LogFAQs > #932994236

#24





Years of release: 2011 (DS, Japan), 2014 (Prosecutor's Path)
Beaten?: Yes

Gyakuten Kenji 2, also known as Ace Attorney Investigations 2, also known as Miles Edgeworth: Ace Attorney Investigation 2 - Prosecutor's Path (WHEW) came at a particularly dark period in the series. Of course, I loved the original trilogy to death, and they remain very close to my top 10 games of all time, but the following two games, Apollo Justice and Investigations 1, were well below the bar. It kind of felt like the mainline games were going off the rails and the spinoffs weren't going to save them; the Ace Attorney series was now a fluke, a really good trilogy of games that had nowhere to go after that. As a result, I wasn't even excited for AAI2 at all. Like, if they localized it and released it here, I would have played it, but I wasn't excited to do so at all, and the fact that it never received a localization didn't really gut me all that hard; I brushed it off and moved on with my life.

Of course, I did play AA5 when that came out, and that completely restored my faith in the series. Furthermore, from the few people who actually had played AAI2 in japanese, I heard that it was pretty good, so my interest in this game got renewed. Shoutouts to dowolf who did a really nice translation/playthrough of this on Youtube, I really respect his work on this a lot - however, I do have to admit that I wanted to play the game for myself rather than watch it, and fortunately, a really good patch for the game came out.

This is actually a ranking of the fanmade localization, I should note, and I'm taking into account the quality of that translation as well as the quality of the original game, just like I would any other game, because that's the version of the game I know! The fan localization feels like a really professional work, and for the most part, playing it made me feel like I was playing an official game in all but name only - not only is the script faithfully localized, but the team went to the work to change names, upgrade graphics, and add voice acting as though this was an official work that Capcom would have made. The result is almost seamless, and it's really amazing how good a job they did - just knowing that this was a fan work actually increased my appreciation and enjoyment of the game a little bit. I do have some quibbles with the script, as I think there's a few jokes that don't land or fizzle out that they could have punched up better, and there's a few slight awkwardnesses (a few too many "eh!"s of surprise or confusion that should have been translated as "oh!" or "huh?" or a number of other better options in english), but for the most part, you can really tell the love and care that went into making this seem like the real deal. As a result, I think the fandom basically treats Prosecutor's Path (what a cool game title, too) as canon, and I think rightly so. We'll probably never get a better rendition of this game.

As for the game itself, it really was worth it, and I regret not anticipating it more highly, although maybe my lowered expectations made me enjoy it more. There isn't too much I can get into about the plot without spoiling, but I will say that this game just really feels like it has a lot more red meat than the first game does. The first game's cases are kind of boring and some parts of the overarching plot are cool, but it doesn't feel like their best work. Here, the overaching plot connects to Edgeworth in a much more meaningful way, and I really connected with all the characters a lot better. This game also weaves each case together into a full storyline in a really clever and cool way, and I think it's overall much better than the sum of its parts. There are some pacing issues in a couple of the longer cases, but overall, it takes the format of the first game, which was cool, and just told a way better story with it. It's a little bittersweet knowing that this is the last major apperance for a lot of these characters, but this game really delivered and sent them off in the best way possible.

By the way, I forgot that AAI1 was actually a 2010 game by my rules, but it would have been really borderline to even show up on my list at all - probably somewhere in the 90's. I did actually LIKE the game, but it wound up disappointing enough that I think I'm glad I didn't put it on the list, wouldn't have been a whole lot to talk about. AAI1 does have its moments though and maybe deserves a small shoutout, but the fact that it contributed to me almost giving up on the series does kind of sting a little bit. The fact that I now know the series would eventually experience a renaissance DOES make me feel a lot softer towards both AAI1 and AA4 now though, and they aren't remotely as disappointing as they once were.