People told me that this is like the best game in the franchise. Gotta disagree. It's fine. I enjoyed it well enough, and there aren't any especially bad cases, and it felt like it had more of a point than AAI1, but none of the cases really wowed me compared to the best of the other games. Thoughts:
Franziska barging into the courtroom to proudly announce that she'd learned the head wound came first after Edgeworth figured it out half an hour before made me laugh.
I'd heard people claim this game redeems von Karma and makes him not evil? He's still clearly evil, he's just tricked into taking a bad case this one time, but he still knowingly uses forged evidence. And that's just in this game, not even considering AA1.
The logic mechanic is really good, even if it's sometimes misused, like having to connect "locked door" and "key." Logic chess was... weird. I don't hate it, but I don't want to play it again.
I enjoyed Gregory Edgeworth. I love how the first game established him as looking like just a normal guy, so they had to incorporate lots of "normal guy" movements into his sprite, like adjusting his tie. That guy loves waving his hand around as he talks so much.
Patricia Roland has probably my favorite breakdown so far in the series, her coat revealing itself to be made of animals and them all exploding off her is great.
Penny Nichols being pointless was surprising, I expected her to do something if they went to the trouble of giving her unique sprites, but I guess that fits with her original version.
Sebastian's little arc is fine.
Maya > Trucy > Pearl > Kay
Generally, as I played, I kept thinking about how much wackier the series has gotten since the first game. In the first game, Blaise would have just been an evil guy in a business suit, but he's a biker with goggles filled with tears. In the first game, the wackiest thing is a samurai-themed kid's show, here we have like a prison full of animals used animal therapy, and it just goes up from there. Just really bizarre. Like, I never got the impression in the first game that Gregory Edgeworth's final case was particularly wacky, but here it involves candy sculptures and astrology ice cream and I'm just thinking "man, remember when the series was about a guy breaking into an office and clubbing a woman over the head?" I'm not complaining about this, just to be clear, I'm commenting on how much the series has changed from 'a little bit wacky' to 'everything is insane.'
And because Board 8 loves lists, here we go.
Top Tier 3-5 2-4 1-4 3-4
High Tier 1-5 4-1 1-2 3-1 E2-3 E2-4 2-2 E2-5
Average Tier 4-4 E2-1 1-3 E2-2 E1-4 3-2 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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Not changing this sig until I decide to change this sig. Started: July 6, 2005