I beat a game!!: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
Excellent, excellent game. I'm not sure why I never had an interest in the Phoenix Wright series; I bought a copy of Trials and Tribulations for my friend who was in law school (I didn't realize that there was an overarching storyline through it), but never had much of an interest until I saw a friend playing Apollo Justice, and it looked fun as hell. It took me about a month to track down the first game, and it's one of those rare games that was worth the wait.
My criticisms are minor and mostly relate to the investigation portions of the game. The trials are goddamn exciting--battle motion lines and exaggerated reations, it's like an anime battle scene, made even more ludicrous by the fact that this is done in a courtroom. (I was on jury duty recently; it was a LASIK malpractice case, much lower stakes than the murder cases in the game, but I can tell you that this is how lawyers actually act.) One mistake too many and the entire case is lost. The investigation sequences are...much less well-paced--there's no tension, basically you're bumming around looking for clues. The trial sequences move forward of their own accord; here, if you're not sure what to do, the game grinds to a halt. Still, everything was well-designed enough that I only got stuck to the point of viewing gamefaqs twice--both times in the fifth case. (Once, I didn't pixel-hunt properly--there's a surprisingly awesome lack of that in the most part of the game, and I might have simply been lazy; the second time was because I got confused by the navigation and didn't visit an entire location.)
The fifth case is exclusive to the DS remake--the game originally came out for the GBA--and it's...kind of a mixed bag. The first four stories are much more obviously connected--they form an arc of their own--and especially at first, the fifth case seems to be just thrown in there as bonus content. Your main sidekick through the main game leaves at the end of Case 4...and is replaced by a character who looks very much like her (it's commented on in-game), and yet is incredibly annoying at first. (She grows on you.) However, they do manage to make the fifth case tie in a little more deeply to the characters' arcs--it explores some facets of their personalities, and ends up working well. And it is hard--I think I spent about as much time on the fifth case as I did the first four cases combined.
To criticize the legal system in the game as ridiculous is missing the point--of course it's ridiculous. Trials cannot last more than three days, defendants are guilty until proven innocent, evidence law can be covered in exactly two sentences, there is no jury, lawyers seem to concentrate mostly on pointing out logical flaws...and yet, it amounts to a more fun and interesting game than a straight legal sim would be. And I like the idea of a court that throws around confetti when a defendant is found not guilty. The localization is excellent; I grew up in the days of the NES and never managed to learn to take for granted that a tradition would not be all "A WINNER IS YOU."
About the only real hinderance to enjoyment I found was the text speed. Phoenix Wright is one of those games where the text types out one letter at a time. I've taken a few speed-reading tests online and generally score between 400-600 words per minute; I could read the sentences about six times in the amount of time it takes to type it out. They use the speed to great effect--excited characters type their text out very very quickly, and when a character is carefully musing on something, the text is slower--but still, it makes replaying sections tedious. I savescummed not because I thought the game was too hard, but because I didn't want to stay and read the fucking text over and over again.
I don't know if that was fixed or not in the sequels, or if navigation is made easier--but I'll spend another month hunting down the second game in order to find out.
My criticisms are minor and mostly relate to the investigation portions of the game. The trials are goddamn exciting--battle motion lines and exaggerated reations, it's like an anime battle scene, made even more ludicrous by the fact that this is done in a courtroom. (I was on jury duty recently; it was a LASIK malpractice case, much lower stakes than the murder cases in the game, but I can tell you that this is how lawyers actually act.) One mistake too many and the entire case is lost. The investigation sequences are...much less well-paced--there's no tension, basically you're bumming around looking for clues. The trial sequences move forward of their own accord; here, if you're not sure what to do, the game grinds to a halt. Still, everything was well-designed enough that I only got stuck to the point of viewing gamefaqs twice--both times in the fifth case. (Once, I didn't pixel-hunt properly--there's a surprisingly awesome lack of that in the most part of the game, and I might have simply been lazy; the second time was because I got confused by the navigation and didn't visit an entire location.)
The fifth case is exclusive to the DS remake--the game originally came out for the GBA--and it's...kind of a mixed bag. The first four stories are much more obviously connected--they form an arc of their own--and especially at first, the fifth case seems to be just thrown in there as bonus content. Your main sidekick through the main game leaves at the end of Case 4...and is replaced by a character who looks very much like her (it's commented on in-game), and yet is incredibly annoying at first. (She grows on you.) However, they do manage to make the fifth case tie in a little more deeply to the characters' arcs--it explores some facets of their personalities, and ends up working well. And it is hard--I think I spent about as much time on the fifth case as I did the first four cases combined.
To criticize the legal system in the game as ridiculous is missing the point--of course it's ridiculous. Trials cannot last more than three days, defendants are guilty until proven innocent, evidence law can be covered in exactly two sentences, there is no jury, lawyers seem to concentrate mostly on pointing out logical flaws...and yet, it amounts to a more fun and interesting game than a straight legal sim would be. And I like the idea of a court that throws around confetti when a defendant is found not guilty. The localization is excellent; I grew up in the days of the NES and never managed to learn to take for granted that a tradition would not be all "A WINNER IS YOU."
About the only real hinderance to enjoyment I found was the text speed. Phoenix Wright is one of those games where the text types out one letter at a time. I've taken a few speed-reading tests online and generally score between 400-600 words per minute; I could read the sentences about six times in the amount of time it takes to type it out. They use the speed to great effect--excited characters type their text out very very quickly, and when a character is carefully musing on something, the text is slower--but still, it makes replaying sections tedious. I savescummed not because I thought the game was too hard, but because I didn't want to stay and read the fucking text over and over again.
I don't know if that was fixed or not in the sequels, or if navigation is made easier--but I'll spend another month hunting down the second game in order to find out.
posted by R. Goodness at 8:50 PM
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