LogFAQs > #957605672

I wish I could read more of what is going on but I'm afraid of spoiling GAA2. Just finished GAA1 though and I have thoughts.

That was...really disappointing, honestly. Part of the issue was definitely inflated expectations. I saw all those glowing reviews and my hype got out of control. I actually went out and bought this on launch and I can't remember the last time I got a game on launch day.

There are just a lot of issues here. Part of it is the "game" part of this is...bad? I don't remember the AA games being bad games with good stories/characters, but I feel like that is the case here. Like this is the worst gameplay out of any AA game I've played (I stopped after AJ and AAI, but even those were leagues above this in my memory). It has been like a decade or so since I played my last AA game, but I remember the games themselves being quite fun. Like I would get stuck and need to think or some revelation would catch me offguard. It could be I'm more use to the gameplay but honestly I feel like this one was just really sloppily designed in comparison to the old ones.

For example, the multiple witness thing sounds cool but it is terrible in execution. AAI does something similar much better where you're looking for tells and it is this fun little mini-game that actually adds a bit to the court segments. Here, someone will say something, a giant exclamation mark will pop up and a different character will go "I AM MAKING A SCENE COUGH COUGH HEY OVER HERE DUDE COUGH COUGH". I don't know what the point even is from a gameplay perspective. It makes things worse. I think there is one example in the entire game where this pursue tactic doesn't immediately lead to the thing you need to counter, so it makes the gameplay more mindless than anything. You get to a testimony, the obvious pursue mechanic pops up, and then it leads to an obvious statement you have to counter.

I really like the idea behind the Sherlock mechanics, but I don't think they quite worked it into gamepaly well. I was having more fun picking wrong answers just to see what weird things Ryunosuke would say, but in terms of challenge there is none. You look around a small area at like 3-4 different things, and there wasn't one that I was ever really stuck at. And beyond this the game is easy in general, and I don't think I ever struggled to figure out what I needed to present when except for literally the final thing in the entire game. Even that wasn't that hard, but it was the first time in the game I had to think and not just immediately know the answer.

I think it was saved a little bit by the characters (who I really liked) and parts of the story (which I sort of liked) but even that wasn't great. Some cases drag on waaaaaay too long which I admit is an issue in the older games as well but it felt really bad here. In case 4 like the last third of the case is dedicated to figuring out the knife was thrown out the window which was a really fun revelation but I figured that out as soon as the Sherlock deduction extravaganza concluded. And then case 5 just wouldn't end. This was my least favorite conclusion outside of AJ from the games I played and I found myself just wishing the thing would end after it went of on like the eighth tangent I just didn't care about.

There were other things about some of the cases too that bugged me. Case 1 also dragged on towards the end. Case 2 felt small. Case 3 didn't really have a resolution (even though the end of the case was really gripping and I wanted to play case 4 immediately). Case 4 was a good filler case but did have that issue with the ending. Case 5 had some fun stuff but also some parts that I didn't care all that much about and it took a long time to get where it was going. Some parts of the story also seemed overly contrived for the sake of the mystery. For example, in Case 5 Susato making that hole in the wall and then being overly dramatic in telling us about it seems to be less in there for actual character development reasons and more in there to make the mystery more mysterious and not immediately obvious. Same thing with Gina not telling us her side of the story. I felt like this was a case that could've been resolved in like two minutes if it wasn't for the game trying to think of ways to hide information from us.

So...I dunno. I think it kinda killed my motivation to play through GAA2 right away now which was my original plan but I think I'd rather find something else for a little bit and come back to this. It wasn't a bad game and I don't regret playing it. Some of the characters were great and I liked Sholmes a lot. But I also think this was the most disappointed I've been in a game for quite some time.

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Moops?
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