LogFAQs > #968321782

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I can see why this game reviewed so well, because the presentation is by far the best we've seen in an Ace Attorney game to date. The character models are well designed and animated so fluidly and lavishly that it makes every other Ace Attorney game look a bit jank by comparison, and the soundtrack is absolutely gorgeous. Ironically, while the mystery plots sometimes make this game feel like a joke, the grandiosity of the game's visuals and music make it feel like the biggest and most important one yet.

All of the key characters in this game are fantastic and really brought to life by the sheer amount of detail put into their character models. Making a main protagonist who's worthy of Phoenix's legacy is a tough ask but Ryunosuke passes the test with flying colors; he might very well be my new favorite main protagonist, and that's saying a lot. He's a surprisingly fresh face and doesn't feel like a retread of Phoenix at all, and it's really fun to watch him grow into the role of defense attorney. Susato as well also doesn't feel like a retread of past sidekicks and makes a great partner for Ryunosuke. Sherlock Herlock Sholmes is an absolute blast and steals the show in every single scene he's in, and keeps some of the slower parts of the game afloat by himself. Even Iris, a character who I expected to be annoying by virtue of being an 8-year-old supergenius scientist, is somehow about as likeable as she could have possibly been in that role. All the secondary characters like Kazuma and Barok van Zieks are also great. Ace Attorney has always been about its characters, and this game continues in that tradition.

The localization is really well done, and it kind of makes me wonder what they were ever afraid of. There's a little bit of awkwardness, of course, in having to deal with the fact that these characters are unavoidably and canonicaly from Japan, and it's clear that the only good choice was to leave the Japanese characters' names in Japanese - it's not 2005 anymore, we've all played Persona and Danganronpa and what have you by now, we can handle it. The localization gets everything right by leaving the names that should be left as is and changing the things that needed to be changed, and the resulting script is as sharp as any Ace Attorney has ever been.

I just can't get over the nagging feeling that for as many things as this game does so incredibly well, it's falling JUST shy of greatness. Maybe if we really got the planned trilogy of games to flesh everything out and give it the proper breathing room. Maybe if a couple of these cases didn't feel like such egregiously annoying filler. There's a few things in the second game that don't quite sit right with me, either, without going into spoiler territory - missed opportunities here and there to do something more interesting that they missed or just didn't have time to do - so this game falls shy of being as good as AA3 or AA6, for me, which is a damn shame, because it's really, really good. I'm really thankful that it ended up getting localized here, because it would have been criminal for a pair of games with this much effort and care and love put into them to not get their shot, and for now, Ace Attorney is a series I can say I've played every game in. We're quite far removed from the failures of AA4 and AAI1 now.

Next up: oh my god. I'm so gay