LogFAQs > #979389866

As expected, Iris is our assistant in this trial. She acquits herself rather well! Van Zieks is our prosecutor after all, and he ramps up the racism to a new level bright and early. Hooray. This case's jury is somehow even more absurd than the last, I laughed seeing Vilen Borshevik up there. OK game, you got me, of all the characters in this game I did not expect to see him lol. We also have Mr Garrideb, whose life has taken a turn for the worse since the last case (much like Fairplay's! Am I sensing a theme here?), a returning juror who is now a communications officer (I assume this will relate to the newspaper article of the leaks of secret comms from the GB govt), another who is the surgeon of Dr Sholmes (who may have a scalpel in his stomach, poor thing), a third returning juror who has the exact same gimmick and outfit as last time (weak!), and our only new character is... a stereoscope enthusiast. As much as I try I still cannot cross my eyes, so the stereoscope segment is sadly wasted on me (why can't we just flip directly from one photo to the next to see the inconsistency >_>).

When we're told the evidence indicates Windibank's attacker was short, my mind went straight to Magnus McGilded. Instead we have the Skulkin brothers, who don't annoy me nearly as much as I first thought they might. I actually rather enjoy the gimmick with Gregson being the third brother, maybe because they don't push it for too long. At one point Ryunosuke objects on the grounds of baseless conjecture, and my goodness how often do you see a legitimate objection in this series? This really is a more grounded game! ...Ignoring the Russian revolutionary assassin on the jury.

A couple of aspects of this case bother me. First, why does nobody speculate how Gina became unconscious? I understand she's reluctant to let us in on her side of things, but what is the prosecution's theory for this? If they don't need one, surely Iris and Runo should at least ponder the issue. There's also a time when we're told Windibank was brandishing his own gun after having been held at gunpoint and led to the storage room... but this is not treated as a revelation and we spend several minutes without anyone bringing it up as an inconsistency.

Van Zieks eventually presents the music disk as evidence, and interestingly this is against the wishes of the government. Oh, Stronghart must be involved in some real shady shit. The disk works to our benefit, as does Sholmes's pouch later on. We're lucky Van Zieks is such a thorough and resourceful racist. The green blood from earlier actually belongs to the man known as Eggert Benedict (apparently there is a name too absurd to be entertained as real by the cast of Ace Attorney), and we establish the presence of a third bullet on the scene.

I'm more confused than ever, now. We claim Benedict is an accomplice of the Skulkins, but he is the one who was shot by this third gun that we've not seen. Did he somehow take the gun that shot at him and run? Which gun fired which bullet, here?! Juror #5 claims Benedict is an associate of hers, so I guess this is where we'll start connecting the bigger picture.

I enjoy having to present the blood profiles several times, a nice way of the game making sure we're paying attention. Eventually van Zieks insists that Sholmes's invention is inadmissible as evidence, and I was wondering when we'd get around to that. But the jury overturn him, and we conclude our second summation examination as I wrap up for the day. We have so many pieces of evidence and I haven't a clue how we're gonna tie everything into whatever is really going on higher up. Maybe Stronghart and McGilded were working together and there's evidence implicating him, so he ordered Benedict to retrieve the disk and it all went wrong from there? But there are more secrets at play here involving the rest of the cast. Herlock is mentioned as still being unconscious, so that early morning rendezvous with Susato was very off the books...

Best moments of the trial so far

• Ryunosuke calling van Zieks 'my learned friend'.
• Van Zieks quoting a famous Sh- Herlock quote, and Iris getting mad about it, and van Zieks later acting like he's above reading the stories.
• "Those two statements clearly contradict... the idea that all I do is pit jurors against each other!"