Board 8 > SovietOmega plays Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor's Path (spoilers)

(+) Yeah! (+)

Can we possibly come up with more puns?

That's a sher bet!
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Bump. Starting to feel signs of recovery. Barring unforeseen circumstances, today should be the day I put the final nails in this case.
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Ended up sleeping most of the day away, apparently I was worse off than I thought. Bumping this back to 'will finish soon' territory, as that seems to be about the safest thing I can promise right now.
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Woah, this actually continued?
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it continued until it didn't
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I'd rather not make any bold proclamations, but I really really want to polish this case off sooner rather than later.
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To get to Gustavia, we have to go through Courtney and her PIC logic.

The case seems to be fully investigated in her eyes (although is this not always the case with Ace Attorney foes?). Only Miles' objections stand in the way, and only then if we can find the right path to the truth.

Poor Gustavia...he checks out of the story for a while, and by the time he recovers, everyone discovers he's secretly the murderer of a bunch of years ago. A sudden shock like that could kill someone you know!

He laughs it off though, what a champ! But he probably really is the murderer here, too much plot is pulling that way. What an evil champ!
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SovietOmega posted...

A sudden shock like that could kill someone you know!

the real victim here
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PIC Courtey naturally allies herself with Gustavia. There always feels like a bit of a disconnect whenever she calls Miles things like a driveling prosecutor, because he oozes so much confidence and general competency that any attack on his character kinda has the opposite effect.

Like some kind of Truth Paladin, Miles is relentless in pursuit of his ideals. But there is no direct evidence to offer to disprove Gustavia's words (which makes game sense, as it didn't present it as a testimony). No, the trick this time is a logic bomb, we have to jiggle some facts around until some truth is jostled loose. I'm just happy some of the smaller details like the hand marks and camera film amount are going to matter finally!
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PIC Courtney is starting to make me think of POC. And yeah, it's really hard to get to Edgeworth by acting superior - appeals to force (Lang) or being revoltingly sweet (Oldbag) seems much more effective!

HYPE for the Logic Chess battle.
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The rush of logics come to a head with the establishing that there was indeed a time the murder could happen...afternoon tea. To that end, Miles enters logic chess mode to get Gustavia to spill the beans. This smacks of finale to me, everything should come to a head here...there just isn't anywhere else the case could reasonably go I think.

...this freak has 4 chess pieces. Not bad for a geezer recently recovered from a brush with death.

One piece gets blown up, and suddenly the old man pulls the 'maybe I should go back to the infirmary...' card.

Another down...he was indeed after that recipe book!

Turns out his son was ill...just one more to go!

It was Gustavia and not the son with the illness! In this case about food, there is a surprising amount of i-can't-taste-anything-itis going around!
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Granted, not much was learned there other than the pastry chef had a taste disorder. Does that really further team hero's case when there is already plenty of motive to desire the world's greatest pastry chef title? I guess you could say there was a point of disagreement in how the book should be applied, but would Dover's dreams of riches not help out Gustavia too? Where is the fallout?

Maybe that sort of issue will be explored in this sudden testimony round. I thought we might have been finished here, but this is the case that keeps on giving and giving and giving and giving.

The secret hint for this testimony, aside from Ray suggesting we press the dude until he breaks, is to remember everything that happened 18 years ago. Simple, really!
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SovietOmega posted...

...this freak has 4 chess pieces. Not bad for a geezer recently recovered from a brush with death.

yessssss

the moment where logic chess gets real
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Oh no...the son came up until the finals and that is when the flavor vanished. And Gustavia has no sense of taste. I think I see what is about to happen here...

Yuuuup, Gustavia's son operated as a taste tester....making the father possibly guilty of some kind of diabetic crime if nothing else.

This guy wasn't quite at horrible levels before, sure he probably murdered a dude over some disagreement, but that's pretty common and hard to really get worked up over. But now we learn that he's pretty much a soulless monster willing to disown his son the second he gets a whiff of a cure. What a heartless jerk! Not even Courtney can refute his bad parenting!
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Trusty Gumshoe with the vital evidence! What a pal!

The blood...is Gustavia's? For Miles, this apparently solves everything.

I question if a rock salt lamp would truly cause such an alteration to the taste of a sherbet sculpture, but I could believe there would be traces....just not enough for Delicia to comment on.

It is enough to get the scary pastry guy to confess at least to his crime. What Gregory and Karma could not have known all those years ago is finally come to light.

I wonder if the amount of time spent training in Zheng Fa will be relevant in a few moments. please say yes!
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I'm still a bit lost as to why Dover needed to betray Gustavia when the deal could have simply been something like 'you can do whatever you want with the meds, just let me have a dose and I'll be happy'. It would take a special brand of despicable person to backstab Gustavia the second they felt they could get away with it, particularly when the potential murderer looks like they probably know 10 kinds of martial arts.

Ah, I did not give Gustavia enough credit, it is explicitly stated that he shaved the lamp to remove the blood from it. I am sure there are still plenty of nitpicks one could make with this case, but this at least is an easily resolved issue.

"He was the one who drew first blood, I simply gave him his just desserts!"

If there was aaaaaany lingering doubt at what level of scumbag we're dealing with here...
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i am loving your reactions right here. gustavia is SO unapologetic in his evilness.
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And so it comes to pass that Delicia was the intended scapegoat for her crimes of fake desserts. Only through Kate's meddling (although mostly still Delicia om nom noming bits and pieces of chocolate) was Master made a suspect . This case sure does have a lot of fun little twists and turns! It could certainly fill up a Shakespeare play or two.

At last, the story makes sense, both past and present. Everything has been wrapped up fairly neatly except the matter of what to actually do with Gustavia. Yet more testimony, this one charmingly titled 'Why You Can't Arrest Me'

Here we go! Statute of limitations time! Find the loophole Miles, I believe in you!
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SovietOmega posted...

Yet more testimony, this one charmingly titled 'Why You Can't Arrest Me'

aw yeah
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I'm getting some 1-5 vibes from how unarrestable this guy is claiming to be. Maybe it is because he's also an old guy with white hair who likes to laugh a lot.

Alas, Miles and friends are seemingly 4 months too late to get the statutes to apply to mr 'yeah, i trained for exactly three years, just long enough to give any players hope that this case would end right here'.

Still, for all the length this case has had, it hasn't felt as annoying as the other long ones. The Edgeworth family connections certainly strengthen it, and there is a logical flow that feels right, even if you can see how and why it is stretching things out. One resolution occurs, but then another question is raised, and the case ends up strongly demonstrating how one sometimes has to circle around a bit before one lands on the actual facts of the matter.
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One more statute of limitations miracle to work...and I like how they presented it as a multiple choice. You could randomly click through, but you could also piece together the bits about accomplice and how it took a year to reach that decision. Feels good when one puzzles out a connection like that, even if the game doesn't exactly offer a lot of competing options.

Only an ace attorney game could make an old pastry chef into such a formidable foe.
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SovietOmega posted...

Still, for all the length this case has had, it hasn't felt as annoying as the other long ones.

Just gonna bring up real quick that you were on this case for 5 1/2 months.
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MrSmartGuy posted...

SovietOmega posted...

Still, for all the length this case has had, it hasn't felt as annoying as the other long ones.

Just gonna bring up real quick that you were on this case for 5 1/2 months.

Shhhhhh
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SovietOmega posted...

Still, for all the length this case has had, it hasn't felt as annoying as the other long ones. The Edgeworth family connections certainly strengthen it, and there is a logical flow that feels right, even if you can see how and why it is stretching things out. One resolution occurs, but then another question is raised, and the case ends up strongly demonstrating how one sometimes has to circle around a bit before one lands on the actual facts of the matter.

I think breaking the case into four segments - like a non-investigations AA case - really helps out here.
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It had excellent structure, a quality cast, had a ton of territory to cover, and at no point felt it was just doing things to artificially lengthen the case. It knew where it wanted to go and took as many steps as needed getting there. I definitely enjoyed it more than case 2, and as reasonably as case 1 was, this one far exceeds that in overall impact. To get such a connection to a previous generation of Edgeworth, it was quite a treat. It massively aided in my opinion of Ray too. By the end of this case, I was forced to admit that he's a damn fine addition to the cast, and I would gladly welcome more of him.

It also invigorates me with regard to continuing sooner than anticipated. How is the rest of the game lengthwise/qualitywise compared to what I have seen thus far?
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Since you asked, the following contains spoilers ONLY for the duration of the remaining case and my opinion of it. No plot details are in here; just an answer to your question.

E2-4 is in many ways a typical finale case in stakes and excitement - except in length. It's actually shorter than E2-2 or E2-3, and by a fair margin at that. Leon's last runthrough took him on the order of 6 hours, whereas cases 2 and 3 broke 7 and 8 hours, respectively. I don't think it's a perfect case, but it's fun, and it's relatively trim for a case this big, this late in the game.

E2-5 is almost an epilogue case, but it's epic in terms of both scope and length (it's in the mix for longest cases along with 2-4, 3-5, E1-5, 1-5, etc.). There'a a bit more bloat to it, but like E2-3, I think it more than justifies it, also coming to an incredible climax after some insane reveals. If it means anything, E2-5 might be my favorite case since the original trilogy.

Preemptive passive-aggressive note: If anyone disagrees with my assessment on the cases in terms of quality/tenor, I don't want to argue here - it can be debated in the AA Discussion topic, but this is just to give a gauge for length from one perspective.
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