The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles - Court in a Landslide, No Escape From Reality

Mine didn't come till Friday, but have done the first case now in the first game.

This is my first AA game, and I'm playing on the TV, even though I've played VN's on the TV before and know some of AA games been ported to likes of Xbox. This feels I should be playing on a handheld, that good I've got on Switch not PS4/PC.

Then I was planning to play in handheld whilst watching a Podcast or soemthin, yet as Balla and peeps on TOH Discord pointed out they wouldn't want to do that as you'd need to be paying attention.

Well last night on the first case came to the end, I'm going to have to agree as it really rampant up the tension and now want to see more of the adventures which I just have to get used to playing on TV & no VO which to me is odd.

That's great to read Mas. Would be good to have another one of us into the series!

I've finished Adventures now.  More scattered thoughts:
- Gosh there's a lot of racism in this!  Especially from van Zieks (whose name I got wrong twice ).  Accurate reflection of London at the time I guess.  (And now.)  There's even a crack at Japanese sexism too.
- Iris Wilson is too much.  I thought it when I originally saw her and I'm thinking it now.  Ten-year-old writing and inventing prodigy with pink hair...  It feels like an attempt to make the Pearl lightning strike again, but she's just not as good.
- Susato, on the other hand, is excellent.  I really think she's a tremendous side-character.  Enjoying her lots.
- Soseki Natsume also fits under the umbrella of 'a bit much'.  I don't care how impressive a literary allusion he is (that no doubt works a lot better in Japanese), very time he does his Absolutely Abhorrent Alliterative Attacks I cringe a bit.  
- Investigations are always really tricky to get right in AA games, because they're so much worse than the court cases.  The first few games' segments could be a bit too obtuse, but I think once the Magatama was introduced it probably hit the sweet spot.  At this point I think we've gone too far the other way.  Outside the Dances of Deduction there was hardly any investigation, to the point that when there was a 'Present' required that wasn't handed to me on a plate it stumped me for several minutes.  Also, the investigation segments now feel far too cordoned off.  

Final thoughts for game one:

Buskalilly wrote:

This was inevitable, buddy . . .

Maybe.  Or maybe Resolve, as suggested by its first case, might be much better...

I've played the first case. I love the Meiji setting. I dislike how high-stakes the first case is; I miss when these games opened with a lighter, sillier one - the Butz and a failed robbery, y'know? Also, so far Ryunosuke isn't different enough from his descendant.

Buskalilly wrote:

Also, so far Ryunosuke isn't different enough from his descendant.

I'm okay with this personally. Attempts to reinvent the lawyer wheel (Apollo Justice, Athena Cykes) have largely been failures. I can only think of one all-new lawyer that I feel has been successful - and, er, I won't name them because of spoilers.

As for starting with a lighter case... fair enough. My favourite first case is probably from T&T, about which that definitely cannot be said! Although I did like Resolve's a great deal.

I'm nearly finished case 2 of game 2. Game 2 is so far a step up.

I just did guess what you call case 2 of Game 1, I enjoyed that and just Case 3 of Game 1 which is also highstakes thought I'd be defending Killer Whales.

There's been a distinct lack of defending killer whales and interrogating parrots so far, it must be said. I'd say Case 3 is pretty average in its seriousness for the series.

I'm onto Game 2 Case 3. It's really interesting. Some top cases in the second game particularly.

And finished!  The second game is much better than the first one I think, benefiting from the first game carrying the heavy lifting of the tutorials.  That said, the final case had a couple of duff bits.  Some final thoughts about the game, especially the last couple of cases:

Spoiler:

Balladeer wrote:

I'm okay with this personally.  Attempts to reinvent the lawyer wheel (Apollo Justice, Athena Cykes) have largely been failures.  

I like Apollo . . .

Quote :

As for starting with a lighter case... fair enough.  My favourite first case is probably from T&T, about which that definitely cannot be said!  

I think that one was kind-of-light initially. Young Phoenix is hilarious as a pathetic lovebird, and the darker stuff with Dahlia is mostly only revealed later in the game.

True, it was lighter initially.  The first case of the second game might work better for you then.  I really like that one.

Maybe you just like loud characters more than I do.

I started this today and tackled the surprisingly meaty first case. I read the posts above about whether or not it's a good thing having a more serious tone for the first case and I'm personally on the side of preferring it. I think having some bigger story beats to get your teeth stuck into works for setting up the overarching plot of the game as opposed to a more silly throwaway case. AA4-1 is one of my favourites in the series for that exact reason.

As for TGAA1-1, I do think the pacing of the case was a bit off towards the end of it all...

spoiler for TGAA1-1:

...but I enjoyed it as a whole. I'm keen to see how the new Trial mechanics play into some more complex cases. None of the characters have made a huge initial impression, but 'tis early doors yet. More to come!

Yep apart from the Prosecutor and the culprit I don't think there's anyone too memorable early doors. More to come indeed!

Finished the second episode of TGAA1 today!

I wasn't sure what to make of Sholmes initially, but I warmed up to him by the end of the episode quite nicely. I thought they were going for a bit of a Gilderoy Lockhart thing at first where it would be revealed he's a massive fraud, but I like that he is actually competent at points and is just massively scatterbrained. I suppose they needed to dumb him down a bit as having actual in-canon Holm-, er, Sholmes palling about with Naruhodo would just be the detective solving everything by himself.

Susato seems like she's going to be a good character too - a more competent Maya, in many ways.

As for some more spoilery thoughts on the episode...

TGAA1-2 Spoilers:

I'm definitely getting into this now. I've seen some folks compare TGAA2 to AA3 which has me super excited to get there!

...ooh, I'm not sure I'd go that far. Anyway, I'm glad you get on with Sholmes better than I did, since he's obviously a key part and does impact how well you'll enjoy the duo.

Finished Episode 3!

I really liked the jury mechanic/plot device they brought in for the English courtroom trials. Much like Kurain's legal system in AA6, it makes the English trials feel sufficiently different from the trials we're used to back in Japanifornia. Plus, seeing the scales of justice tip back and forward mid trial was wonderfully cheesy, and I loved it.

Some more spoilery thoughts on characters and court proceedings...

TGAA 1-3 Spoilers:

Yep I hated Iris the whole way through. You can imagine that between her and not liking Sholmes, I had a somewhat rocky ride through the games.

Van Zieks... guess you'll see.

I'd imagine that the character archetype that Iris represents goes over a lot better in Japan than with Western audiences. I'm hoping she's only in it in small doses...

This one seems to be freely available on Amazon at the moment, so I'll be picking it up before the end of the week. The last AA game I played was Apollo Justice, so at least it doesn't have a huge hurdle to jump to be better than that.

Oooooft, that's not a good place to leave the series! At least download Spirit of Justice on 3DS if you can, I'd say it's up there with 1 and 3. Then again, TGAAC is all-new so it's probably a great place to hop back in.

Balladeer wrote:

Oooooft, that's not a good place to leave the series!  At least download Spirit of Justice on 3DS if you can, I'd say it's up there with 1 and 3.  Then again, TGAAC is all-new so it's probably a great place to hop back in.

Oddly enough, I was thinking about the 3DS editions only this morning. Was there more than one? I recall Dual Destinies. I found what they did to Nick to be quite depressing in Apollo Justice and it left me with a sour taste in my mouth thereafter.

My copy is now on its way! Not often you bump into reasonable import stockists on Amazon, but here we are.

I don't think there's a UK physical copy of TGAAC, Stu! And yeah, Spirit of Justice was the second mainline 3DS Ace Attorney title and is 100% worth playing.

You might even possibly like DD Stu: it undoes what they do with Nick in AJ.

Finished the fourth case! I had no idea that the defendant in this case was a real person and it amused me to no end finding out he actually for the most part hated his time studying in England in real life as well as in the game. Brilliantly done.

Some more spoilery thoughts...

TGAA 1-4 Spoilers:

Balladeer wrote:

JayMoyles wrote:

I'm hoping she's only in it in small doses...

Oh no.

OH YES

She is literally the worst thing about the games.

I actually found Mr. Natsume a bit annoying: glad you liked him more than me!

Oh, don't get me wrong, he still annoyed me with his nervous tics and all - I was just amused how they took the historical evidence of him hating living in England and translated that into Ace Attorney terms.