#getting to that part of my dual destinies playthrough :(

[nyaagolor]

How would you rank all the Ace Attorney games you’ve played from favorite to least favorite? You seemed to enjoy all of them, to varying degrees.

So this is actually kind of hard for me to answer depending on whether you base your metric on “how much fun were they to play” “how much do I think to explore the themes / writing / think about the game in general” or “how well written do you think they are”. I’m gonna do all of them and prolly talk a lot so yeehaw. Under the cut bc. surprise surprise! I got long winded

Quick disclaimer: Not including DLC cases or spin off games because if I did we’d be here all day

“How much fun did I have playing through the actual game”

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney

Trials and Tribulations

Apollo Justice Ace Attorney

Justice for All

Dual Destinies

Spirit of Justice

This might be kinda surprising to some people considering what I talk about on this blog, but honestly my opinions on these games changed drastically after I had time to ruminate on them. Here’s some explanations if you’re curious!

AA1 very well could be at the top because it was the first game in the series and I was going in fresh— while Turnabout Samurai was a bit of a slog, I managed to get through all of these cases in a day each and just could not put down Turnabout Goodbyes. I don’t think about it as much anymore because it was so foundational and all the things it introduced have been explored by other games, but this game really is the reason I fell into this series with such ferocity.

AA3 was much of the same, and I don’t think I had as much fun with a tutorial case as I did with Turnabout Beginnings. The characterization present in this games and the nonlinearity of the narrative is genuinely fantastic, and my opinion of it has only increased over time.

AA4 is ranked a little lower because I actually wasn’t vibing with the game when I first played it— it was only after Turnabout Succession that everything fell into place and the game skyrocketed up my favorites list. Once I’m finished with all the spinoffs and have some time to chill I actually plan on revisiting it with fresh eyes because I think a second playthrough has the potential to be soooo much better than the first. Also APOLLOOOOOOO he’s my little guy :)

I thought justice for all was fine, but boring. Big Top made me feel some emotions that were less than positive, but generally speaking all the cases were fine but didn’t leave a big impression on me. Also I don’t like Farewell My Turnabout nearly as much as other people— I still like it but it didn’t totally blow me away or anything. Game is still like an 8/10, but it didn’t leave a huge impression on me.

Dual Destinies was confusing as hell timeline wise and it made it kinda difficult to figure out what was even happening, and for that same reason I struggled to attach myself to the plot. The game had some moments that really were stellar but the sheer length and layout of the cases kinda made me wanna cry

I literally only finished this game so I could get to Investigations. Characters were great but it was so. Damn. long.

“How much do I like thinking about the games, its writing, and its themes”

Dual Destinies

Apollo Justice Ace Attorney

Trials and Tribulations

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney

Spirit of Justice

Justice for All

This part of the list actually has very little to do with how good I think the games are or how much I like them, but sometimes a game’s themes just Captivate you.

If you’re reading this you’ve probably seen this blog, and you know how I feel about Dual Destinies. I am OBSESSED with this game. I love the characters, I love the themes, and I am fascinated by every part of the writing process and how the game ended up the way it did. I think about this game an unhealthy amount actually. Don’t let my complaining make you think I don’t love this game to pieces. Bc I do. So much.

I love expanding on things. The media I blog about? KIrby and Pokemon, stories that practically beg for you to fill in the gaps and work with their vagueness. So when Takumi handed me a game with half a dozen hanging plot threads and massive time gaps just begging to be filled? You can bet I would never shut the fuck up about it. AJAA my absolute beloved

I could probably talk about Miego for hours. This game is incredible I think about it on the regular. Ough.

This game slams but all the ideas introduced by it have been expanded on and talked about and worked with in a hundred different ways so it’s hard to me to really go back other than to say “wow Turnabout Goodbyes was so fucking good”

Literally the only context in which I think about this game is “this should have been a spinoff” but honestly it barely crosses my mind except when I purposefully try to ignore it

JFA is good and makes me feel absolutely nothing

“How well-written do I think the games are”

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney

Trials and Tribulations

Apollo Justice Ace Attorney

Justice for All

Spirit of Justice

Dual Destinies

These are suuuuuper close so this list is a lil shakier than the others but explanations are below as usual!

Ok this is really REALLY tough because I think AA1 and AA3 are tied. They both have their moments and I think the themes are incredible, but for the purposes of this list I’m putting AA1 above AA3 because BttT is a little bit absolutely batshit insane? Turnabout Goodbyes is TIGHT. Sorry Godot you’re still my favorite prosecutor ily kitten

See above

I’ve never seen an AA game whose final cases elevates the entire game quite like AA4. I thought the game was good, but the Turnabout Succession hit and oh my GOD. I think about this game constantly it’s so, SO good. Also helps that Apollo really shakes up the series, he’s my favorite species of insect

These cases were fine, Franziska is a solid prosecutor, the whole “chooses death” thing was fresh, and Farewell was some of the best character writing this series has seen. I don’t honestly have much to even say about it bc it’s super solid

The difference between DD and SOJ is that I think DD had a really good story that it failed to tell effectively while SOJ succeeded in telling its story but that story fucking sucks. Jokes aside I don’t like SOJ but the story is cohesive at least. It had a plot. It was Fine. DD failed miserably but oh my god what you could have been. Ily. Mwah.

See above

Sorry this wasn’t a clear ranking / favorites list, hope you enjoyed regardless!!

#mod vex #ask #ace attorney #heheheeee I love AA asks I love talking about it

[someone-online]

(Cartun) Hey, i saw that your Trucy Gavin AU comic, And while i don’t know much of Ace attorney (watched some playthroughs tho), i would like to know what it is about!!

OOH OKAY so the premise of my Trucy Gavin Au is that instead of being adopted by Phoenix, she’s adopted by Kristoph, who trains her to become a defense attorney like himself at a young age. She becomes a defense attorney around the same time as Apollo and she’s basically an evil magician lawyer with rumors surrounding her about how she uses underhanded tricks to win cases, magician’s tricks.

Gonna get into MAJOR Apollo Justice spoilers below the cut, especially for stuff learned in Turnabout Succession

So Zak doesnt use Poker to determine his lawyer and sticks with Kristoph as his attorney. Kristoph ends up using the forged evidence of course, establishing Zak’s innocence. However, Zak still flees before a verdict is announced (ee mentions smth in the game abt how it will be impossible to declare a verdict, so I genuinely believe that he was planning on running out no matter what) and Kristoph gets stuck with an 8 year old girl.

At first, he’s planning on giving her up to an orphanage when he can’t find any living relatives of hers, until he learns that she aided Zak in his escape. This makes Kristoph realize that she’s smarter than he first thought, meaning she could be useful to him, so he adopts her, not out of pity or love, but because he could use her. He has her start training to become a defense attorney like himself that she’s a defense attorney by the time she’s 15.

Kristoph gets the fame he was looking for as the lawyer who defended Zak Gramarye, but due to the defendant running away, there are rumors that Zak was actually guilty, and that Kristoph is a defense attorney who would do anything to win, like the defense attorney version of the Demon Prosecutor. Still, hes a really good defense attorney, so he’s still getting business.

Another important thing about this Au: Phoenix never got disbarred, since Kristoph was never replaced, so the Wright and Co. Law Offices remains. Apollo ends up working there instead of the Gavin and Co. Law Offices, and this part is still iffy as I need to play more of Dual Destinies, but I’m thinking of changing the timeline a bit and having Athena in the US during AA4 as Apollo’s assistant/weird girl as an intern at the Wright and Co. Law Offices studying to take the bar exam since Trucy can no longer be his weird girl.

Not completely sure how the actual game itself would play out now, I’m still developing this Au, but Kristoph does still end up killing Zak seven years later. Zak has the real torn page, which makes Kristoph paranoid because Zak could reveal Kristoph’s secret of seven years that he used forged evidence and destroy his career. So Kristoph kills him on impulse.

Apollo still catches Kristoph as the true culprit somehow (not sure how yet, still working this out), and of course Trucy finds out. She defends her father in his trial and gets him a Not Guilty due to a lack of evidence, so he doesn’t go to jail this time. But the Gavin & Co. Law Offices name is ruined thanks to Kristoph having been labeled as a murderer. The moment Trucy learns it was Apollo Justice who branded her father a criminal, she decides that she hates him for doing so and declares him her enemy.

I have some ideas as to how the Au plays out w their rivalry as two defense attorneys, but I’m still working it out

#asks #anonymous #cartun #ace attorney #trucy gavin au

[bones-sprouts]

pspspspspssps bites ur ankle to get ur attention How do i get into ace attorney

KGDFOYALHH DID VJDLVLHGKX ED CLHDKHCK sorry. normal now. okay so

i recommend starting with the original trilogy of games!!!!! theyre like violently widely available which is really cool, i suggest the switch ports bc thats what i played and it was great but they're also on ds, wii, steam, and there are mobile ports that work p well! i also rbed a post that has links to roms of everything right under this, but i have yet to test them. ALSO ALSO, if you would prefer a playthrough with commentary there are tons of great ones on the first game and my personal all time favorite is press buttons and talk, who have covered the entire trilogy and the first investigations game (theyr so funny and they care ab the series sm i love it i would personally recommend playing the games for yourself but still watching their playthroughs afterwards) HOWEVER none of them play the bonus fifth case of the first game which is like one of the best in the series and introduces a character thats really important later on so be careful there

my personal recommendation for what order to play the games in is obviously chronological order, going ace attorney, justice for all, trials and tribulations (these 3 are literally always sold as a package deal except on like the ds) them optionally investigations 1 and 2 (these r spinoffs about edgeworth that only get vaguely referenced in future games, and 2 doesn't have an official translation so ur only options there are romming the fan translation [one of the press buttons and talk guys worked on it!!!] and watching a playthrough [jelloapocalypses is really funny and good but his playthrough of the last part of the final case is lost media which sucks ASS i wanna see it again so bad]) and then apollo justice (either ur favorite or least favorite game. i think u would be an aj fan but we'll see) then dual destinies (🤮) and then spirit of justice (🤮)

there's also 2 other spin offs with a completely different cast thats set in feudal japan and england thats made by the guy who made the original trilogy and apollo justice and theyre probably the best games in the series (i don't know! i have not finished them!) and they just got translated so they just have a switch and a steam port for now

this probably looks a little bit complicated but thats just me likimg to ramble ace attorney is like 100% one of the easiest game series out there to get into and i think you would like it a lot i suggest either buying romming or watching a playthrough of the first game its so so great there r so many amazing characters

#i want the joy of playing the first game blind again so bad oh my god

[escarlatafox]

penny for ur thoughts on aa dual destinies!

You First.

(Just kidding but man. I'm curious on your opinions and feel that anything I can say would be inadequate in comparison djdfjdfjh)

This ask feels intimidatingly broad to me because I rarely think about or analyse Dual Destinies, the game itself, as a cohesive whole, as opposed to being highly opinionated about so many individual but unrelated things underneath this banner of “Dual Destinies” that aren’t related or necessarily about the question of the game’s cohesive story and cases-strung-together in and of itself.

And Really, in my response here, while I certainly talk ABOUT Dual Destinies, it still feels like I haven't really Answered The Fundamental Question this ask you have bestowed upon me requests. I have no unified, cohesive, coherent thoughts. Only reactions and responses, a huge amount of which are just not even mentioned here because I already wrote too much because this game is my undoing <3

My reactions to the game seem to have purely been on two extreme ends of a spectrum of disinterest vs obsession at different points of the game especially during my first playthrough, leaving these two extreme points of view hopelessly biasing me beyond the ability to give a proper rundown/analysis of the game as a cohesive whole and present my thoughts. It feels like for some aspects either I don’t care enough to form much of a solid opinion that I can talk about or coherently word or I’m too obsessed to present my opinion in a manner sufficiently connected purely to the game in-and-of-itself as the topic at hand.

Probably immediately alienating a lot of Dual Destinies supporters right off the bat: the people that call Dual Destinies “boring”… I can’t even like say anything to that necessarily at least when they mean the EARLY cases. Because even when I was really far into my first playthrough it’s just like. Yeah. That was me. I wasn’t really invested.

Like even now I just can't really bring myself to care too much about the storyline contents of the wrestling case and Turnabout Academy and what have you, idk. It comes down to different people have different tastes and the actual content of those cases, on the face of it, just like... I don't really get very interested by it.

I thought Professor Means’ transformation when cornered was pretty fun though. That had my attention.

One thing I don’t really have any real beef with is the fact that the game decided to be its own thing. People point to and criticise Dual Destinies as this point of divergence in the series but – hold on I have some old discord messages I can post here

People point the blame at Dual Destinies as being the point of divergence but with me, the series diverged in 4. 4 is what gave us the massive timeline gap that introduced so many issues. I talk about not being particularly invested in my first playthrough of DD, but I say this as someone who was also not particularly invested during parts of AA4, and undeniably less interested than I was during my playthrough of the trilogy. In my eyes, AA4 had already “broken” a lot of things about Ace Attorney canon, so by the time Dual Destinies rolls around it’s just sort of like “sure do whatever at this point I guess”. An Apollo Justice sequel could have enhanced AA4 and could have been great in its own right. But I wasn’t that invested in the direction AA4 took to begin with, so… I don’t feel any great loss associated with AA5’s determination to be its own things that vocal portions of the fandom feel. I’m totally cool with AA5 trying to be its own mostly self-contained thing. At This Point, Why Not? Etc etc.

One thing I do dislike about Dual Destinies is… That’s Not Edgeworth.

Edgeworth was my favourite character. He shows up in Dual Destinies and he’s dead on arrival. He never was. He might as well not have been before he even arrived. #NotMyEdgeworth who is that????

For all the lambasting of the game and of Phoenix’s characterisation by the fandom it feels like people accept AA5 Edgeworth so uncritically and even just. Somehow manage to build a continuity between Edgeworth from the previous games and AA5Edgeworth and even look to AA5Edgeworth to build a basis of their understanding of his character and I’m always just like ???????

Okay, okay, I have to inevitably talk about The Ending Of The Game. That’s why you’re here that’s why We’re here. This is the big one.

People criticise a) the revelation about “Bobby” being the big bad as being a typical “cheap twist for shock value” villain reveal and b) the reveal that “Bobby” isn’t actually Bobby, but rather “some random nobody” to be “pointless”.

My response to a) is: I don’t care.

To elaborate a little further, my response to a) is: sorry it didn’t Do It for you, but I was having the absolute time of my life. It was thrilling. It was shocking. It was FUN. This trope exists for a reason and I can’t get enough of it – well okay, in the broader media landscape it has been a little overplayed in the present day, I’ve encountered instances where it felt forced or overplayed, and I get that. This is not one of the instances where I felt that way at all. Maybe it’s not your cup of tea, but it’s MY cup of tea and you don’t get to say it’s objectively bad or objectively pointless – of course there’s no such thing as objectivity when it comes to appreciation of tropes or art etc etc and so on. Things become cliches and things fall out of favour and what have you and the cycle goes on. Tropes exist for a reason. People like and dislike aspects of media for a multitude of different complex subjective reasons etc etc etc. I played Dual Destinies blind just as I’d played the other games blind and I got to revel in and relish the full force of the reveal as it happened. 10/10

If someone goes into this game already spoiled about the villain, I Get it. That would take a LOT of momentum out of the impact of the reveal. I’m extremely grateful I got to play it to the end blind. I don’t know how different this game would have been for me if I’d known about the twist beforehand.

People criticise spoiler culture a lot these days and there has been the argument raised that if a work is “ruined” by knowing a certain twist beforehand, then it probably wasn’t very good to begin with and that a work should be able to stand on its own merits regardless of whether spoilers are or are not known beforehand.

I understand the sentiment, but at the same time, while there are works you can enjoy regardless of whether aspects are spoiled or not, the type of enjoyment  - the type of experience you would derive from the work is still DIFFERENT.

And while yes, I think that spoiler culture is pretty Extreme in the present cultural zeitgeist and that some works don’t necessarily really need it, some works are genuinely better to consume blind because of how they function and what they do.

Part of what it comes down to is that I Had Fun. And I had fun largely because I didn’t know the twist was coming before it hit, and the impact of the revelation was fun. And you can pry that fun Dual Destinies twist villain reveal from my cold dead hands.

It’s part of where my investment in the game sort of flipped from 0 to 100. Okay that’s not quite true – there were all these whisperings about a “phantom”. The phantom theme played for a bit prior to the reveal which REALLY adds to hype tbh. The characters were discussing this absolutely incredible person who, in the absence of fear, was capable of making that massive leap high up in the air which would have required a running start. Where they could have easily fallen to their death had they not timed it right. We got to see that glimpse of them in the space centre footage where we just can’t quite see any real definitive facial characteristics. Just enough was being teased about the phantom that really, I was already well and truly hooked and fascinated by these concepts the game was bringing up. The aura of intrigue, of the notion that there lurks a spy amongus,

Yeah. Yeah.

My response to b) “the reveal that “Bobby” isn’t actually Bobby, but rather “some random nobody” is “pointless”.” Is…

Okay, while I wholeheartedly disagree with this sentiment, it’s funny to note first that I was somewhat inclined to agree with it in the immediate aftermath of the reveal. Like, we find out Bobby is dead, that Bobby was sincerely a good person after all it seemed, and tbh my sentiment was sorta like “damn. I wish Bobby WAS the evil one though. That’d be Cool. I want to see evil genuine Bobby. The notion excites me”. We got BAITED with the notion of an evil Bobby, smh (JK)

But anyway, when people try to “rewrite” or “fix” Dual Destinies and just…. Completely ignore Bobby/The phantom/scrap that whole aspect of the game it’s just like…….. It does not Compute. Like at that point, you’re not “fixing” Dual Destinies with its core premise and concepts and plotlines, you’re writing an entirely different game with an entirely different plot! People claim that Dual Destinies had potential and then set about seemingly doing their utmost to erase one of the fundamental aspects of the game that carried the MOST potential. It’s at that point where common ground I could have with that person breaks down completely and I’m simply left scratching my head.

I’ve seen people criticise Dual Destinies for refusing to reveal any of the phantom’s true facial characteristics or information about their identity and it’s like. Okay. Let’s actually examine that criticism realistically for a moment. So it’s the end of Dual Destinies. You learn that the phantom was just some guy called Jackson Morgan all along. The sniper shot happens. Jackson Morgan falls to the ground. We see they’re just some guy with curly brown hair.

What does this revelation realistically add to the game and its themes. What does this realistically accomplish. What do we stand to gain from adding this in.

Or, how would it detract from the game and the themes it raises, as it currently stands? What would we lose from its effectiveness?

We get No information about the phantom… and that’s the point. People argue that that’s pointless, that it’s a cop-out, that it’s whatever-negative-thing-have-you, and I’m just like… No??

And like, theoretically, we could have some sort of phantom-identity-reveal plot, but the simple fact of the matter is that there is not enough room left in the game to do so in any effective or meaningful way. It’s not what this game was for or what it set out to do.

Athena is a brilliant character to be contrasted against the phantom. Fandom loves Athena and they want to keep Athena. But what doesn’t seem to be acknowledged is what a good contrast against someone so centred around emotions like Athena that the phantom is. Athena feels and detects the emotions of others, meanwhile we have the phantom, someone who hardly has any emotions at all.

But fandom does not, for the most part, like the phantom. They consider the phantom a non-character in the strictest sense. They largely refuse to engage with the phantom as a character that Exists in this franchise.

To be fair, to an extent, so does Dual Destinies (and Capcom LOLLL), and that’s one of my criticisms of the game. Like, at times it really feels like the writers really have forgotten the truth behind “Bobby” and it feels like maybe they really did just write Bobby as authentic up until pasting a sudden twist onto the end.

But it’s like damn, you guys all have no idea how much fun you’re missing out on when you refuse to genuinely engage with the phantom as a character that this franchise has presented us with.

The lack of identity and lack of emotions are just such interesting themes. Emotions, identity, personhood, the concept of the self… I’m all about those themes.

Dual Destinies absolutely could have done a better job handling the themes and by god I wish it did. But I see the solution would be to have a more guided and cohesive focus on those themes building up to the introduction of the phantom revelation, not in seeking to erase the phantom from the story altogether.

People often criticise Dual Destinies for trying to be too many things at once. And yeah, that criticism is founded. There are several different ideas with potential for their own individual games all bundled into one singular game, and in many respects botched and/or poorly executed because they’re just not given enough room to BREATHE. The phantom as a character and the themes and concepts brought up BY the character is one of those things that was just not given enough room, and should have been a more coherent, focused site of exploration throughout the game so that the audience could feel a greater sense of thematic resonance with the reveal(s) towards the end of the game and all it entailed.

It just so happens that I am the ultimate sucker for the themes and ideas brought up by the phantom and their presence in the game. I eat those themes up like you wouldn’t believe, so Dual Destinies in a sense sort of cheated its way into making me completely obsessed in raising those themes in the first place, regardless of how much they were explored. The people arguing the phantom reveal on top of the Bobby-as-villain reveal is “pointless” are seemingly buying into the phantom’s assertion of their non-existence wholeheartedly and uncritically and without seeking to entertain what the game might actually be wanting us to be doing or thinking about with this set-up.

(I’m biased. I’m impossibly biased. I am ADDICTED to the themes the game flirts with. I can’t claim to know what the writers ‘actually’ wanted us to get out of this game at the end of the day. All I know is that I got so much out of it it’s insane. I owe so much to Dual Destinies it’s unreal.)

There’s a few layers to this.

Dual Destinies raises the following questions: what if there was a person who had no identity that they called their own, no emotions, no self. What would such a person be like? What would such a person be capable of? What could such a person do? Is the existence of such a person even possible?

The game doesn’t necessarily answer these questions. But it asks them. It presents its own tentative hypotheses.

These are fundamentally questions that dip into philosophy and science. Setting aside the question of identity for a moment, we can ask ourselves what a human without emotions would be like, what other parts/aspects of their existence would a lack of emotions affect? What does that tell us about the nature of humanity? What are human emotions intertwined with that would be impacted by their absence?

And that’s not to start on a whole host of questions about the topic of identity.

I don’t understand why most of the fandom doesn’t seem to find that remotely interesting??? The phantom is a wonderful theoretical case study. But I can’t see the forest for the trees, I’m too busy eating dirt tbh.

The game has its cake and eats it too because it never demystifies the phantom, leaving them an identity-less endless abyss of a character (which people accept uncritically as “oh so they’re not an actual character then and I should act as if they really don’t exist” without engaging with any deeper philosophical underpinning or significance of what it would even MEAN to be a conscious ‘identity-less being’) meanwhile the game never denies that the phantom really is a person. The game tells us a) they have some emotions b) that massive breakdown they have at the end. The game is saying yes the phantom is just another person at the end of the day. ‘You can’t outrun yourself’…

I have surprisingly few opinions on the way the game itself handled the phantom (besides wanting more foreshadowing and/or retrospective indication that "Bobby" was always being written with the phantom in mind as opposed to the phantom's existence not factoring into the writing process) or how it "should" have treated the phantom in the ending. Other phantom fans absolutely do have opinions about it. The reason for my lack of opinion in this area is my analysis on this front is that when it comes to canon content of the phantom I simply tend to accept their portrayal/scenes in the game as-is, and then proceed to analyse from there, as opposed to asking "what could/should the game have done differently?". I engage on a very Watsonian level in that particular respect, not a Doylistic one.

But I'm always down for hearing other phantom fans' takes on what the game should have done with the character. <3

Anyway I had literally only Just written up a kind of tangential thing today and yesterday so. I’m just gonna stick it here at the end of this post as a random Bonus. I was gonna think about messaging you about it or emailing it to you anyway Shoop ahhhhh <3 it’s not the complete text but it’s a relevant excerpt!

Here, just because your epic:

"The phantom’s claim that they have no subjective sense of self leaves them open to make claims of absolute objectivity – absolute neutrality - and control over expressed behaviour – to them, their entire life is performance itself. They are always mimicking, imitating, portraying the behaviour of others, and never behaving just as ‘themself’; everything intentionally (consciously) mediated.

The phantom’s denial of their own existence is an ontological absurdity on the face of it. While they surely would not deny their physical existence as an organism, they deny having any self at all. A purely Cartesian distinction is insufficient and still cannot account for them having only a body and no “mind” – the fact that there is a consciousness mediating their impersonations is contradiction of that; subjectivity is also an inevitability. It’s always come across to me like a strange/misguided attempt on their part seemingly to deny their own “Cogito, ergo sum”. The phantom is hardly claiming that they are a p-zombie. Even if they were completely incapable of emotion (which is born out in the game to not be ultimately true), they are capable of feeling physical pain and are just as conscious as any other. Not only that, but their very disposition requires them to engage in a complex, high-level way of thinking and awareness – their every move must be calculated. A lack of self is often associated with a lack of awareness and a lack of intent, which is overwhelmingly not the case here. The phantom is required to be far more aware of their behaviour than the average person.

You may argue the phantom denies not their physical existence as an organism, nor their consciousness, but a “self” more in a social/political/etc sense. But I consider such hopelessly abstract definitions of “self” to be far too artificial and externally imposed to the extent that they are undivorceable and inevitable results of the baseline “cogito, ergo sum.” To exist and to be a living, thinking, breathing, conscious being is to hold beliefs about the world around you in order to facilitate navigation of that world. To hold beliefs is to be of a certain orientation/inclination, and that is to be anything but neutral. Neutrality was never an option. A feeling of a lack of self is a feeling in and of itself. The lack of feeling is part of the constitution of the self to begin with. To have no self and yet to have a consciousness is a contradiction. The consciousness is evidence of the self."

#I'm not putting this in any main tags im so. SO.... Totally Normal :) #Also I absolutely had more to add and I just Forgot. Wonder if it'll come back to me oh well #cmpunkapologist #ask #asks #long post #can I be normal about character for five minute? the answer is no

[4ragon]

Simon keyes for the analysis thing?

Okay, so real quick

Hi! You should play AAI2! It’s the best Ace Attorney game! It’s full of interesting twists and turns and is so much fun! And if you want to play AAI2, PLEASE do not continue to read this post! I’m serious! It’s going to be nothing but spoilers! Get out of here! Go look at my post about how Godot is a weird dipshit. Please. Anything. Go on. Shoo.

Okay, they’re gone. Phew. Anyway.

Simon Keyes! I think he’s one of the most interesting, dynamic, well rounded villains in the series. More than Blaise, more than Kristoph or Dahlia (two other stellar villains but that’s a note for another day). And I think a lot of that comes down to his backstory, his character motivation, and the parallels between him and both Miles and Kay.

I actually wasn’t sure I liked him after my first playthrough. Or, no, I did like him, I liked him a lot, but I wasn’t sure if I was sold on him being the Big Bad, the Final Boss, the Mastermind, when I got to the end of the game.

There were a lot of little parts about that final case that I thought were a bit of a letdown, especially after The Forgotten Turnabout, which is one of the best cases in the entire series. After all, we’d already saved Kay from Blaise, from the PIC, that constant, nebulous threat that had been hanging over Miles’s head since case 2. And Blaise is a really good villain, he represents all of the stuff we’d been dealing with since the beginning, all of the corruption and cruelty inherent in the system that Miles is trapped in.

But after having spent some time ruminating on it, and chatting with my friends, I think I’ve come to understand that Simon Keyes is just as important of an antagonist for the purposes of AAI2, thematically and just as a villain. (I don’t want to take all the credit here but I also don’t know if I should tag anybody? I don’t know my friends are very smart and cool and I don’t want to bother them.)

To start, Simon Keyes represents a lot of things. He is the failures of the system. His story is directly opposite to Miles’s own loss of his father. He actually challenges a lot of this new worldview that Miles had gained over the course of the entire series, and particularly what he’s experienced in AAI2 alone. After all, Miles trusted in his client, and was stabbed in the back. He followed the ideals of his father and Phoenix, and it backfired on him. And in addition, Simon is right in a lot of the ways that he challenges Miles. A lot of the accusations he throws around are not wholly inaccurate, all things considered, even if so many of them are twisted to fit his own cold worldview. I think Simon has seen the absolute worst of the court system in these games, and as a result I think he became one of the most compelling villains to date.

And I think having a character challenge Miles in this way was so important. Like, anyone who played Dual Destinies or Spirit of Justice before getting into the investigations games knows that Miles sticks with his whole prosecutor gig, but I think the important part of AAI2 is the why. Why does he make that decision, especially when the rest of the series shows the importance of the defense attorneys defending the people who have nowhere to turn. And Simon Keyes proves to Miles that change needs to occur on both sides of the bench, that he can change things, protect the people who need protecting, while still being his own person separate from the father he lost. Simon showed some of the flaws inherent in always believing in your client, but also gave Miles a completely new insight that was crucial to that decision to stick with being a prosecutor instead of becoming a defense attorney.

Oh, gosh, I feel like I haven’t even fully touched on Simon as a character. He’s manipulative and cunning and conniving. You can really feel that he’s never really received the love that he deserved and needed as a child, and it really shows in all of his interactions, especially with Miles and Kay. It’s so clear that he can’t even conceptualize being able to care about someone the way that the people around him care about each other, all stemming from the cruelty of the adults in his life that used him and tossed him aside. I find it so interesting that his redemption sort of goes hand in hand with the ‘redemption’ of Sirhan Dogen. And I use the word redemption loosely, I don’t think either of them are redeemed per se, but it’s clear that Dogen cares about this horrible boy that he saved on a whim, and Simon needs someone to care for him, even, you know, the worst man on the planet. And I think that despite the fact that Dogen is, you know, a super murderer, the fact that they both can at least find some sort of bizarre peace in their punishment is weirdly satisfying? Particularly for Simon, like. He deserves his punishment, but you can’t help but feel sorry for him, and it’s nice that this other horrible person has decided to do something good at the end of a very horrible life he lead.

But yeah, Simon is so well fleshed out from beginning to end. He’s a bad man, and he deserves the punishment that he receives, but he’s also a tragic figure deserving of sympathy, and was integral in shaping Miles into the person that he is by the end of the game.

#simon keyes #ace attorney #ace attorney investigations 2 spoilers #like major spoilers #aai2 #aai2 spoilers #j #meta

[transguyedgeworth]

OH HEY YEAH i think the main difference that makes my opinions on certain aa things like. differ from like general consensuses or whatever is the fact that I HAVENT ACTUALLY BEEN PLAYING THE GAMESSSSS i own the first one and played it a long long time ago but other than that. sdfhdfjd i kinda feel bad abt it tbh but whats done is done honestly,, but yeah ive been watching those no commentary walkthroughs on yt since 2, basically i havent done aai2 yet bc i went to aai after 4 and after that i was like I MISS PHOENIXXX so ive been on dual destinies and im abt 2/3 through that.. so my plan is to then go to aai2 and then soj. and tbh i might actually try to emulate and like PLAY those but ive never emulated before so shits scary... whether or not i do that tho i do think i wanna get the turnabout collection for my switch and then i can play thru 2 and 3 eventually n all that shit i am not immune to consumerism smh

as for reginas theme idk man its just me i dont like it u cant make me like it.. like tbh i actually think its like good as in its Effective i think.. but like my ears just hate it idk. i feel like its repetitive too and so it just gets like annoying to listen to for me.. anyway yeah i do agree basically w what you said abt 2-3 and if id played it im pretty sure id hate it too but i mean the shit i like Liked abt it was like. everything you didnt mention jdfghersdhf i love the shit that has nothing to do w the actual fuckin case ie That Part in the plaza w franziska GOD THAT PART.. and also i said this to a friend who id also been talking abt it with another time and like may as well share it with you, au where regina is 20 the ventriloquist is the one who died and everything is Fine.

k laters <3

OKAY OKAY NOT TO LIKE. PRESSURE YOU OR ANYTHING BUT. PLAYING THE GAMES YOURSELF IS A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE THAN WATCHING A PLAYTHROUGH. both my partner and i can attest to this, i tried to watch a playthrough of aa1 years ago and it was SO BORING but then when my current roommates wanted to play the series with me i immediately got sucked in. like. there’s some stuff you just... need to Experience for yourself i think but maybe that’s just me?? idk i don’t think i’d even be into the series at all if i hadn’t actually played it myself. 

my roommate and i ended up playing aai and aai2 after trials and tribulations because he was telling me that that’s the order the games take place in chronologically and also cuz he knows i kin really like edgeworth ghdfnd honestly i’m afraid i won’t be able to get through aa4 for like. a similar reason that you had for skipping aai2 because I Will Miss Edgeworth. 

also emulating is totally not that scary i promise the scariest part is finding the roms. emulating is totally safe and as long as you have decent antivirus software (like windows defender or just. common sense not to click on shady links) you can basically just google ‘[game title] rom’ and find stuff pretty easily. i think it took maybe 5 minutes total for me to find roms for both aai and aai2.

and bro it’s like. totally fine to have differing opinions on music i prommy. i can def understand the repetitive part but considering most of the songs are played on loop in the background anyway i start getting annoyed by any song in the games that loops more than like 3 times in a row (it’s the Sensory Issues). 

my main issue with turnabout big top (besides the ped*philia which according to my roommate didn’t even exist in the japanese version) definitely has a lot to do with having to play it. the investigation is long and tedious and the reveal of what actually happened is just so fucking Stupid and Ridiculous. when i played with my roommates i kept making guesses as to what happened with the ringmaster and how the culprit flew and shit and every time they were like “i wish that’s what actually happened, it would make more sense” ghfjfdnf and yeah i like the part in the plaza with franziska too and all the times they mention edgeworth and we get to hear more about what exactly Happened and shit but. that Cannot save the case for me. those bits do not cancel out the utter bullshit that case put me through it still fills me with rage just to think about it (other than regina my angel whom i adore).

and yeah literally just. keeping regina Of Legal Age would fix the ped*philia stuff but i probably still wouldn’t like the case just because of how stupid and rage-inducing the plot twists and reveal of the actual events were. 

#also max galactica gives me Gender Envy #but still that cannot save the case in my eyes #nothing can. fuck turnabout big top. #miles edgeworth #regina berry #franziska von karma #jfa spoilers #miles answers #twink-on-the-brink

[jake-marshall]

22 for ship ask

22. Ship that you immediately fall in love with after one scene despite not considering it before. I'm not sure I entirely understand this one but my best answer for this is probably Blackbright from Ace Attorney. I went into Dual Destinies being somewhat spoiled to it (including everything with Fulbright), and I didn't really like Simon much my first playthrough so I didn't have any thoughts/feelings about Blackbright one way or the other. But the part in Turnabout Academy where Simon walks out during Hugh's testimony and "goes on a stroll" with Fulbright, I was like "lol gayyyyyy." I wouldn't say I "fell in love with the pairing" then, though. But I really don't have another answer for this. Most ships for me either click or they don't, when I'm watching/reading/playing the source material. If I get into a ship afterwards, it's probably through discussion with friends and not based on anything in the source itself. Thanks for the ask, Tay! >>Send me questions from this Ship Meme here!<<

[no-hetsplanation-for-aa]

thoughts on ace attorney: dual destinies

wow, surprisingly it’s only been two months and we’ve already blazed through another game (faster than last time!!). i went into this one expecting the worst, but it turned out very differently. more about that under the cut: 

-everybody said this game was going to be bad. like....really really bad, but nearly everything that i’ve seen criticized exceeded my expectations, for once. i was super impressed with this game, i think it’s easily one of my top favorites now

-the graphics are one of the aforementioned criticisms, and honestly....it’s not so bad?? like at all? like, i’m a sucker for the classic pixel sprites, and i’ll stick by my preference for them, but regardless? the 3d models are nice. i like that they’re stylized to look like fully-rendered drawings, with the shading already painted on and cartoon lines. plus, the animations are so expressive!

-i really miss being able to investigate every area!! i suppose it would have been a bit excessive to have to make every single room rotatable, but part of the charm of ace attorney games is getting to point and click EVERYTHING you can find

-the music was alright. some of it was charming, some was just okay. i think aura’s theme was my favorite, though

-this game had a significant amount of filler, but overall felt both necessary for establishing characters, relationships and setting up the main storyline. the fillers were extremely fun--my favorite was turnabout academy but every case had a cast of lovable characters you just get attached to

-story progression-wise......even though there was setup in the fillers, it basically did what aai did in terms of every other case being a flashback and leading up to the present case (which were the first and last two cases). i’m personally not a fan of setting up the story this way, i kind of wish we could have more linear cases with a few flashbacks but it’s not a huge problem. just me being picky

-I MISS YOU, BOBBY FULBRIGHT. I’LL NEVER FORGET YOU YOU FUNKY LITTLE DETECTIVE

-smiles mcgoo

-capcom spoiled us so much with lesbians in this game, like it wasn’t even subtle: juniper and athena, juniper and robin, trucy and jinxie, aura and metis......sasha too

-but speaking of things that aren’t subtle, another thing i love about this game is that it’s more obvious/up front about mental illness and neurodivergency! athena’s (at least, in my eyes) very meant-to-be autism symptoms aren’t addressed by any particular name, but we have schizophrenia and anxiety addressed by name here, as well as acknowledging the character’s deep traumas. it’s really, really great. we got a little taste of this sort of thing back in the first two aa games, but they weren’t afraid to say things here, and i’m glad for it

-i am seriously tired of the trucy’s panties joke, also can we please just ditch this gag??? i’m begging you it’s not funny or appropriate

-i’m also upset that trucy wasn’t given more lawyering time in this game!! like, it makes sense story-wise, since the entire reason she couldn’t always be present/shut down and had flashbacks mid-trial was because of her trauma and fear of courtrooms as a result, but......it’s sad that in a game mainly about her we still have to have phoenix take the spotlight. i like you a lot phoenix but like, we can have someone else be the star now

-aura and metis’s story broke my heart....not just because i’m a lesbian, but hearing how much aura cried over her death made me feel something in the pits of my heart and. ow

-i wish clay’s history with apollo, or just his story was fleshed out just a little bit more. i have nothing against the character, but compared to metis’s death, and the rest of 5-4 and 5-5 it felt like small potatoes in comparison. i don’t feel like we got enough time to get attached to this character enough to care about him

-the phantom/”bobby” had one of the most awesome breakdowns in the entire series. i was a bit miffed because i had this part of the game spoiled a long time ago (which is my fault for not using a blacklist, though), but the payoff was still worth it

anyways....that’s all, i think. i hope you enjoyed the latest wacky attorney adventure, and that you’ll tune in very very soon for my next playthrough!

#ace attorney #dual destinies #dd spoilers / #MAJOR SPOILERS / #probably my longest 'review' yet....i had a lot to say about this game #it was very good and i'm glad i played it before aai2 #i still dont know if im ready for it yet

[pokemaniacal]

Rowlet, Dartrix and Decidueye

Bloody hell, if I don’t hurry this up they’re going to announce another damn generation before I’m done with this one; we’re already expecting whatever this bull$#!t is supposed to be and I’ve got eighty whole Pokémon to evaluate in the next couple of months, as well as talking about Team Skull and the Aether Foundation, and Hau, and maybe Lillie too, and whoever I decide counts as the Champion, not to mention answering the neverending tide of ridiculous banal questions that keep pouring out of my goddamn inbox (obviously, gentle reader, I’m not talking about any questions you might have submitted, which are of course consistently insightful and thought provoking; it’s all those other bastards that are the problem).

I’M FINE

Let’s talk about Rowlet.

If you pay any attention whatsoever to this blog for any length of time, one of the first things you discover is that I like Grass-types.  The Grass-type has been my go-to starter for my first playthrough (and most subsequent playthroughs) of every generation since the first.  Rowlet’s fate was bound to mine by destiny long before I ever laid eyes on him.  And I’m basically okay with this.  Rowlet isn’t really in contention to unseat Bulbasaur and Turtwig as my favourite starter Pokémon, but he’s fine.  He’s easy and fun to use in a playthrough, we’ve never had a birdlike Grass-type before, it doesn’t hurt that he’s just objectively adorable, and in abandoning his Flying-type Decidueye becomes the very first Ghost-type starter Pokémon ever, which is neat.  Rowlet and Dartrix are clearly barn owls, with the barn owl’s distinctive pale heart-shaped face, whereas Decidueye is maybe more of a hawk owl, although I wouldn’t read too much into that.  Comparisons to Hoothoot and Noctowl, who seem to be horned owls, are in order, as one of my usual criteria for evaluating new Pokémon is “is this actually new?” and I think the answer there is… probably???  Part of the problem there is that Hoothoot actually has a much more clearly-defined and interesting “personality” than Noctowl, with his heavily stylised cuckoo-clock aesthetic and metronome-like rocking from side to side (actually though, as long as we’re here, why doesn’t Hoothoot get Metronome?  I mean, I get that Metronome was still super-exclusive when Hoothoot was introduced, but they gave it to Snubbull and Chansey as an egg move).  Noctowl is kinda just a big owl that does owl things.  Rowlet, Dartrix and Decidueye are a bit deeper than that, which I generally tend to think is good.  Decidueye’s arrows and archery are an odd touch, but as with Talonflame, you can link birds and arrows conceptually via feathered fletching, so that makes sense.  What might not immediately makes sense to some of us is the switch from Flying to Ghost when Dartrix evolves, and this gives me an excuse to begin one of my patented Bull$#!t Lore Digressions™, so let’s learn some more about owls.

Owls are associated with the spirit world in several different and unrelated cultures, and there are some pretty good reasons for this.  Owls are night hunters, but more than that, they’re silent hunters – owls’ feathers are softer and smoother-edged than those of other birds, so the flapping of their wings is much more difficult to hear, giving them a ghostly, ethereal quality.  Also, like many nocturnal animals, their eyes reflect light and seem to glow in the dark in a disconcertingly eerie manner.  Not for nothing are owls omens of death in sub-Saharan Africa, of sickness and bad luck in the native cultures of the American southwest, or of catastrophe in ancient Rome.  In ancient Greece, of course – mainly in Athens – owls had a more ambivalent role as the sacred birds of Athena and symbols of wisdom (an association that persists today and gives us Noctowl’s famous intellect and minor psychic abilities).  Even there, though, the sinister scops owl was seen as a creature of the underworld, and the owl’s reputation for knowledge subsequently made it the familiar of witches and warlocks in mediaeval Europe.  In New Zealand, where I come from, the small brown hawk owl known as the morepork or ruru is believed to be an oracle of the future in Maori culture, its different cries portending either good fortune or disaster.  Finally, and perhaps most relevant for us today, on several of the islands of Hawai’i a species of short-eared owl called a pueo is one of the more common shapes known to be taken by ’aumākua, the spirits of a family’s honoured ancestors, who return to serve as guardians and as a link to the spirit world (sharks, lizards and turtles are also common; families must show respect and deference to all animals of a similar form to their ’aumākua).  An owl Pokémon thus becomes an intermediary between this world and the next, a sort of warrior-shaman that protects its trainer from spiritual threats using powers of its own that are more than a little dark and sinister (we see a similar theme with Hoothoot in the anime, where he has the unique power to force hidden Ghost-types to reveal themselves with Foresight).

This “mystic guardian” aesthetic is conspicuously undercut by what Rowlet and Dartrix seem to be doing, because they have more of a “dapper gentleman” style in play – consider the Pokédex line that describes Dartrix as “a bit of a dandy” obsessed with keeping his wings groomed, or their leafy bow-ties (in Decidueye, that evolves into something more like a brooch or the clasp of a cloak, which has a more mediaeval-fantasy feel to it).  It feels like a very odd fit for the direction that Decidueye moves in.  If you had just given me Rowlet and Dartrix, and told me to come up with ideas for a final evolution, I might, after substantial umm-and-ahh-ing, have pitched a kind of James-Bond-esque super-spy-in-a-tuxedo concept.  That seems like a more natural continuation, but easily could have turned out looking rather stupid without some very clever way of unifying the design elements (and if there’s anything this blog should teach us, it’s that I’m not quite that clever).  The self-important “dandy” aesthetic, after a bit of thought, is oddly reminiscent to me of the vain, professorial Owl from Winnie-the-Pooh, genuinely wise (…relatively speaking) but perhaps just as much concerned with the appearance of wisdom as with wisdom itself, and eager to look the part of the sober, intellectual scholar of the arcane.  Decidueye’s own description from the Pokédex tells us that this wise Pokémon is nonetheless easily startled and flustered (try slapping him awake in PokéRefresh and you’ll see what they’re getting at).  It’s still incongruous with Decidueye as mystic archer and night hunter, but it is at least giving me a common aesthetic thread to follow through all three evolutionary stages, something that’s quite important for a starter Pokémon to maintain.  Which is enough for the purposes of this review, I think.

Stats-wise, Decidueye seems to be built as a mixed attacker, with strong offensive skills, but isn’t very fast.  That doesn’t bode particularly well, since he can’t really afford to not max his speed in training, leaving less to split between attack and special attack.  There’s a passable physical movepool here, which includes Leaf Blade, Brave Bird, Sucker Punch, U-Turn, and… I guess Steel Wing if, like, you really hate Alolan Ninetales or something?  There’s also Decidueye’s signature move, Spirit Shackle, which has several advantages.  It’s a reliable Ghost-type physical attack, which a) is a rare sort of attack for anyone to have access to, and b) is something Decidueye clearly needs, c) it traps its target in play with Decidueye (unless the target is a Normal-type or Ghost-type, or has some escape mechanism), limiting your opponent’s options, and d) it fires a spiritual arrow that nails the target’s soul to the ground, which is super badass.  This move is easily Decidueye’s biggest edge; you want to use him to set up critical moments where you can switch and your opponent can’t, then pressure their weak points with one of Decidueye’s teammates, or try to Swords Dance while they’re off balance.  Leaf Blade and Spirit Shackle are actually a pretty solid combination; neither Grass nor Ghost gets a lot of super-effective hits, but Ghost has strong neutral coverage, so basically you’re resisted by all the Normal/Flying birds and a bunch of Dark dual-types.  Sucker Punch is mostly redundant with Spirit Shackle in terms of type coverage, but it’s also Decidueye’s only priority move, and he’s fairly slow and doesn’t have any speed buffs, so at least considering it is sort of obligatory (just remember that it only works on targets preparing a direct attack, so be careful using it against support Pokémon).  U-Turn is just generally a good move, because the free switch-out gives you a lot of flexibility in responding to your opponent’s actions (and especially switches), and it covers your ass against Dark-types, whom Decidueye tends to have trouble with.  Trapping something with Spirit Shackle and then bouncing out with U-Turn is a decent little combo, if you like that sort of thing.  Brave Bird adds a bit more of a sting than Decidueye’s other options, but lacks their utility.  Some combination of four of these, or three plus Swords Dance, should probably be the default go-to.  Decidueye’s kit lends itself to switching in and out a lot, and he doesn’t really have the speed to try and sweep a significant chunk of an enemy team, so I’d be more inclined to slap a Choice item on him than bank on Swords Dance, but to each their own.

Decidueye’s special attack stat is pretty solid, so in theory you can use that to mix things up a bit.  Unfortunately, basically his only worthwhile special attacks are Shadow Ball and Energy Ball/Grass Knot, and if you cut Spirit Shackle for Shadow Ball then you’ve sort of forsaken one of the most compelling reasons to use Decidueye in the first place.  That’s not quite the end of the story; you might be gunning specifically for some big chunky physical tank with a Grass weakness like Hippowdon, who gets stung much harder by Grass Knot than by Leaf Blade even with minimal special attack training on Decidueye’s part.  Also, most human opponents are going to assume Decidueye is a physical attacker, so if you can grab him a free turn to set up with Nasty Plot (which he also learns), you might just be able to catch someone with their pants down.  I’m not sure this is particularly a good plan, and again I’m not encouraged by the fact that he essentially has no third special attack, but the possibility theoretically exists.  Decidueye does have a support movepool of sorts, but you can probably find better Pokémon for any conceivable support role he might try to fill.  Like, Baton Pass is there as an egg move (via Togetic or Oricorio), and again, Decidueye does get both Swords Dance and Nasty Plot, so he has perfectly sound options for using it, but he just looks so unlike my idea of what a Baton Passer ought to be (poor speed, average defences) that my mind sort of recoils from the notion.  Alternatively you could try to ply Roost and Light Screen with some HP training into some kind of weird tanky Decidueye – give up trying to outrun things, since he’s slow anyway, and focus on your defences.  Just don’t tell anyone it was my idea.

As well as a signature move, Decidueye has a unique ability; it’s his hidden ability and isn’t currently obtainable, but I think we’ll probably get it eventually, so we ought to talk about it before we finish up.  This ability is Long Reach, which lets Decidueye treat his “contact” attacks as ranged instead, bypassing enemy effects like Static, Rough Skin, Beak Blast’s retributive burn, and so on.  This… ehhh, I’m not really sure what this is for.  I mean, I understand conceptually why Decidueye has this: he’s an archer, so he should be able to make what would normally be close-range attacks from a distance.  But that aspect of the design is already expressed by his signature move, and by the fact that he can use ranged special attacks effectively.  Most contact effects aren’t that big a deal, most Pokémon that get them have better abilities to choose from, and even when they’re likely to turn up, Decidueye would often prefer Spirit Shackle to Leaf Blade anyway.  I think Long Reach would probably give Decidueye an extra edge against… Wigglytuff, Electrode, Parasect, Bewear, Stunfisk, and (lord help us) Delcatty.  Being able to one-shot Bewear with Brave Bird after a Swords Dance is not nothing, but I suspect the more general Grass-type damage bonus from Overgrow would probably still be more useful, even once Long Reach becomes available.

So, all in all, this is a decent start to generation VII.  Rowlet, Dartrix and Decidueye are nothing amazing; they have a couple of conflicting ideas in their design, and other than Spirit Shackle there’s not a whole lot to be impressed by in their skillset.  They’re still interesting, though; as fighters they are at the very least passable, with an interesting niche courtesy of that neat little signature move, and I cannot stress enough that pinning a foe in place by the shadow is a very cool gimmick.  I got my cool new Grass-type starter, all is right with the world, and I can now review the rest of the seventh generation joyfully and optimistically, without a hint of malice or discontent in my heart.

…well, I mean, I can try, anyway.

#pokemon #alola #alola pokedex #rowlet #dartrix #decidueye #grasstypes #ghosttypes #flyingtypes #starters

[theclarkystuff-blog]

Ace Attorney 6 : Spirit Of Justice

The Ace Attorney series has always had a strange relationship with it’s audience outside of it’s native homeland, Japan. With the series origins going back to 2001 on the GBA , it would not be until 2005 until the original Gyakuten Saiban would be released outside of Japan,  now under the name of Ace Attorney on the DS. Ports of the original GBA trilogy to the DS would favor functions the DS offered such as the touch screen and microphone input and a new soundtrack, the series would continue primarily on the DS with 3 new games emerging and would see various games in the series get ported to IOS, Windows (Japan exclusive), 3DS and Wii.

The series would continue to see releases outside of Japan although a number of games such as Ace Attorney Investigations 2 and The Great Ace Attorney would stay in Japan for reasons ranging from changing market environment and what some speculate could be a difficult localisation with the series already skating on thin ice with it’s current location setting it somewhere in California despite the series nods to it’s Japanese origins often on display, the titles that would make it outside of Japan however would only be available via the 3DS eShop, the only game to get a physical release being a cross over with Level 5 series, Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.

In 2016 Capcom would release the latest mainline entry, Spirit Of Justice, on 3DS to which I decided to pass up on buying straight away due not having enough free time to commit to this game but Capcom put a tiny deal on it and I’m thinking great, if I want more of these games to release outside of Japan I have to buy this so I cave in. Starting the actual game up we get what I feel is a standard now with the series, short anime cutscenes to help explain the story, the usual events of a crime taking place and slowly being introduced to the setting, the story starts off with series main man Phoenix Wright traveling aboard to the country of Khura'in, a country at civil war being ruled over by a dictatorship like monarchy which has enforced the Defense Culpability Act, legislation which allows lawyers representing clients found guilty in any crime will face the same sentence as there clients, including being put to death,  which has made being a defense attorney a frowned upon occupation. 

As usual in this game you spend a good chunk of time in a court room having to defend your clients claims of innocence by presenting relevant evidence or pointing out inconsistencies in testimonies given by witnesses or the accused. Returning are old tricks our attorney team can use to find the truth including Apollo Justice’s bracelet which will point out people in distress to him and allow him to use his perception to pick on nervous traits your subject may show when reflecting upon there actions. Athena Cykes brings along her therapy sessions which questions people upon their emotional state during events and with her help you can help recover memories from patients suffering from traumatic events. New for this series is the fountain of truth, an event which will allow the court to see the victims last moments through their eyes in the hopes of finding clues to convict the real murderer. For the other half of this game you will play in the investigation mode which will allow you to explore various areas associated with the crime scene and question witnesses and investigators.

It did not take long for the usual charm of the series to kick in, punny names, stranger than fiction murder plots, colourful characters, although by about the third case into this game I felt that some of the experience was dragging along, being the 6th entry into this series it is but hard to imagine fans have already seen a majority of it is about and the game did feel a little like I had been there and seen a bunch of it before. It never helped that during my playthrough due to a mishap involving forgetting to save and leaving the battery on my 3DS to run out I had to repeat a large chunk of the trial again which turned me off so much that i took a short hiatus from this game, I would pick up the game again a month or 2 later after beating Breath Of The Wild and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

I pushed through with case 3 again I was then greeted with perhaps one of the worst cases I have ever seen in an Ace Attorney game. This case felt like it was put in here just to give Athena some kind playtime, I feel this case has little to no bearing for the rest of the game and just kind of exists for no reason like a commercial break at the third act of a movie. You can imagine my frustration losing my steam for this game due to my save blunder although coming back at the shittest part of the game but then we got to case 5 and it completely turned me around. The concluding chapter of this game was that good I would say the rest of the cases seem like a long drawn out intro. This case puts you in the position of Apollo Justice as you enter into one of the most complex murder plots within the Ace Attorney series which involves spirit mediums, assassinations, black mail, smear campaigns, broken families, there is a while lot to take in, think a friend who played the playthrough commented the case lasts like 14 hours.

As this story is progressing I soon realise I am playing a case as good anything Trials & Tribultions ( AA3) as a whole offered, that story wrapped up many things which i felt were left loose and showcased how many of it’s cast had grown, questioning the motive of there characters and giving Phoenix his defining moment, that moment where you felt he had learned all he could from his mentors and had become the ace attorney he had wanted to become. As the game goes on and draws closer to it’s conclusion I realise that I may have played the “Apollo Trilogy” and while Dual Destiny’s may not have outright focused on Apollo I seem to recall moments in there which helped branched his character forward which makes his story all the more meaningful. The penny drops for me in how this game even follows a similar course to Trials & Tribultions in how the cases are presented to you and how we get told this story from at least two perspectives.

If the series goes on ( I have no difficulty in believing it will) I suspect it may begin to focus on Anthea but it leaves enough open stories to keep older fans interested in hopes of them being resolved but this is Capcom we are on about, they ain’t no problem leaving loose ends open like several of the MegaMan series stories.

My conclusion on this is that Spirit Of Justice stands at least level with Trials and Tribultions, which was already a favorite of mine in the series. This game crafts a wonderful story about character growth and facing up to our responsibilities for the greater good of society and with the political story that feels like it mirrors parts of todays political climate I can’t help but feel the story in this game registered more with me more than perhaps it was ever intended too. Ace Attorney despite coming close to being fifteen years old manages to hold up well with its new stores and bright and vibrant characters, I guess I will dive​ into the DLC at a later date and hope that I will be able to find an excuse to play through this game again, this game comes highly recommended by me.

#nintendo #nintendo 3ds #3ds #capcom #ace attorney #ace attorney 6 #spirit of justice #phoenix wright #apollo justice #android #ios #eshop

[laurietom]

My Favorite Games of 2016

My gaming backlog is something impressive, as I typically buy a few more than I can play in any given year, and then those extras build up. The result is that I rarely play any game in its year of release unless it's a part of a favorite series, and even then, depending on how busy I am, a much anticipated game might get postponed. But I'm not adverse to playing older games. As long as the gameplay is still there I generally don't care. Maybe that's the same for you? These are the nine games I liked enough to finish for the first time in 2016, in the order I played them. Virtue's Last Reward * I enjoyed 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors for the Nintendo DS, so I intended to pick up the sequel, but took a while due to a bugged 3DS version (now patched) and not having a Vita at the time. Virtue's Last Reward is quite simply the strongest entry in the Zero Escape series. Science, pseudo-science, multiple universes, time travel, non-linear gameplay, and an incredible cast of characters made this a joy to play. I was up at 3am with tears in my eyes (on a work night!) because I had to see a particularly bittersweet sequence through. Fair warning there is a lot of reading, and the gameplay is all making choices and escape room mechanics, but if that's even remotely your bag it's worth playing. It'll mean more if you play 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors first, but the good news is that both games are coming to Steam in a remastered edition. Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest I was looking forward to Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest, and despite the child problems I blogged about, I enjoyed it. It was refreshing to have a game so focused on family and divided loyalties. I really liked the moral gray area that Corrin and her siblings occupied and as mentioned in my RPG Talk entry, I like that the final confrontation features Corrin standing together with her siblings rather than Corrin plus love interest and motley band of heroes. Familial relationships are usually set behind the romantic ones in games, so having family placed before everything else makes this unique. Zero Time Dilemma Zero Time Dilemma had a hell of a lot of hype to live up to, and at the end of the day I don't think it's going to be anyone's favorite out of the Zero Escape series, but it's still an enjoyable game. It keeps a lot of the same mechanics from Virtue's Last Reward, but suffers from a less satisfying mastermind than the other two. There's also a plot twist that people tend to either love or hate. But that said, it does a decent job of wrapping up the series, the escape rooms are still fun, and offers a lot of emotional rewards for fans of the previous two. Code Realize: Guardian of Rebirth This is the best otome game I've played to date. I would have liked to include it in my top three games of the year, and it was a narrow miss. Otome games are usually given lackluster, passive protagonists to serve as the female player insert, but not Cardia. That girl is amazing, whether she's piloting an airship, busting herself out of confinement, or being a supportive girlfriend, because why can't one person do all of that. The boyfriends are more interesting than average, with only one route that really bored me. If there's any fault to this game I'd say it's locking Lupin's route behind everyone else's and making it so clearly the "real" route. Danganronpa: Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls Ultra Despair Girls is a little strange in that I don't think it's a particular good game, though I still finished it. It's a third person shooter, which is a strange genre jump for what had been a visual novel series. I only played it when I did because the Danganronpa 3 anime had Monaca, who originated in this game. The story isn't bad, it asks good questions and even clears up some others (like where did Junko Enoshima get all those crazy robots), but I'm not a shooter fan and I can't imagine the overlap between visual novels, shooters, and Danganronpa is enough to justify this game's existence. If you suck at shooters though, there's no story penalty for playing on easy. You can still see the whole thing. Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice I still haven't posted my VN Talk for this, but the sixth entry in the Ace Attorney series was a bumpy ride. It was good, but it wasn't great, and I think this is mostly due to character bloat. Dual Destinies had three lawyer protagonists so by golly Spirit of Justice has to too, even when the game can't quite figure out what to do with them. Unlike Dual Destinies, where the story honestly belongs to all of them, when it comes down to it, Spirit of Justice is really about Apollo, but the writing tries to showcase everyone, including several supporting characters, which results in a lack of focus. But if you like Apollo, this is the game to play as he has his best moments. This War of Mine * I waffled a lot on whether to buy This War of Mine because the vertical cut-away view of the buildings made me think of old platformers I was terrible at, but This War of Mine needs very little in the way of reflexes. I bought it for the for miserable experience of surviving as a civilian in an urban warzone and I was not disappointed. There's no tutorial, but the basics can be picked up by point and click, which feels oddly immersive, as the characters you're tasked with caring for have no idea how they're going to make ends meet either. Chances are, a first playthrough is going to be unsuccessful. People will die along the way, and you'll feel awful, which is the point. You get to put down the game and go home whereas the people who really lived this life could not. It was a sobering realization. (This War of Mine was inspired by the real world Siege of Sarajevo.) The Room This was a purchase based on a friend's recommendation because we both like escape rooms. While you're not escaping anything in The Room, the type of puzzle solving is familiar to anyone who has done escape rooms, and it's a affordable fix that can be done in an afternoon or two. The story is minimal and the atmosphere creepy, though it's manageable for those who scare easily (with one possible exception during the ending, but you've solved everything by then). I'm skipping the sequel because I react poorly to jump scares, even the ones that are so mild that most people wouldn't even consider them jump scares. Civilization V * When Civilization VI came out, I realized I wanted to play a Civ game again, but rather than getting the latest and greatest at full price, I decided to pick up Civilization V during a Steam sale, which netted me the base game and all the expansions and DLC for under $14. This turned out to be $14 well spent as I've now logged an embarrassing amount of hours on it. It's a lot of strategy and management to bring my chosen civilization to victory, but fun since the AI leaders of other civilizations have their own personalities. I had a really good tussle with Caesar in my Carthage campaign, which felt appropriate. My only complaint is that Europe feels over-represented in the number of civilizations available. There are multiple options for a continent like Africa, with Carthage, Morocco, Ethiopia, Egypt, Songhai, and Zulu available, which show that the game designers did put effort into avoiding a Eurocentric world, but it feels like it's not enough when 15 of the 43 civilizations are European (17 if one counts Byzantium and Ottoman, which I'm not since they're partially in the mideast), making them slightly more than a third of what's available. As I did with my book roundup, the three games I tagged with an asterisk (*) were my favorites of the year and definitely worth playing. I'd also like to mention the four games I replayed this year since it's rare that I replay anything, and four is unprecedented. Fire Emblem: Awakening (second time) Dragon Age II (third time) Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (third time) Danganronpa 2: Good-bye Despair (second time) The Danganronpa games were mostly because of the anime and wanting to relive the experience, but Fire Emblem: Awakening and Dragon Age II were purely unprompted, with the former having happened before the release of Fire Emblem Fates.

Mirrored from: The Rat’s Den

#ace attorney #code realize #danganronpa #dragon age #entertainment roundup #fire emblem #fire emblem fates #video games #visual novel #zero escape #zero time dilemma