Board 8 > KCF plays Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice

(+) Yeah! (+)

Can emotional trauma cause memory loss? Blocking out specific memories I understand, but full-blown memory loss? I was thinking all this time it was physical trauma from the accident.

Sorin also caused the accident. What is Pierce's motive for killing Dumas then? He must have known that Sorin and not Dumas caused the incident and that Ellen would be taking the fall. If he hated Sorin, he could have just let him bleed out.

Clearly, a page was ripped out of the notebook. Pierce had it before Sorin. Was he really that sloppy and didn't tear it completely to make it inconspicuous? Sorin says that he might have written a note and tore the page to give it someone in the form of a paper airplane, as any self-respecting infuriating individual would do. I could be wrong, but the torn page might match the handwriting found on the paper given to Dumas.

I initially thought that Sorin kept the notebook in the Time Keeper to really push the motif and also since he mentioned it being under lock and key. We also mysteriously found a key in the reception hall that wasn't previously there. However, the Time Keeper was obviously under policy custody being the alleged murder weapon and all.

Recess!
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Note to self: look up the word addlepated
- Edgeworth used it to refer to the theory that Sorin used the reception hall escape hatch

I didn't exactly know, but I knew that Pierce hiding the body in the lantern had more than meets the eye due to the blood found only on the inside handle.

Something about this train of thought doesn't make sense as things currently stand. This is what the game is proposing:
1. Dumas was hit by the Time Keeper on the Vista Deck, rendering him unconscious
2. Pierce drags Dumas back to the hold where his is placed inside the lantern and closes it
3. Dumas later regains consciousness and opens the lantern, getting blood on the inside handle
4. The second and fatal blow came later under unknown circumstances

Dumas then should have exited the lantern. How could Pierce have killed him without being seen. Was he just watching the lantern like a hawk ever since he put him in there? Where did he have access to the Time Keeper without anyone noticing? It has to be the murder weapon since I believe a luminol test was done.

I know that Dumas is left-handed and the note was written by a right-handed person, but I can't find anything to present. Oh duh, the candelabra.
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So Pierce was after Sorin. No surprise there. I JUST WANT TO KNOW WHY DUMAS GOT INVOLVED! Saying that he was resentful for taking the blame is ludicrous because:
1. He was rewarded handsomely for doing so
2. He could have chosen NOT to take the blame. He wasn't even in the car, so the paramedics/police there at the scene should have quickly realized that the driver of the one-car crash was at fault.
3. Everyone in the Sprocket family must have known the truth, so if his life solely revolves around serving said family, then there's nobody to be resentful toward since nobody in his life believes that he was the cause of the crash.

Pierce is openly antagonistic of Edgeworth. It has been a looong time since he was a prosecutor in these cases, but I feel like that wasn't common in the first two games.

Why does somebody's "real" self often have to be some unfunny schtick?

Ah, so it was during the reception that Dumas was killed. Pierce must have used the fog as cover, but wasn't close to being thick enough to shroud his actions, and with him being behind the bride and groom, half of the eyes in the area were looking in his direction.

So Dumas opened the lantern just as Pierce was looking at it while having the frame of mind of grabbing the Time Keeper several feet away from him, and the aforementioned guests didn't notice anything through sight or sound given the thin, short fog and where this took place? Not sure that I can buy that.
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There's clearly a crack in the glass of the Time Keeper, so I guess that's the final nail in Pierce's coffin.

Sorin didn't sustain life-threatening injuries or at the very least, Serena's was deemed to be in far more critical condition. Isn't it always hospital policy to prioritize the more critical patient?

Pierce had the authority to offer Dumas a better position? How and what position? Dumas was already head servant, so as a non-billionaire with a stable of hired help, what is the next stepping stone?

There's no way that Pierce could have pinned the murder on Ellen given the circumstances. Ellen holding the Time Keeper just as the lantern toppled was sheer, improbably coincidence.
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They are laying it a little thick with Pierce's stop watching suddenly working again.

Uh, Sorin was stabbed recently, so who thought it was a good idea for him to carry Ellen in his arms?

I don't think Maya and Athena understand how wedding invitations work. In the end, everyone but Athena was invited to the wedding. It is odd that given there being one murder, an attempted murder, and a near-fatal stabbing, they would relax their vetting process and allow Athena to come in unannounced. I didn't recognize Ema at first with the way her hair was done.

R.I.P. Butz

End of Special Episode
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Pros
+ Good kind of fan service (mostly for Butz)
+ Always nice to see Edgeworth out of his comfort zone, and it happened often
+ Interesting setting

Cons
- Hinged on too much coincidence and questionable plausibility (Sorin post-stabbing, Dumas' motives, etc...)
- It was obvious who the culprit was less than a quarter through the case
- Could have stood to be a tad wackier
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If I had to rank the special episode, it would probably slot between 5 and 1
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I haven't had that many playthrough topics (maybe 10-12) through my decade+ on B8, but this is the first time that one took over two months to finish. Part of it had to do my life stuff, but it also had to do with the nature of Ace Attorney.

There is almost no subtlety and they do not really want you to figure stuff out (as evidenced by internal monologues that solve most of the mystery and the frequent use of new evidence during trial), which makes it hard for me to come up with stuff to say. As you may have seen, I still decided to post most of my thoughts on the case even as they were immediately made redundant by the aforementioned internal monologue or some new information presented in court that I had no hope of knowing beforehand. I ended up cutting quite a few of such instances from what I posted just so it wouldn't happen every 5 minutes.

I went to the 3DS activity log, and it says I logged in 52:06 of playtime, when the actual playtime was probably close to 25-30 hours. When I played the Danganronpa games back in 2015, I probably spent around the same 25-30 hours in the game, but my playtime on the file was closer to 40-42 hours and those were in games where they generally provided you with all the information you needed to figure out the who, why, and how. Thus, I had a reason to spend more time in coming up with theories and the such.

So I, in essence, spent about 10 hours more trying to manufacture things to say as characters were transparent and the game wanted to keep its cards close to the vest. That in turn made it harder for me to get into the mood to play the game for long stretches of time. Looking at that same activity log, it says that I put in an average of 30-ish minutes each time I booted up the game.

While the jury is still out on playing a future Ace Attorney game, I do plan on playing the Investigations sequel, but there's no chance that I will be doing a playthrough topic for it. Ace Attorney and myself don't mix for playthrough topics. I will stick to games that are more like Zero Escape and Danganronpa for that.
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If anyone feels like there is something that I didn't address either in the topic or game, or if anyone has any other comments or questions, let me know. I know two people said that they were behind on keeping up with my progress, so I will try and keep this bumped for awhile.
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bump
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Bump
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sorry to hear you didn't enjoy doing this topic, and even sorrier to hear that you won't do one for aai2

IMO it's the best of the series, even though it's a gaiden
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It just wasn't meant to be. I do intend on doing a Zero Time Dilemma playthrough topic sometime later in the year.
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bump
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Probably will stop bumping once June hits
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bump
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