I finally finished Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies today and I was absolutely blown away by the final case. It must go without saying that spoilers follow.
Dual Destinies features fully orchestrated music
It's been five years since Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney came out. I was overjoyed when it released because it was the first new title to come out since I'd started playing the series. After all, the first three games were localizations of Game Boy Advance games originally released starting in 2001. Here in North America we didn't get access to the series until 2005 when we received an enhanced remake of the original title. Even then, I didn't try the series until Trials and Tribulations had been out for some time. Once I'd discovered the series, I devoured the games. I fell in love with the concept.
I never played a lot of adventure games when I was younger--not because I wasn't interested in the concept, mind you. I never had access to them. Most were older PC titles that I wouldn't normally be exposed to. Aside from Blizzard's catalog, I had never been much of a PC gamer. I spent most of my childhood playing Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, and other similar games. I was intrigued at the idea of games being about narrative, about character. It was never enough for me just to compete objectives and get points--I wanted to care about the characters I was taking control of. RPGs, although admittedly not featuring amazingly well-crafted storylines, did go far in scratching that itch.
There was never a time when I was younger that I had the opportunity to discover the appeal of adventure games. To this day, I haven't explored the huge variety of games available to me. I absolutely adored The Secret of Monkey Island and The Longest Journey, but these are games I've only discovered in the past couple of years. I find games that focus primarily on storytelling and problem solving pretty fascinating, and I'd love to play more of those classic games--and I will, in time.
So when I played Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney for the first time, it was like nothing I'd ever seen before. You play as a lawyer and solve cases? I have to admit that at the time it sounded like a very dry and boring concept. I think for most people it's a tough concept to swallow, but as soon as I played through that very first case detailing the exploits of Phoenix's old pal Larry Butz, I was hooked. It felt like such a refreshing concept, even though it was essentially just a modern interpretation of classic adventure games.
A series like Ace Attorney has a way of really making you become attached to its characters. You spend a lot of time with them. The series is very dialogue heavy--and I mean, that's basically all the game is. It's a lot of talking. You spend a great deal of time investigating crime scenes (which is apparently a lawyer's job in Phoenix's backwards world) but the bulk of the game revolves around questioning and cross-examining witnesses.
The point is that by the time I finished the first three games of the series, I was already a devoted fan. I was hungry for more. Apollo Justice came out and I bought it on release day. And you know what? I enjoyed it, but it's not worth obfuscating that I was disappointed. The character that I'd come to know and love in the last three titles of the series was no longer even a part of the title of the game. He had been relegated to a cameo character--and now we were expected to accustom ourselves to this new guy, Apollo.
My initial impressions of Apollo were not entirely positive. I felt like he was loud and obnoxious. To me, he just didn't have the same charm as Phoenix, whose primary claim to fame was a devout belief in his client and just barely gliding by on the skin of his teeth by bluffing his way through trials. Apollo felt like an inferior copy. However, despite my misgivings I did eventually somewhat warm to the character and I enjoyed the game overall--but not without gripes. Characters from previous titles in the series were nowhere to be seen, aside from Phoenix himself who was now barely recognizable without his classic blue suit.
The new hotshot prosecutor Klavier Gavin just did not pack the same punch that Miles Edgeworth did. Trucy, Phoenix's adopted daughter also felt like an inferior replacement to Maya. Everything just felt out of sorts and it made me kind of sad. Were we never going to return to those classic characters again? I could learn to live with this new cast and I would certainly still play any games that came out, but I longed for a return to form.
For a few years, I kind of forgot about the Ace Attorney series. Due to the extremely linear nature of the game they don't lend themselves well to replaying--so details drifted out of my mind as they so often do. As such, I missed the announcements leading up to the Dual Destinies release and as such only heard about it right before it came out. It was a nice surprise, and I picked it up a few weeks later, my misgivings about Apollo Justice mostly forgotten.
Dual Destinies has absolutely satisfied me as a new entry into the Ace Attorney series. That much is clear. Apollo Justice was a bit of a misstep, but this new entry has somehow made the entire Ace Attorney mythos richer--while continuing to celebrate the existence of Apollo. Phoenix Wright once again takes the helm, but this time in lieu of sidekicks he instead has partners. Apollo and newcomer Athena are just as important to the plot as Phoenix himself, if not in fact moreso.
Not since Trials and Tribulations has an Ace Attorney game impressed me with the depth and interconnectedness of its cases. Each case is relevant to each other, even if the reasons for which are not initially apparent. Cases 4 and 5 in particular lead into each other in a way that they might as well be one massive case all its own.
Dual Destinies also makes good on its misstep with the bland Klavier from the previous main series title and introduces a new prosecutor by the name of Simon Blackquill, a raven-haired convict with a mysterious past and a fascination for samurai culture. His importance to the overall plot cannot be overstated--and although I am loathe to admit it, he is certainly a worthy successor for the mighty Edgeworth. Speaking of the original Ace Attorney prosecutor, several familiar characters show their faces in this title--a fact that brought a grin to my face that has not since left!
Athena Cykes is my favorite Ace Attorney character in a long time. She takes the primary role herself in several occasions, not only as the primary lawyer, but with her invaluable Mood Matrix program, which analyzes the emotions of witnesses. Her cloudy past and mysterious connection to other new Ace Attorney characters is one of the new title's highlights. I think I prefer her to Maya because as previously stated--she is not just a sidekick.
I've finished the main game but have yet to tackle the DLC episode just yet. I don't imagine it'll have much of an impact on the overall story, but it should be fun to play through. I'll probably write about it at a later time. This entry is getting way too long anyway!
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