Board 8 > Post Your Hot Takes Regarding Ace Attorney

(+) Yeah! (+)

Ace Attorney is better than Zelda

Spirit of Justice is probably my least favorite in the series

Found the pacing terrible, the setting unfocused, the characterizations took a step back for several characters and the new ones didnt do enough to make up for it

Alright thats my hot take

LeonhartFour posted...

Dual Destinies is the second best game in the series, every case (except the intro case) is above average

The first game > Dual Destinies > everything else

Athena is the best lawyer

UltimaterializerX posted...

Only the original trilogy is any good. Everything since is trash.

Someone did not play The Great Ace Attorney on the Nintendo Switch available now on the Eshop.

Hot take: Mike Meekins is good

LeonhartFour posted...

Yeah, I don't get this take. Phoenix and Apollo still looked like incompetent idiots in their second cases, too, and nobody says their character development is irrelevant.

To be fair, both Wright's and Apollo's second cases take place right after their first in the same game they first appeared in compared to Athena's which was in the sequel (though I guess technically her second case was 5-1, but she had a mental breakdown early on and needed Phoenix to take over).

The way they acted in both of their seconds cases was also a little understandable. Wright literally just lost his mentor and is now defending her sister (who he had never seen before) in a case where the prosecutor is way more experienced than him, is playing mind games (updated autopsy report), AND who was once his friend many years ago and this is their first interaction together since then. Not to mention, he becomes the defendant after the second investigation day which just adds to the pressure.

In Apollo's case, he was basically a pawn for Kristoph then Phoenix during the entire trial so 4-2 was really the first case he got to actually do his job (not to mention, he isn't helped by Apollo Justice being a terribly written game, especially the last 2 cases).

I really can't speak much on 6-4 since I haven't played/watched through the entirety of SOJ yet and only seen bits of it way back in 2016, but she's had an entire game based around her so you'd think she would much more fleshed out now and grown as a character, so there's a little more of an expectation for such a character and them regressing (or finding excuses to temporarily regress the character for plot reasons) isn't good (like Phoenix needing amnesia so they can do a tutorial case in JFA).

Speaking of Apollo Justice, here's arguably a hot take...

Kristoph Gavin is arguably the worst character in the series for his actions resulting in the events of 4-1, 4-4 and the MASON system, and (through a butterfly effect) the other two cases (meaning storywise we have him to thank for setting up most of the game being bad) all because he lost a card game to a defendant who chose Wright to defend him instead.

Personal take: despite the series making an attempt, it never fully recovered from what Apollo Justice (the game) did to Phoenix. Almost everything since then has either been an attempt to pave over a terrible decision, or a spinoff that ignores it. The sales have definitely reflected this as well.

KamikazePotato posted...

Personal take: despite the series making an attempt, it never fully recovered from what Apollo Justice (the game) did to Phoenix. Almost everything since then has either been an attempt to pave over a terrible decision, or a spinoff that ignores it. The sales have definitely reflected this as well.

Oh absolutely I wouldn't even call this a hot take.

Calisto Yew is the worst character in the series and completely ruins E1-4, which would otherwise be the only good case in the game.

As such, somehow E1-1 is the best case instead, solely because Jacques is my favorite villain in the game.

I'd like to add Zak to this worst character discussion.

I...I don't have a hot take? I feel like most of my AA opinions are pretty much the community consensus. I am such a normie.

I am not a fan of 1-5. Felt like it was too long, killer was obvious and never cared for him. Not sure it's even considered a hot take because I read so many people posts that said they didn't like 1-5 either

The Cosmic Turnabout is one of the worst cases in the series down there with 4-3 and 6-4 (That's not really a hot take either, is it..?)

Im pretty sure series sales are much higher now than they were before Apollo Justice so Im not sure I agree with that KP.

Anyway:

Not sure if this is a hot take, but these games have gotten far too long across the board. They should get back to the levels of length from T&T through AAI1.

4-2 is really good despite some bad decisions around Trucy. The way they go from the three mysteries to the main case is a fun idea.

JFA is the worst game in the series and given a huge pass because its part of the original trilogy. Apollo Justice, AAI1 and TGAA1 are easily above it.

On the game Apollo Justice, while it does suffer for just kind of stopping a full third of a case before it should, its a much better game than its given credit for. It has a great mood that really felt fresh for the series.

Now likely my hottest take of all: Phoenix is the worst leading protagonist in the series by a lot. He is very plain compared to everybody else and Ryunosuke does the same type of character better.

LightningStrikes posted...

Now likely my hottest take of all: Phoenix is the worst leading protagonist in the series by a lot. He is very plain compared to everybody else and Ryunosuke does the same type of character better.

Probably the hottest take here yet..!

The games slowly getting longer is not (nor shouldn't be) a hot take because it's widely agreed that the final cases to AAI2 and SOJ (and maybe some others) go on for far too long and probably would've benefitted from being an hour shorter each. I liked the pacing of the first game and hated that they stopped doing 3-day cases outright after that because they help to break up how long certain trial days felt in the later cases of most games. JFA and T&T had good pacing, too. Since then, it just feels like alot of cases are bloated with additional stuff to either pad out the trial/investigation or to make something feel more grander.

OT Phoenix is still the best. Phoenix after that has felt like they don't totally know what to do with him since his story has basically already been told, but they also don't want to get rid of him because they're afraid sales will tank if his name isn't attached to it.

Yeah I don't feel like "the games are too long" is a hot take. I complained about it A LOT.
And it always surprised me to see Leon's line count not really aligning with it. So it's not really just about the amount of text...but I believe it's because of the animations as well
And pacing, of course
I remember so many times I played AA on Friday nights, thinking to myself "I will just finish this segment and go to sleep" and it just....dragged, and dragged, and dragged forever. And suddenly it's 3 AM and I find myself more tired than having fun

I don't think the games are too long at all, especially not AA6, which is just as long as it should be.

Except E2-2. That case actually does drag quite a bit.

6-2 is too long because the twist of the case is obvious 5 minutes into the second trial so that whole day is redundant

6-2 should've been two short days instead of one really long day

sorry I meant 6-3

hmm... well for me, the "earlier games were better" takes are pretty standard but i'll state them again

- the simple diversity, banter, and pacing of earlier games, especially aa1, can't be beat. 1-3 will always be a top case because of this. 3-2 as well, though i admit it is a little longer. agree with the comment earlier that we don't need longer days; breaking stuff up is easy better for pacing.

- 3D investigation is mostly a waste of time; pointing and clicking was definitely better

- as mentioned slightly above, all the animations really just show the games down. they look kinda nice but i'm not playing to see blackquill sloooooowly pound the table and snap out of his chains and spend 15 seconds awing the audience. the gaps between dialogue are too long now, when the animations get repeated as much as they do.

---

other than this, some more lukewarm tastes, as i generally agree with consensus:

- 4-2 is enjoyable. it's low stakes and offbeat and fun.

- revisiting AA1 in later games feels uncanny valley-ish and generally kind of depressing - the layton game and 6-6 for instance.

- the obsession with epicness/giant stakes is a big reason the series has tapped out; i would happily play a bunch of 1-3 or 3-2-esque cases

- edgeworth in 3-5 >>> edgeworth in his own games

- fey clan drama is miserable. 2-2 is a drag and 3-5 is carried by godot and edgeworth rather than anything fey-related.

- not sure if there's a great way around this, but i feel blackquill and nahyuta's coolness are both brought down by how much of them we see in a short period of time. maybe if they were less hyped or they're animations were faster it wouldn't grind as much because godot did not reach this point. (admittedly godot gets only 2.5 total cases, but i felt like i could've taken another 3-3 easily.)

- the series' obsession with your assistant being a 15 year old girl has clearly passed weird territory. just let them age; the players and player characters have. ryonusuke having romantic feelings for a girl 8 years his junior is weird - why can't susato's canonical age just be 21 instead?

Woke up to 66 new posts this morning! This board will always have hot AA takes.

Hot (maybe medium) Take: Dual Destinies would've been better told in chronological order

I don't think it's a hot take. But really, 5-1 is just a bad case.

My last game was Edgeworth 1 for context.

Most NPCs that aren't members of the courtroom are obnoxious.

Most investigation phases are a slog because of this.

JFA is the best AA game. Mostly because 2-4 is the best case in the series by a mile but also because 2-3's investigation phase cast was not as bad as everyone says (they were annoying but most are)

Pretty much every recurring character that isn't an assistant or lawyer or prosecutor or judge actively detracts from the game.

Every game after AAI1 is too long. They should have compensated for the games not being small GBA games anymore by making them like 20$ download only games or something, Ace Attorney doesn't really work as well when scaled up. There's so much superfluous text and in the case of the later Yamazaki games the mechanics of the later cases get too convoluted for their own good.

GAA1-4 is not a good case

2-3 and 4-3 are both completely fine cases and most of the problems people have with them are way overstated, their biggest flaw is never having a moment of being mindblowing. In fact the entire "third case curse" is basically hagwash, I can't think of a third case in a series I don't like much aside from maybe GK2-3.

GK2 (I played it in Japanese so it's not AAI2 to me) is terrible at bringing back old characters. Whenever they do so it's painfully obvious it was written by a different team than the original trilogy.

Great Ace Attorney loses a lot from not being set in the modern day.

Spirit of Justice is a worse game than Dual Destinies, mostly because of the aforementioned case length problem which is the worst it's ever been in SoJ, but also Spirit of Justice's background story for Apollo feels unnatural and Dual Destinies doesn't have anything as egregious as 6-4.

Basically everything in the originals aged well except 1-5 which is a big drag with some good ideas

The ending of Apollo Justice makes sense

Despite my grievances with the series, I don't think there's a bad game in it except for the Layton crossover, which was largely ruined by Layton puzzles which are not fun in the least to me

I honestly had no idea that people complained about most of the games being too long before this topic.

And it's not even that later Ace Attorney games are long, even by visual novel standards. They're just long compared to the first four games Takumi wrote (and AAI1 is "standard length," too). You can beat any of the first four games in about 20-25 hours. Anything after AAI1 you can expect to run 35-40 hours.

i don't think the games are too long, but the cases are, if that makes sense.

(edit) like nanis points out, it's annoying when you say "okay, i'll play another hour to finish part 2 of this trial and wrap the case" and then it turns out to go another 2-3.

I think it's how the cases are written that makes a lot of them feel too long to me. Like, they take the same amount of content and twists that the earlier games had, and stretch them into cases that are twice as long. That length doesn't feel earned. AA5 feels like a bit of a sweet spot between the two, where the cases aren't as long as AA6/AAI2, but they're still longer than the earlier games, and most of that time is used well (though not all of it, of course).

The exception is 6-5: it's the longest case in the series (I think?) but that length is used extremely effectively. Of course, that's partly because it cheats by being two cases in one, while the other games have epic cases split in two instead, but still. 6-5 does go on a bit too long at the end, but not in the sense that it's paced poorly, just that the last 30-60 minutes aren't as good as the rest.

There are definitely cases that are too big for their britches, but 6-5 isn't one of them. It absolutely justifies it's time. If it had been split into a short 6-5 and then was made 6-6 for it's remainder, as I've seen tossed around, there would be no difference but semantics.

A couple others I forgot

AAI1 is better than GK2, though both are good mid-tier games in the series, GK2 has way higher highs and way lower lows whereas AAI1 is just fine the whole way through

Wright/Maya Fey for life, and anyone who says that their dynamic is a "brother/sister" dynamic has a weird dynamic with their sister (or doesn't have a sister)

I really did not like 1-5. Only played it once, no desire to touch it again

Oh also yeah Nahyuta sucks but I thought that was a pretty common opinion

More specifically, him being the prosecutor in the noodle case rather than, like, anyone else (Klavier, maybe?) pissed me off to no end, made precious little fucking sense, and killed that (mercifully short) case stone dead for me. That was the moment I fully turned on him as a character, and the dumbfuck decision to have him alternate with whatshername in the final (otherwise great!) case was the cherry on top of that shit sundae

I definitely agree with the newer games being too long. Its a mix of a lot of things: longer animations, a bigger cast, a need to drag the court battle out, etc. Its not obvious immediately, but if you go back to AA1 especially, its apparent. I dont think its a big deal, but I would like it if we got the ability to toggle on fast text the first time you play a case.

The Khurain name puns are great.

Cross-Examination Allegro is consistently the best mainstay song in the series.

The Blue Badger jar puzzle is not that bad. I also enjoy the Blue Badger in general.

Bitto posted...

The Khurain name puns are great.

Gotta love Rheel Nehmu

Rheel Nehmu forever

i think the hotter take at this point is: i actually like nahyuta. they just used him far too much. if he isn't in 6-2, the game probably benefits. that said he was great in 6-4.

Nahyuta not being in 6-2 would be wild because you'd have him and Apollo never meeting until the end of the game despite their relationship

I don't dislike Nahyuta, but he's definitely a victim of overuse.

that's a fair point, but nahyuta and apollo's relationship is actually one of the least important things about the game! and they don't seem to do anything in 6-2 either - so i wouldn't be concerned with that loss. maybe have hints dropped in 6-2 with a different prosecutor, and then the two meet outside of court in 6-5 or something?

athena and blackquill have a much more interesting relationship, as a contrast

Well, one of the problems with having three playable characters is that you can't give equal time to everyone and everything. Apollo got the short end of the stick in Dual Destinies, and Athena did in Spirit of Justice. I think that's a big reason that game ends with Apollo staying in Khura'in.

Of course it may not matter if we never get AA7...!

SoJ was kind of just "Apollo Justice 2 costarring Phoenix Wright"

SoJ is the worst (main) game in the series.

Callisto Yew is one of the best minor characters in the series. I could have a whole game of Callisto Yew.

1-5 is on the level of the other final cases in the series and better than a few of them.

Robin Newman is the problematic fave.

I'm not sure how hot these takes are actually.

If you want a whole game of Calisto Yew just watch a GIF of her laughing animation for 20 hours

Robin Newman singlehandedly dropped 5-3 an entire tier for me based on the massive copout of what they set up turning into "lulz it was a girl all along"

The Iris/Phoenix ship sucks

Leonhart4 posted...

If you want a whole game of Calisto Yew just watch a GIF of her laughing animation for 20 hours

Legitimately one of my favorite animations in the series! Just thinking about it put a big smile on my face

Crescent-Moon posted...

Robin Newman singlehandedly dropped 5-3 an entire tier for me based on the massive copout of what they set up turning into "lulz it was a girl all along"

What was the setup? It's been years since I played Dual Destinies.

Anyway I remember thinking it was a copout so I agree with that, but I still like the character. Maybe that's the bigger hot take, I really liked the whole cast of 5-3. My most wanted AA game that will never ever happen would be one about Hugh, Robin, and Juniper after they become a defense attorney, prosecutor, and judge.

Kenri posted...

Legitimately one of my favorite animations in the series! Just thinking about it put a big smile on my face

What was the setup? It's been years since I played Dual Destinies.

Anyway I remember thinking it was a copout so I agree with that, but I still like the character. Maybe that's the bigger hot take, I really liked the whole cast of 5-3. My most wanted AA game that will never ever happen would be one about Hugh, Robin, and Juniper after they become a defense attorney, prosecutor, and judge.

They sent up Robin to be a crossdresser or outright transgender very overtly, then pulled the rug at the last moment and said "oh she was just a girl pretending to be a boy pretending to be attracted to crossdressing all along"

Fuck that. That pissed me off.

Oh yeah I really couldn't stand 5-3 either

Rubbish