Blackfire Posted April 15, 2019 Posted April 15, 2019 Publisher Capcom Reviewed on Core i-5-8400, GTX 1060, 16GB RAM Multiplayer No Link Official Site CHECK AMAZON Before I became familiar with Japanese media, I associated courtroom dramas with the no-nonsense rulings of Judge Judy or the uber-serious suspense of A Few Good Men. Meanwhile, in Japan's fictional courtrooms, the silly and the dramatic is found in equal measure, making it a hugely po[CENSORED]r genre. This is especially true of Ace Attorney, which imbues its trials with all the visual and stylistic trappings of an engaging anime serial. Ace Attorney is the latest in a line of HD remasters of Capcom's previously console-only games. Prior to Ace Attorney, hardly any visual novels were officially localised, and even now it’s still a niche that more commonly brings to mind dating games over adventure. Ace Attorney's courtroom setting and goofy humour still set it apart; both from visual novels and games at large. Trials range from ridiculous to genuinely suspenseful. Rather than just a collection of selectable player reactions, Phoenix Wright is one of the few main characters in this type of game who gets to freely express himself. While he often seems overwhelmed by the shenanigans around him, he genuinely cares—making me care in turn. You learn everything you need to know to become a winner in the courtroom during your very first case. Fresh from law school, defence attorney Phoenix has promised to get his best friend Larry Butz acquitted of murder. Your clients are generally hapless people like him, and in order to keep them out of jail, you have to identify the true culprit and then—to quote Wright—"put the pressure on until they squeal". First you listen to a witness's testimony, then pick it apart statement by statement during the cross-examination. You can ask a witness to clarify ("Hold it!") or expose inaccuracies and straight-up lies by presenting a piece of contradicting evidence ("Objection!"). All evidence is handily collected in the court record, which you can access at any time. Presenting evidence can be frustrating however, because not only do you have to present the right piece, it also has to be presented at the right moment. If a witness is elaborating on a prior statement in their next sentence, either seem like viable moments to object, but the game will only acknowledge the right sentence to do so. Get it wrong, and you'll be penalised and lose part of a health bar. The more is on the line, the more health you stand to lose, but you can save at any time from the options menu. Diagnosis: Murder Starting with the second of 14 episodes, you also put your Sherlock Holmes hat on and do some sleuthing ahead of a court date. Looking for clues out in the world is an unwieldy affair, as you have to move from screen to screen in a certain order and randomly click just about anything that could be of interest. Sometimes you move about aimlessly without knowing what to do next until a person appears out of nowhere or you've finished all available conversations. Ace Attorney is a hilarious game, highly dependent on wordplay and overdramatic witnesses Trials soon turn into lengthy affairs over multiple days, in which dramatic revelations and new evidence regularly provide interesting twists and turns. Yet Ace Attorney isn't just a 'case of the week' affair—over time you come to know an eclectic cast of main characters whose backstories intertwine with the seemingly unrelated cases you're trying to solve. Many episodes over the course of the trilogy involve Wright's assistant Maya Fey, who belongs to a family of spirit mediums who to help with investigations by channelling the dead, for example. Police detective and lovable village idiot Dick Gumshoe is another regular. Of course no trial would be complete without prosecuting attorneys, Wright's opponents in court. In the first game, this role is filled by Miles Edgeworth, a delightfully sour-faced fop who wears actual cravats as part of his everyday outfit. Edgeworth is my new favourite, because how many men do you know, fictional or otherwise, who can rock a magenta suit and a tragic backstory? Edgeworth provides a lot of the overarching story's backbone, as do the Feys. Ace Attorney does put a lot of stock in character development, and watching Phoenix relationship with his friends grow over time is heart-warming. As much as these characters grew on me though, the individual cases remained my main source of enjoyment over the course of the three games. Still, I appreciate the interplay between random trials and more personal stories. Murder, She Translated The localisation is Ace Attorney's actual star. Ace Attorney is a hilarious game, highly dependent on wordplay and overdramatic witnesses being completely oblivious to the gravity of the situation they find themselves in. There's more than one running gag that stretches over several episodes, and like SEGA's Yakuza series, it's often just Wright's deadpan reactions to everyone else's outlandish behaviour that makes each interaction so much fun. The localisation confers each suspect's linguistic ticks and is overall vital to helping you find out just when they say something that doesn't quite add up. To help illustrate the scope of influence the localisation has, you just need to look at names in the series. Each character’s name in the original is a pun. Take Phoenix Wright—his first name was chosen for its heroic sound, then modified into "Nick” by several characters, becoming a literal nickname. His original name is Ryuichi Naruhodo, and his surname is actually the Japanese way to say "right” as an affirmation. To justify using English names however, localisation moved the setting of the entire game. A drastic decision in order to accurately localise as many puns as possible, especially when the Japanese setting becomes increasingly obvious in the second and third games, but the frankly ridiculous puns give Ace Attorney its own charm. When it comes to having you uncover evidence, Ace Attorney uses a curious combination of very eagerly pushing hints onto you (complete with marking text passages of interest in red), and staying completely schtum. Every piece of evidence you collect will become relevant at some point, but sometimes you only find out by trial and error what Phoenix is referring to. When situations enter the territory of the absurd, cases turn into guesswork. The creative twists that make each criminal case interesting also make them so difficult to puzzle out. Still, Ace Attorney avoids feeling punishing. During my playthrough I only saw the game over screen once. Anime calls for drama and highly unlikely events the same way it calls for characters with candy-coloured hair Solving a puzzle feels great, thanks to the frankly smug way in which Wright explains his deductions. Ace Attorney would likely be half as long if Wright didn't announce his breakthroughs in the most dramatic fashion imaginable, followed by a lengthy explanation to make sure everyone's on board. "You want to know what this business card signifies? I'm going to tell you what it signifies!" Clickbait, in my games? Thankfully, a simple button press is enough to skip to the end of a sentence or to have the text run slightly faster.
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