could be be removed without affecting anything, and even Edgeworth is barely important), and for a case where you're playing as Phoenix, all of the actual character development is experienced by Athena and Blackquill. Phoenix just feels like he's there because he has to be after people complained Apollo wasn't as interesting as him, and that applies for the rest of the game as well. I wrote up a huuuuuuge thing here analyzing Phoenix's role in this game, but I'm cutting it and saving it for the game wrap-up, so more on that later, along with Athena and Blackquill. Instead, I'll just say that Phoenix was the wrong player character for this case. It should have either been Apollo defending Athena or Athena defending herself.

But with that said, the case is still really, really good. When I make up my tier list, it'll be high tier, but it won't be on the same level as the other finales (aside from AA4, of course, which it's far above). It's buoyed a lot by the Phantom, who clearly the developers of the game had a lot of fun with by creating wacky things for him to do and ways for him interact with the heroes' powers (although Apollo's is kind of boring, he just immediately sees through the guy, whereas Athena's psychology goes haywire in a fun way). He's a good enough character that it almost made me overlook some of the plot holes, but I decided not to be a jerk and talk about them. Like, just to be clear: this case is a lot of fun, but it lacks the feeling of constantly being on the defensive of 1-4, the questioning of what it means to be a lawyer and have faith of 2-4, the pain of failure of 3-4, and the sheer pathos and personal connection of 3-5. It's just a fun little case where Phoenix and company defeat a random bad guy who's bad because he's bad. It's almost like someone took a third case, the ones that are always disconnected from the main plot and where you just fight a random bad guy, and blew it up to main plot levels. That's kind of what the entire game feels like, but we'll get to that in the full analysis.

Finally, I'm just going to say it: I don't see how Blackquill's conviction caused people to stop trusting the law. He's a prosecutor who's convicted of murder. Okay? So what? His conviction has zero to do with him being a prosecutor, it's not like he forged evidence and got caught or something. It would have made more sense if von Karma's conviction did that.

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Star Trek: TOS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIQsrvW6Ji4

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LeonhartFour posted...

It's kind of funny how the sound clips were better when it was just the Capcom employees who were localizing the game instead of professional voice actors.

I was never a huge fan of von Karma's, but I understand what they were going for.

LeonhartFour posted...

Asking Maya to testify against the dude who saved her life, who also happened to be the love of her sister's life.

I still think it might be Klavier, but I'll accept this as a close second.

LeonhartFour posted...

Nah, it's just from AJ. Kristoph had them during the MASON System sequence, and you weren't allowed to break them. I feel like they were just meant to be cool and mysterious rather than having any sort of deeper meaning to them, so I'm glad DD actually made an effort to make sense of them.

Jesus, it was that recent? I'm shocked.


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• I remember black psyche-locks from the third game? Maybe the second. Did it really take this long to learn their meaning? That's crazy.
• Have Athena and Pearl even met before yesterday? Because Phoenix is like "you're the only one who can be with Athena right now," and that's only true because everyone else he knows is either busy or kidnapped.
• Oh man, they completely screwed up Edgeworth's "smug face with his hands held out" pose, this is terrible. Poor Edgeworth.
• Edgeworth's anime cutscene voice sounds nothing like his old objection voice.
• I like how this trial has an audience of random guys. Which is more likely: these people are genuinely interested in what's going on, or Fulbright thought it would please Aura to have an audience like a real trial, so he rounded up some random guys?
• Edgeworth's new objection voice is terrible, I'm so, so sorry.
• I don't see how Edgeworth can pretend that Phoenix has a history calling weird witnesses. Almost every witness is called by the prosecution. The only especially weird witnesses were a parrot and radio, and Phoenix is only responsible for the parrot.
• I wonder what the biggest conflict of interest in the entire series is. Is it Klavier having to help convict his own brother?
• Look, I'm just saying, in all previous "the murder weapon wasn't really what we thought it was, it was something else" examples in the series, it was plausible. But katanas have such a specific shape that there's no way you can possibly mistake a katana stab for anything else.
• I really like Edgeworth getting offended when Phoenix questions his fashion sense.
• "You make that pose all the time, regardless of the facts!" Give him a break, Edgeworth, Phoenix has like five poses total.
• Oh man, I just figured it out, I bet the capsule contains the gold rock from 5-2.
• Judge: "This isn't a real trial." Judge, five seconds later: "Prosecutor Blackquill, you're hereby released."

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By the way, is the DLC case especially long? Is it a 1-5 situation here?

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LeonhartFour posted...

The moon is always in the sky! It's just not always visible. That's the point they're trying to make.

Man, I don't need existential technicalities from Phoenix Wright. When people say "in the sky," they mean something you can see.

LeonhartFour posted...

That was the solution to Magnifi Gramarye's death in 4-0.

Herp my derp, I completely forgot about that one. It's funny, because I was just thinking yesterday as I played that Zak Gramareye is the worst person in the series who's not a murderer, and he's worse than some of the murderers as well.

LeonhartFour posted...

Phoenix doesn't have an assistant at all in 1-2 or during the MASON System in 4-4. And there are other brief segments where you're exploring alone.

Don't know how I forgot 1-2, but I think of 4-4 as an Apollo case even though the MASON system is the only interesting part of it.

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Case 5-5

• "Our sins are as ever-present as the moon in the sky." The... you... I mean... You do know that the moon is in the sky less than half the time, right?
• You know what I just thought of, it would be cool if there was a case that ends with the "murder" actually being an accident or a suicide, and no one is responsible. We've had every detective story murder cliche except that one.
• "AKA a regular ol' telephone." Phoenix, that phone is from like 2002.
• Man, look, I appreciate the gameplay necessity of psyche-locks only appearing when people lie during the investigation portions, but Phoenix saying "I don't see any psyche-locks, so he must not be lying" is kind of insane when they never appeared during the five-hundred lies Director Cosmos told in the courtroom.
• So someone at the courthouse stole the detonator, eh?
• I can't remember, have there been times when you go exploring without an assistant? For this purpose, I'm counting Gumshoe and Franziska during their short moments of following Phoenix.
• "He's usually not all cool and dark and mysterious like that!" Trucy confirmed for liking Sephiroth, Shadow the Hedgehog, and Vergil... Actually, I also like Vergil, I won't lie.
• How can you be introducing Maya Fey and her ghost channeling powers in two sentences five cases into the game, this is like way too late in the game to casually mention this exists.
• "She had a thing for Japanese culture." Everyone in the translated version is either a Japanese immigrant or a huge weeb.
• But if Blackquill was the only person who used the hallway when the murder took place, how could the reporter have taken a picture in the lab?
• "My sixteen year-old daughter is being held hostage, I'd better take this seventeen year-old girl into a scene controlled by dangerous robots."
• And now Edgeworth is being introduced. This would be the worst possible game to play first.
• "Lawyers and prosecutors were supposed to trust each other, pursue the truth together." Man, even in the first three games, the prosecutors were nothing but dicks to you, Phoenix, don't pretend otherwise. The first prosecutor to not be a huge dick was Klavier, and that was during the Dark Age of the Law you were just complaining about.

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Deluxe Cruise

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Sailor Moon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5txHGxJRwtQ

Outlaw Star
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0N3L-pcGdc

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Leonhart4 posted...

I mean, you got about a dozen magic pantries jokes. Wasn't that what you really wanted from Trucy all along?

I know Trucy isn't actually going to do anything and that they just included her because they had to.

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Alright, here's my prediction for 5-5, everyone can laugh at me for being completely off-base.

• Blackquill was accused and convicted of killing the woman in the space photo, but he was actually innocent. The real killer is Aura. Don't know if Blackquill knows it. I don't know how this results in the Dark Age of the Law, though.
• The woman in the photo is related to Athena, who maybe testified against Blackquill or something and repressed the memories or something?
• Aura is holding something over Cosmos, or maybe he agreed to take part in her shenanigans because of funding issues, but those funding issues are definitely coming up again, and she's the one threatening him. Fulbright is involved somehow, but I don't know how.
• I also don't know how Apollo and Edgeworth fit into things yet. There's also a chance Klavier will show back up, because it would be very strange to model him for just 5-3 when they could have gotten away with just not doing that, but we'll see.
• There's also an outside chance Trucy will do something important, again because they went to the trouble modeling her and have done absolutely nothing with her the entire game.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

Lord

LeonhartFour posted...

It's an outdated honoriffic indicating respect, which fits with Blackquill acting like a samurai.

Ah, okay, so he means it sarcastically. This game really assumes a base level of familiarity with Japanese culture.

LeonhartFour posted...

According to Edgeworth in AAI1 (which he picked up on von Karma, who basically intimidated all the other prosecutors into being this way), it's more fashionable to keep it in your pocket instead of putting a hole in perfectly good clothing!

I did think of that, but I thought that was a von Karma thing! I didn't remember him intimidating others into agreeing, but alright

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Pokemon s1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xKWiCMKKJg

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Koopalings


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I don't think I can give a real episode wrap-up of 5-4 like I did for the other episodes, it's clearly just build-up for 5-5.

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• So what does -dono mean? I only know -chan.
• I just noticed Blackquill doesn't have a prosecutor's badge. Poor prosecutors, almost none of them get to wear their badges.
• It took me quite a while to figure out that you were supposed to press 'surprised' when Arme shot Cosmos. This is not quite armpit sweat levels of stupidity, but it's close.
• "Cut the existential bull or I'll cut you."
• Yuri's breakdown of breaking through the door was great, I didn't realize they could have characters interact with the environment like that.
• Man, these must be the only people in the world whose first question to Fulbright would not be "whose fingerprints are on the lighter?"
• I was absolutely shocked when the not guilty text came up, I was certain we were going to get an objection.
• "I wish I could we could tell Apollo about Mr. Starbuck's verdict right now!" Too bad cellphones don't exist in this universe.
• AHA I knew an objection was coming.
• Dun dun dunnnnn Athena's fingerprints are on the lighter.
• So the killer is definitely either Blackquill's sister or Fulbright, right? I've been suspicious of Fulbright the entire game for one reason: there's no reason for him to exist. They could have just used Ema or Gumshoe in his place and nothing would have changed. Also, the game went to great lengths to emphasize how Fulbright found the lighter. But obviously Blackquill's sister is involved because there's no other reason to include her, either. The other woman in the space photo is also going to be involved, I predict Blackquill was convicted of her murder. 5-5 must also involve Blackquill's murder conviction just because it hasn't been explained yet and there's no other way to wrap up the Dark Age of the Law subplot. And looking at the episode select screen, I see Edgeworth shows up. Hm. I also predict this will be part Phoenix, part Apollo, because again, there's otherwise no reason why Apollo would have left except to dramatically return. And obviously it has to also include Athena's backstory. Lots to wrap up in this last case, we'll see how it goes.

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LeonhartFour posted...

Yeah, 5-4 is kind of a brief case compared to the other cases in DD.

I honestly don't mind short cases. To me, the court stuff is much better than the investigation stuff, that's part of why I liked Mia's sections so much.

LordoftheMorons posted...

I'd personally do it before, but it's a preference thing (really before 5-4).

Definitely don't do SoJ's DLC before the main game, though.

LeonhartFour posted...

Yeah, play SoJ's DLC case last.

Noted.

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• "The judge has seen his fair share of colorful prosecutors." I don't know about that, Phoenix. As far as I can tell, all he's seen are Edgeworth, von Karma, Franziska, Godot, Klavier, Winston Payne, Gaspin Payne, Kay's dad... Okay, actually, I'll give you this one.
• I only just now realized Director Cosmos' coat has Mario starmen on it.
• Cosmos spinning around in the wide shot was the most shocking moment of the game. I didn't know we were allowed to have wide shot animations.

That was an unexpectedly short chapter.

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Thanks.

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Good to hear.

How is many cases does AA6 have, DLC included?

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Should I have played the DLC before 5-4, or should I wait until I finish 5-5 to play it?

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• So... Trials are on a "three day max" system, and Starbuck's first day was cut short, then we had Juniper Woods' trial, which took one day, and after that trial ends is the investigation portion of Starbuck's trial. So that means Starbuck's trial is skipping a day?
• This black screen, heartbeat, and alarm in the background is actually effective at showing what it's like to be in trouble in space. This series is always good at this kind of thing.
• Alright, so I'm assuming the probe contains something other than asteroid fragments. Probably something the old space captain doesn't want being found. He's done something illegal to stop the budget cuts. Don't know if he's the killer yet, though.
• I... can't quite remember, is this the first time Phoenix is meeting Fulbright? Because it doesn't seem like it.
• Whaaaat? We can dust for prints without having a minigame? Is that... is that even legal?
• Had to look up a walkthrough to find that I was supposed to show Ponco the autopsy report. That was not at all clear.
• I cannot imagine playing this as your first AA game, then having Phoenix four cases in casually explain that he has a magical rock that he can use to see psychic locks that protect a person's secrets.
• I see they rerecorded Phoenix's "Take that," and made it worse.
• "He's got a grudge against him! That's not real justice!" Buddy, we are way beyond complaining about conflicts of interest.
• That karate chop was not 42.5 degrees.

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Episode 5-4

• We begin with Apollo talking about the personal stakes he has in the trial that Ted Tonate blew up. To emphasize how personal this is to him, we switch perspectives to an orbital satellite, the least personal thing in the world. I guess it's not even in the world. It's so impersonal that it cannot be contained by planet Earth, that's how little it has to do with Apollo.
• The space shuttle explodes. Dude, Challenger, too soon.
• Oh man, GYAXA, they're my favorite space exploration agency.
• Apollo's eyepatch, amazing. I'd just assumed it was related to the explosion, I guess not.
• I just realized how huge Blackquill's hands are, they're way too big for his body.
• "Drop down a dead body? Who would do such a disrespectful thing?!" Does Japan have a thing about touching dead bodies? I've seen this kind of idea before in Japanese stuff.
• In a previous topic, someone posted an AZ comic where Apollo figures everything out in five seconds and has to wait for the game to catch up with him. I felt that way the entire time of this case. I knew in one second that the astronauts would be switched around in the picture.
• The way the fancy anime cutscene at the start of the game portrayed the bombing and escape compared to the in-game version is hilarious.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

I'm the only person who liked the pot reconstruction in 1-5

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Leonhart4 posted...

I like the "You're a goner" and recreating the statue because those are uniquely Athena moments. Phoenix and Apollo aren't doing that.

It's also nice that Athena makes rookie mistakes because she is, in fact, a rookie.

The statue is okay. I was afraid theyd make me construct it and it would be a terrible 1-5 pot minigame.

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Luigis hat

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