Apollo Justice is an interesting game to discuss.
It's quality made be endlessly debated, but one thing that cannot be denied I think is that it's a game which gets people
talking. People will endlessly debate about the merit of the time skip, how Takumi approached the new main cast, if Succession failed or succeeded at what it set out to do, and if those things were even good ideas. People develop their own, very strong opinions about the game, and that, in a way, shows it succeeds on some level, because it makes people care about it.
I say this because the most striking thing I can label about about the two 3DS games is how little people seem to...care about them, in a sense. I've see people almost daily head through the original trilogy for the first time, and have had many debates with Apollo Justice's fans, but the most of a reaction I tend to see for 5/6 is a resounding "I enjoyed it". They're games which seem to leave surprisingly little impact on people, and more often than not attract complaints, especially from AA4 fans. (Opinions I mostly don't care about)
This review can be considered, in a sense, my dissertation on why AA5 is framed like this. While I will be getting very,
very critical of the game, I want everyone who reads this to come into it with an open mind, and consider the points I'm about to make. That's what analytics are for, after all.
~~
1. This Is A Bad Game So, with that out of the way, we begin the dissection of the game, with an opener that says
everything you are to expect.
Turnabout Countdown starts on a literal bang, blowing up an entire courtroom in a terrorist attack. It's a strong opener for the game, a bold new direction overlaid upon Phoenix's narration about a dark era which the world is in. Everything looks more or less good...and then we start the case.
Apollo Emiya has entered the courtroom The nature of a first case in Ace Attorney is an interesting thing to ponder because, functionally, they lack the larger narrative space which allows them to build a storyline around, so what they act as is two-fold, a relatively basic murder mystery which can function as an effective short story, and an establishing model from which themes and narrative arcs can build off of. How this was approached started with simple tutorial scenarios with obvious villains in the first two games, after which Takumi took and expanded this into something far more workable in longer, more narratively complex mini-cases with their own twists and reveals, while setting up the direction of the game itself. Memories, Trump and Investigation 2's Target all follow this formula, and function thus as strong openers to their respective titles.
Countdown does not do this. Not only does it outright show the killer in the opening seconds, robbing the case of any mystique it might've had, but its actual story never once diverges into any interesting scenarios which invite further interest into the mystery. The killer is an incredibly one-dimensional psychopath who does virtually nothing interesting, the defendant never is given any agency or personal narrative in the case, and the resolution, rather than creating some kind of new perspective on the mystery, essentially just acts as a mundane "turnaround" on how the killer did it. It, in essence, is just an updated version of the early first cases, down to the revelation of the killer using their position to hide his criminal lifestyle, only in this case the player isn't even allowed to reveal it.
Things become further problematic as the case has an additional "purpose", one far more destructive to the game itself; the reestablishment of Phoenix Wright as protagonist.
I now present; Uberwright The problem with the use of Phoenix in AA5 is that he's
not a character, he's a marketing device. While Takumi!Phoenix was written as a person with actual relationships and a character arc, 5/6!Phoenix is written as this very broad idea of "Ace Attorney protagonist", who solves murders and proves the identity of the innocent. While Takumi would have Phoenix in flashback do something as stupid as literally eating evidence to protect a likely murderer, actually have a mental breakdown at the possibility of Maya being killed or even lie or forge evidence to catch the villain, this Phoenix remains almost comically resilient to any kind of actual emotional reaction to the things around him, and instead only reacts with broad slapstick. A character says something mildly surprising, and Phoenix's continual response is to just go "WHHHHHAAATTT!?", but when his own daughter is taken hostage he treats the situation as at most a mild issue. He never once uses clever or less moral tactics, and instead the game falls back on him constantly bluffing, which in the original trilogy was supposed to be an
inaccurate assessment of him.
The cipher like existence of Phoenix in the game has a knock-on effect when associated with the characters around him. In the first case, we Athena, a rookie lawyer defending her best friend Juniper from terrorism accusations, a reasonable setup for a first case, but then it becomes about Phoenix, who has never met Juniper, has no relationship of any kind with her for the rest of the story, and doesn't change in the slightest from the cases events. In essence, all he accomplishes is act as the front man who heroically protects justice, which is great...if you're a marketing house who has no actual understanding of the work Takumi actually wrote. If you're someone who actually values a good story, on the other hand, then all Phoenix becomes is an anchor perpetually at the games feet, as it struggles to even justify his existence.
Beyond that, Countdown does a miserable job actually prepping players up for the rest of the game. The actual bombing goes unresolved, which
would be a good hook, but that event turns out to be almost entirely superfluous to the story. The other thing, Apollo's sudden departure, is summarily botched in downright bizarre way. The game frames itself as it will now be explaining what lead to Apollo's actions...only it doesn't. Nothing about Apollo's actions is related to the chronologically earlier cases, and Athena knows exactly why he left (because he flat out told her), but is still angsting about it like she has no idea what's going on. The first case essentially acts as the start to a narrative which, in essence...doesn't exist.
And trust me, this is just the start of the problems we'll be facing.
~~
2. A New Stage Of Missing Pieces Dual Destinies is divided into what, on paper, seems like a fairly logical format. After the opening case, we are given three cases (one of which shuffled to the DLC late in development, for whatever reason) set chronologically before the first case, each starring one of the three lawyers, before proceeding onto the traditional giant AA final case. This is a pretty logical idea on the surface. In practice...not so much.
Anyway, let's discuss our new heroine/protagonist, shall we?
Athena's expressions are a true highlight of the game. Kudos to Fuse. Athena is an interesting addition to the main cast, I can say that much. She's a pretty standard genki girl character in personality with a short fuse and an excitable attitude, who acts before thinking and is prone to making mistakes, and generally acts like...about what you'd exact of a teenage newbie lawyer. This definitely stands out in contrast to Apollo's nature of hot-blooded determination and attempted professionalism, so it's most definitely not a repeat of another character. There's a lot to like about her, and unlike some people I genuinely do think she fits in with Takumi's world. She's just a very good character overall.
Unfortunately, while I like Athena the character, her
execution leaves something to be desired. Her character struggles with this very complicated divide in how she's written to function both as a protagonist
and a heroine, and in reality doesn't really function either role well.
One of the first things we learn about Athena is that she's a prodigy, having both an attorney's badge and psychology degree at the age of 18. This clearly is setting her up a genius of some kind, but the game never
shows it like it did with actual canon child prodigy Trucy, and indeed when we view Athena's POV she acts like a completely normal teenager...who just happens to have a full law license.
Now, in isolation, there's nothing necessarily wrong with having Athena act the way she does, but it demonstrates a pretty clear conflict in the characters written ideas which prevents her from forming any kind of cohesive identity. This can been seen in how the game tries to pair her with the other lawyers; her interactions with Apollo are okay as co-workers if a little stiff, but her and Phoenix have virtually zero chemistry together when she takes the role of assistant (which is three cases), because unlike Trucy she has nothing that could give her sway over Wright as a character, but there's zero emotional connection like with Maya which can make their interactions feel meaningful.
The larger, encompassing issue, is that Athena, despite being far and away the central character of the game, isn't given any kind of arc of proper progression with emotional beats. Her backstory is something the game actively avoids addressing until a couple of exposition dumps near the end of the game, and nothing she goes through, even when it involves something as personal as clearing the name of her childhood best friend, actually seems to emotionally impact her or bring out anything new about the character. This fundamentally underlines the generally directionless, inconsistent nature of DD's writing that is built largely on incredibly isolated scenarios which fail to build on each other, but it is especially problematic when taken with a character who is given major prominence in every part of the story. What it results in is that Athena is an excellent character in isolation held back by a story unable to do anything with her.
https://preview.redd.it/9oqzxzvqepg61.jpg?width=683&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1b7054941e3cc2589ed2a00b4e72acfd02f6554b Blackquill, the new rival, is somewhat fittingly in a similar boat as Athena. The idea of the character, a former samurai turn dark ronin, who despite his ruthlessness and manipulative court demeanour is genuinely on the side of good, is a genuinely unique and non-derivative premise for a rival. Furthermore, the game actually allows him to carry himself in trials while still allowing him to be
wrong, allowing him to avoid the pitfalls Klavier suffered from. He's surprisingly good for comedy as well, with his dry wit opening up a lot of opportunities for great laughs.
Unfortunately, due to how AA5 is structured, Blackquill is robbed of something far more important; namely a consistent building relationship with the rest of the cast. With each case stuck with a different lawyer, the interplay he has never is able to really expand into more something fully realized, not helped by his lack of appearances outside the courtroom. This is most fatal in his relationship with Athena; which despite being nominally the most important in the game is given only a single conversation to support it.
The rest of the main ranges from thin to non-existent. Phoenix I've already gone over. Fulbright is an entertaining comic relief, but not much beyond that, he never gets to develop the kind of placement in the ensemble Gumshoe and Ema achieved. And the other returning characters are written in not just incredibly downplayed roles, but as outright facsimiles of themselves, with even Apollo suffering from this despite being still a playable character. Dual Destinies has in general a problem with how...people act, but we'll get more into that as we go.
The last thing I'll touch on here is the ENG script, which is...not good. AA has famously had incredibly high-quality localizations, but DD's is
easily the worst of the professionally held games. Sentences often carry a lot of rather unnatural language and overuse of nouns (a hallmark of poor JP -> ENG conversion), with attempts to translate comedy that reads
incredibly cringe-inducing and forced. Athena is easily the worst victim of this, with a lot of very strange lines talking about "hearts" (a result of translating "kokoro" too literally) that at times kill the mood. It's not
bad, but it def feels like it was rushed, and a couple of noticeable mistakes (like a bug which causes a major plot hole in Academy) and frequent typos supports that. Still, it's the least of Dual Destinies problems.
~~
3. An Unravelment Atop The New Era And now we get to the reasons AA5 is a bad work of fiction, starting from something very basic; how the game is written.
Poor Juniper, who deserved so much more than you were given. I'm going to start off with something a little strange, but I think is important to understanding the real faults with the game. It's in the second investigation of Academy, after the general aftermath. By this point, the player has witnessed Juniper, Hugh and Robin all confess to the murder in an effort to protect the others. Tension is at a high, and it's very clear that the three do genuinely about each other despite being three very different people. This, obviously, creates the obvious question as to why that would be. And yet, this is what's given when Juniper is asked about it:
- Juniper: "Even though we were in different courses, we really bonded from the first day of school. We vowed to bring an end to the dark age of the law."
These two sentences are literally all that is given as to why the three's friendship is a thing, in spite of the entire premise of the case being about that very subject. Two sentences which essentially do nothing to explain how they became friends, why they became friends, or what exactly that friendship meant to them. Rather than explaining
why their friendship is important and has to be repaired, the game instead just says it
is important, and leaves it at that.
I talk about this because this is a persistent problem throughout the game. Story elements, character relationships and other such factors which build a narrative are consistently glossed over, given as little detail as possible or are written in a way that separates them from any kind of actual narrative arc. Some plot points, most notably Hugh's injured hand, are introduced as humongous revelations, only to be given quick, unsatisfying answers which act divorced from the mystery at hand, and the game virtually never tries to build complex backstories for why the murders happened to begin with.
https://preview.redd.it/7wt6lei7fpg61.jpg?width=686&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c57d6355d762edb4db4c4af2e383ebf955014e13 This problem is compounded by another substantial issue, that the game keeps introducing these excellent premises for mystery stories, and then does virtually nothing with any of them. While the concepts of a rural town which believes in a demonic creature, or a school drama with bloodshed, aren't exactly
unique concepts to Japanese mysteries, they are excellent models for an AA take on them, but DD consistently swerves away from the various ideas that make those premises engaging, such as the influence of town superstition or the corrupt nature of the Japanese education system, and instead makes everything about how a select villain is bad and needs to be stopped, wasting the potential each case has.
Indeed, the one case which doesn't do this, Reclaimed, shows off the un-ambition of the game in a different way. The entire case, point to point, is essentially
the exact same as the second games Big Top down to the roles of major characters, just with minor changes that if anything cause the new case to make substantially less sense (for one thing, it requires the past victim to have never had a proper autopsy) and also less emotionally powerful. By consequence, what the case ends up is something far less pointed and direct.
This is all made worse by how poorly structured each case is. Normally, when designing a mystery story around an interactive scenario, it's generally a good idea to design it around a general flow of information, slowly constructing various narrative threads that gradually coalesces into a singular whole. This can be as simple as, say, establishing in the lead-in to the murder establishing a backstory that we learn is more involved in the murder itself than first thought, as Takumi did in the second game with Reunion.
DD, meanwhile, basically devotes long,
long stretches of cases to nothing happening. Narrative arcs are largely absent, and instead trials mainly consists of the protagonists making random guesses on how the murders
might have actually played out, be proven wrong, and then repeating the pattern until something outside of their control happens that furthers the case. This is at it's most insulting in the final trial, where the biggest mystery of the game, what happened with UR-1, is resolved not through an actual deduction, but by the characters conveniently having the answer handed to them via a video feed.
All this put together makes the cases incredibly disengaging to play, with little in the way of lasting surprises and aimless, limp mysteries. Occasionally there's a funny joke or a good interjection, but mostly there's little to add up, and they just come off as really lifeless. Just "another" AA mystery at best, rather than something special.
Of course, there's another issue there...
~~
4. The Morality of Cherished Killings Tone is an important thing when it comes to discussing art, especially art which often switches what kind of content it's presenting between serious and comedic. A work of fiction, when involved in this kind of dichotomy, essentially present a game of how exactly the two sides are presented and, more crucially, how they interact. One cannot look at Yakuza for it's complex crime and social dramas or its wacky, off-the-wall side content without considering how one interacts with the other, and in the process creates the narratives which form the work of fiction we, the audience, know as Yakuza.
I bring this up because it's a perspective important to Ace Attorney as a franchise, namely in regard to Takumi's work. A lot of lazy hack pundits like to wholesale frame the franchise as some kind of stock "funny lawyer game" due to its comedic scenarios and witty dialogue, but that sort of perspective acts in disregard to, say, the significant amounts of suicides or explicit references to suicide, one which is outright witnessed onscreen.
Rather, what AA as a franchise is using the comedic scenarios as
accessories to the main mystery plotlines, which are used to balance tone and create a consistent rhythm to the action. While comedic incidents with comic relief characters and fun banter are indeed part of the franchises DNA, they almost never act in interaction to the serious murder plots being interacted with, and oftentimes are recontextualized in a darker light after specific revelations. Even Recipe, the most comedic case Takumi wrote, is at its core a fairly serious story about financial debts and the control money has on people's lives, even if the villain is yakuza Phoenix.
I'm discussing this, just to make it clear how AA5...forgets this.
Remember, this is the franchise where a man killed himself onscreen. DD seems to have been founded off this genuine misunderstanding of what exactly Ace Attorney as a franchise even
is, born of developers stuck in a feedback loop of marketing which wholly simplified and ignored the actual content of the games themselves. The game seems to be built on portraying AA as this wacky cartoon world where comically evil villains commit murders that the heroes valiantly solve. Settings purposely involve absurd concepts such as a yokai village, municipal merger and a pro-wrestler in a single case, wacky robots that don't remotely fit the technology of the setting, and a case which's premise is Phoenix defending an orca in a court of law.
Of note, the orca demonstrates a very specific failing to understand the franchise. The game attempts to justify its own absurdity by arguing "Phoenix cross-examined a parrot once"...only it forgets that, in-context, the parrot was a desperate but genuinely logical decision Phoenix made when backed into a corner. It
wasn't the utterly nonsense scenario of a character deciding to request for something with no human rights be defended in a court of law.
The misunderstanding of characters carries over to the character writing. DD seems to misunderstand that, while Takumi wrote his characters with
quirks, he still wrote them as people with humanity, but DD just seems often only into making characters based around whatever zany gimmicks they could come up with. The thing is, it doesn't need to be this way, but the game seems utterly disinterested in such matters. Jinxie is given an unlikely friendship with Trucy, a dead mother and schizophrenia(!?), but the game never uses those things to make a full human being, leaving her with just yokai jokes (which are borderline offensive given her condition).
The nature of tone however gets really, really interesting when one considers something almost as important; morality.
This line is important. Morality in mystery stories is an important concept to discuss because it imprints the general sense of complexity. Mysteries are, more or often than not, about the truth behind some kind of negative act, and in the context of a series about murders and criminals. If there is no sense of deeper morality, then all the detective is is a hero defeating cartoon villains. And, as Edgeworth made clear in Farewell, the protagonists of Ace Attorney are not "heroes", for a hero is someone who can't understand people.
Takumi understood the need to understand morality in mysteries. Starting from the second game, nearly every case he did would include at least one character who, despite being someone who undeniably did something
wrong, is still treated with humanity as a part of the narrative. Sometimes it was the culprit, sometimes an important secondary character, oftentimes the defendant, each of these times would be characters whose stories were framed with humanity in part of the crimes they committed, and that was integral to the series developing a sense of emotional nuance.
Dual Destinies takes that crucial part of mystery writing, and flat out disregards it. Every murder is the work of a single villain with deliberately one-dimensional, unlikable personalities that you are supposed to hate. Motives, what little there are, are never given as part of the story, and in two instances are only given by Blackquill in passing once the villain has been defeated. None of the murders are given accomplices, the killers
always act alone with no other characters committing a criminal act of any kind. This is especially blatant in regards to Academy, where the game spends an inordinate amount of time building up as to if one of the three friends did something wrong, only to reveal it was all just the obvious villain character while the three get a perfect happy ending.
There are only two exceptions to this, and both in doing so
prove the rule. Aura, while she does take hostages and does go to jail, is almost completely disregarded by the narrative the moment the actual trial starts. She gets maybe ten lines tops after the opening statement, with her only motive given being the general implication that she was in love with Athena's mother, and then is basically forgotten about once her role in the story is done. She is more or less treated as a plot device to enable the final trial to happen, and her driving motivations as a character, namely her resentment to Metis' own daughter for being more important to Metis than she was, are never discussed or confronted.
Rimes, on the other hand, isn't as much disregarded as he is, in a sense, valorised. Despite his motive being essentially the same as Godot, debatably the most morally grey character in the franchise, with more or less the same outcome, Marlon is treated as someone genuinely good who just made a tragic mistake, whereas Godot is explicitly framed by the narrative as a deeply flawed and complex figure. This is pressed even more as Marlon is essentially rewarded for his motives, getting to return to the aquarium after a few months rehabilitating, while Godot is expressly punished even as the story treats him as a tragic and sympathetic character.
The biggest example of AA5's stunted sense of morality, however, is easily Myriam Scuttlebutt.
She's cute, I can give that much. Myriam is introduced early into Academy, and the game makes explicit is meant to be someone you
do not like. From the very start she overtly lies about being a friend of Juniper, only for it be outed that she continually spreads malicious rumours about her seemingly out of some kind of inherent dislike. Over the course her next few appearances, she's also shown to be rude, a chronic liar, having zero journalistic ethics, openly practices an ideology repeatedly vilified by the narrative, and outright lies about what she witnessed purely to make Juniper look more guilty. This...makes sense. Myriam is, in the context of the case, an antagonist, her role is to act as an initial roadblock for the heroes in proving Juniper's innocence, and acts as a buffer before the friends secrets start coming to light.
It's
after the trial, however, when Myriam's entire character does a radical 180, and she suddenly transforms into a comically inept loser who's "secret" desire is to be Juniper's friend, with all her incredibly nasty and malicious actions being either ignored or brushed aside, even getting to stay at the school despite it being said multiple times any criminal act is grounds for expulsion. This seemingly gigantic turn in character is done almost extensively because the game doesn't want to, or arguably doesn't have the ability to, confront the idea of a genuinely unlikable person who isn't someone who can be directly punished by the player. Consequently, the games only means of solving this contradiction is to have such a character radically transform in personality, even when it makes little sense. And I know this is what the writers see as a solution, because AA6 does it again, with almost the exact same outcome.
The result of all of this is that, rather than coming off as mystery fiction with an eccentric tone and sensibilities, AA5 reads like a bad shonen manga. The protagonists are hot-blooded, admirable heroes who heroically push to protect the innocent, defeat the evil villains, and bring a happy ending to the masses. Even when it turns out the lovable Detective Fulbright is evil and later
dead, the game plays to this. No one responds with the emotional weight such a revelation entails, they're just angry he "lied" to them and treat him as another villain to defeat. Because emotional meaning is apparently icky, I guess.
Bridge to Turnabout, what's that?
~~
5. The Patchwork Puzzlement of Dual Destinies So, we've gone over the incredibly weak story writing and tone problems, but there's an important angle to really we have yet to really discuss, namely that of Dual Destinies perhaps most intriguing feature...it's rewrites.
When developing a project, rewrites are an inevitable and natural part of the process. Not everything one initially sets out to include turns out to work in practice, and understanding what to cut or change is essential to narrative construction.
Where it gets problematic, however, is when the rewrites become so numerous, and within a project with so little internal communication, that they actively begin to conflict with each other. And, according to the artbook comments, Dual Destinies was rewritten
a lot. So, let's talk about anime.
I am genuinely shocked they kept this scene in. At the end of the second investigation of Academy, Juniper relates a story of how she witnessed Hugh, looking completely and utterly out of it, staggering down the hallway with blood on his hands. The scene clearly sets up some kind of horrifying connection between Hugh and the murder...only there's nothing. Hugh's hand injury is given a very hasty handwave explanation about him accidently triggering Myriam's springtrap, and that's it. He has no connection to the murder, and why he was walking around with an injured hand looking like a zombie, and why his
uninjured hand had blood on it are never given explanations.
Now, this is going into theory, but I think this is likely true. If I had to guess, the cutscene with Hugh was made with an earlier version of the story where he
was involved in the murder in some way. Animation takes time, and when you're working with cutscenes which were out-sourced to a studio, it's likely that, by the time things are done, the scenes might not fit the game anymore, hence requiring scenes be repurposed. And indeed, datamining the game reveals several cutscenes to have been flat-out cut from the game, and many of the later ones have a starkly lower art quality indicative of them being made later in production with less time. Most likely, the Hugh scene was only kept because his animations were all designed around his injured hand, even if the presentation doesn't match the final story.
This is
far from the only example of a seemingly random story beat caused by reshuffled. For example, in the final case of the game, Pearl appears out of nowhere to aid Phoenix, and proceeds to do quite literally nothing but follow him around the rest of the investigation, with characters barely even acting as if she's present. Her appearance in the case is baffling from a writing POV...but makes perfect sense when read as an attempt to keep using her in advertising materials after Reclaimed, the case she was supposed to appear in, was rendered DLC.
Note the black cufflinks. Those are the result of texture not loading. Even the final confrontation is like this. There is very, very compelling evidence that the Phantom was a last-minute decision, ranging from a heavily buggy and unfinished character model, to a lack of concept art in the official artbook, to there being outright duplicate files in the JP version of the game. The character, most likely, was a hasty attempt to create a new final boss who wouldn't require new assets or story arcs to incorporate into the plot, after whatever original plan was there vanished.
When even the
final boss is likely a late revision, it speaks to how cumbersome the game as a whole is. There's very little about DD which really seems to have a defined artistic point, it's random concepts piled atop one another in an attempt to create something resembling a working plot. Whatever story of friendship Academy was trying to tell is chaotic and messy, and it's probable most of Aura's story was left on the cutting room floor. The game is essentially a shell of itself, with no sense of direction or purpose, just a lot of disjointed ideas.
And that's without getting into the
big issue.
~~
6. The Dark Age of Coherent Writing You see...all of this is without discussing AA5's
actual story, and without question the absolute worst part of the game.
The Dark Age of the Law.
https://preview.redd.it/l3c9tmw8jpg61.jpg?width=685&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a0bb17598070ddf20f45790ebc02fd2b525ceb06 The Dark Age of the Law is the main "conceit" behind the game, the supposed overarching thread which links the story together. It is first established in Phoenix's opening monologue, and from there on is periodically discussed from then on. It is given an entire case which is designed around priming players for the importance of the subject, and then the climax of the game is expressly framed around the idea that this is the case which will "end" the dark age. In essence, it what the entire game is built upon.
The problems with the dark age start almost immediately with a very big, very fundamental issue, despite how much it is talked about, not once does the game actually sit down and explain what it actually
is. Indeed, the game seems to shift frequently between arguing it as an all-time high insofar as corruption in the legal system,
and the loss of public faith in the legal system. Both of these things apparently were started by Phoenix's disbarment and Blackquill's incarceration, a baffling assertion when the final case of
the first game involved outing a legendary prosecutor on murder and corruption, with plenty of more examples from there. Evidently, the entire series just didn't happen outside of the funny bits.
Way more problematic however is that nothing about "the dark age" is actually conveyed in the story. Besides Aura, a misanthrope with personal connections to the incident, not a single character is ever shown to distrust or doubt the law, and the only depiction of corruption in the story is another comically evil villain who the characters themselves treat as a joke, essentially undermining whatever statement the game was trying to make. In many cases, this lack of clarity causes the characters to be left talking about essentially
nothing.
This becomes a central problem come the games finale, when it kinda loses track of what it's even about. Supposedly, catching the Phantom will "end" the dark age, but how? Despite saying repeatedly it will, it never provides an explanation, because AA's format of insular murder mysteries works against such a concept of a massive, sweeping societal problem. It basically ends up just amounting a half-hearted way to keep Phoenix present, when he really is the one with the least reason to be there.
By the end of the game, the Dark Age is still what it was at the start. A vague, unexplained phenomena the game keeps treating as the driving narrative in spite of nothing happening to warrant it. Athena's story, the one thread the final case actually explores, has nothing to really do with it, but come the finale ending it is all that matters. The game is left stumbling out confused, with closing moments that appear to have been edited together at the last moment.
So...why is the game like this?
~~
7. Conclusion In Turnabout Reclaimed, when Pearl makes her reintroduction, there's a quick line from narration where Phoenix mentions that Pearl "acted like a big sister for Trucy". This line...says a lot.
For one thing, Pearl and Trucy never exchange any dialogue, so any relationship is completely informed rather than shown. Nothing about Pearl's character is informed by this detail, and she is little more than a minor character anyway. And, from a logic POV, it makes very little sense. Trucy is canonically a child prodigy, but Pearl's entire character is built on how, despite attempting to act with maturity, she's ultimately just a little girl from an isolated mountain village, so the idea of the latter having the emotional intelligence to act like a big sister to the former is far-fetched at best.
The reason why that line is there, however, makes sense. It's to give some kind of justification for Pearl's existence and explain where she's been, and because, if you apply the bare minimum of narrative understanding, then the little girl close to Phoenix who's a year older than his adopted daughter being a "big sister" makes sense.
This is a really, really easy trap that fanfic writers very often fall into. They think in a very simple frame of reference regarding the work they're basing off, and consequently fail to understand basic facts or ideas around why those things were originally there. This can been seen with Trucy's Magic Panties, which is treated as an integral running gag of the character (with even an entire drama CD around it) despite it's purpose in AJ being just a one case side-gag about Trucy's magic props, simply because it was one of two props of Trucy's demonstrated in the game.
When observed through the lens of this "mediocre fanfic" approach, suddenly a lot of AA5's creative mentality makes sense. The average fan isn't going to pay attention to the actual narrative construction and meaning behind the mysteries, so cases become far more simple, routine affairs. AA is often sold to people as the "wacky" lawyer mystery series, so suddenly we have ridiculous plots and ideas with black-white morality and clean-cut happy endings. And Ace Attorney is about the "law" (when that was never Takumi's intention), so we get a big law plotline the game can neither portray nor really tackle.
And that is Dual Destines. It is a game made from the "lie" of what many Ace Attorney fan believe the series to be, a lie which overpowers the "truth" of what those games actually are. If a bunch of average fans were asked to make a game of their favourite franchise, I imagine it likely would look something like this; a replication that unfortunately can't truly act as an expansion of it. It is us, because that us is the thing we must accept.
Even if you think this is too harsh, I hope this analysis opens up your mind. Art, even poor art, can be valuable tool in understanding other people. We think with our hearts, and those hearts can create things both brilliant and poor. It's our desire to understand that, and why that is created, which makes us human, it can be said.
What A Beautiful World I recently got an Xbox Series S/X controller for playing games on PC, and I'm really enjoying it so far. I use it wirelessly over bluetooth with my Windows 10 PC, and it's working great.
However, when I tried playing Yakuza Kiwami, I noticed that the controller was acting wonky. The D-pad straight-up doesn't work in menus, and a lot of the controls don't work in game. A lot of them are mixed up or swapped. I plugged the controller into my PC via a USB-C cable, and it worked normally with no issues. I did some tests with some other games on my PC, from various different platforms (Steam, Epic, Ubisoft). Everything works as expected. Even Yakuza Kiwami 2 (also from GamePass) works perfectly with the Series S/X controller over bluetooth. So it might just be an issue with the GamePass version of Yakuza Kiwami. It works when I use an Xbox One controller with a Steam Link with Steam streaming, so it seems like this problem is only present when using it over Bluetooth directly with the PC.
Has anyone else experienced this issue? Are there any fixes? Worst case is that I'll just play through Kiwami with a USB cable and not wireless, which isn't a big deal honestly, but I just thought the situation was odd.
submitted by You guys remember that feeling when we were kids and we couldn't wait to get back home from school to play that game on our SNES/Gameboy? How excited we used to be just to get home to play those games? Until recently, it felt like a lifetime has passed since I've had those same butterflies in my stomach to play a game. Now I'm a responsible adult with a fulltime job, a more than capable rig and unlimited money to buy whatever games I want (and yet I still choose to be a patientgamer- go figure!) So you'll understand when I say, I don't daydream about what I'd do in X game when I get to play today like I used to back when I was a kid. Yakuza 0 changed that. What is Yakuza 0 you ask? I'm glad you asked.
Yakuza 0 is like the Japanese Grand Theft Auto (GTA has got nothing on Yakuza though as Yakuza is wayyy more story-rich and oozing with substance than GTA has ever managed to, and that's coming from someone who has played all of 3D GTAs but never a Yakuza game before). Yakuza 0 is ALSO a game that can throw you off real good if you go into it blind - yet the trick IS actually to go in blind, especially if you haven't played any of the other games in the series. The reason behind it is two-pronged. First up, that the "0" in the game's name is not there to make for a stylish title (that's merely a welcome side-effect I believe) but it's because this game is a prequel to the entire Yakuza series. Two, because it is claimed as one of THE best stories in the entire series, if not of all time among other non-Yakuza games as well. As someone who had never played a single Yakuza game before, I was advised by many to go in blind. And I'm glad I did.
So the story starts off real slow and you get a really strong, silent type yet boring protagonist whose story you couldn't give two shits about. But then, around chapter 3, a secondary protagonist is introduced (!!) and it completely turns things around. I started having fun because this new guy was written extremely well and his life was much more interesting, his missions were much more interesting, his personality was much more interesting, his fighting style was much more interesting and even his side-stories were much more interesting. So we spent two missions together when something big happens and I'm back to using the first protagonist. That's not to say that the first protagonist stays boring forever; as his story progresses, he starts to grow on you too but he's essentially a very different personality than the other one. After a while of this back and forth, I started seeing the pattern. You get each protagonist for two missions in a row and you play the missions with them. They're completely unaware of each-other's existence, just like Grand Theft Auto 4 and it's DLCs, but they have their stories panning out parallel to each-other's in a shared world. And yet, once again, like GTA 4 and it's DLCs, the events surrounding them unfold in such a way that these protagonists are eventually set on an inevitable collision course which leaves the player guessing as to which chapter they're finally going to cross paths with each-other (and you get to discover awesome stuff when you deliberately try to make them meet by visting the places frequented by the other protagonist while controlling one, as in the game acknowledges it and rewards you with a little something instead of there being just nothing just because they don't want you breaking the game's rules).
As for progression, look, I'll be honest- Yakuza 0's progression mechanics are plot devices. Which is to be expected from a game tagged with "Story-Rich" keywords. But, boy, do the developers use those plot devices beautifully and skillfully! After just a couple chapters in the game's story, you get sucked in for a wild ride. I found myself to be at the edge of my seat everytime the cutscenes played. And the way the dialogues kinda work in this game, it reminded me of Fallout New Vegas so much. FNV was also old and clunky with dialogue boxes while being a veteran at progressing the game with just stories despite that handicap. And I'm amazed at how similar Yakuza 0 is to FNV in that regard. Yes, both are hard to get into because of their clunkiness but once you do, you'd be enamoured, biting your nails for the next grand revelation in the overarching story while enjoying the thoughtfully written side stories simultaneously. As a result, the series has earned the title of "Japanese underworld soap opera" among fans.
However, the game definitely isn't without it's drawbacks. And, boy, there are many.
For a game made in 2015, the UI/UX feels garish and clunky that's on par with 2010's Fallout New Vegas. Its definitely better than New Vegas, but only marginally so in that department. All in all, even if I look past the UI, the UX is just... unacceptably bad.
Then come the graphics which are a mixed bag because of how inconsistent they are throughout the game. For the first 6-7 hours, I was playing the game with all graphics settings cranked to high. Despite having a rig good enough to play 2019 titles on 1080p @ 60+ FPS, I was getting sub-optimal performance with everything looking blurry that was a blatant eyesore. It was only after a few google searches that I realized that I was supposed to turn off the "Render Scaling" option in the graphics settings to get rid of those blurry visuals. However, that didn't solve the low-FPS issue so after a few more google searches, I was forced to change the SSAA setting to 4x from 8x and that's when I gained 7-10 extra FPS to make the gameplay smoother and more enjoyable. That's not the end of it though because even the scripted cutscenes aren't consistent as to the graphics. For the main story, you have real-time cutscenes with voice and animation, pre-rendered high quality cutscenes with voice and animation and comic-strip style cutscenes with only voice. For substories, you have real-time cutscenes with just animation and text-boxes but no voice. This inconsistency can be quite unsettling at first, especially considering the fact that this is a modern AAA game we're talking about but after a while, you'll get used to it.
Next up, tutorials for the numerous mechanics this game sports. It was, for me, quite unexpected of Sega to push this game out with an astounding lack of proper tutorials. There's a lot of stuff I never used in-game because there wasn't any explanation for whether they existed, what they existed for and/or why I should use them. While that is fine for non-essential mechanics, it's absolutely unacceptable for core mechanics. For instance, the game doesn't ever tell you how to save. Yes, that is true. I had to google how to save the game. Spoilers- you go to one of the many public telephones in the game and activate them to save the game. Another example- I never knew there was a sprint option in the game until I was 45 hours in because the game neither explains it, nor mentions it in the "Controls" menu where all key inputs for different mechanics must be listed. I got suspicious because there were some vague references to "normal run and sprint" in a non-essential mechanic (Completion Points Gift shop menu). I suspect there's still a lot more about this game I still don't understand. I certainly don't know where to restock ammo for Kiryu because the game gave me weapons to use as Kiryu but has never pointed me to a store where I can buy ammo as Kiryu.
Another glaring issue with this game is that most of the time, you can't walk 10 feet in either direction without stumbling across a side-story cutscene or street punks looking to prove their mettle surrounding you to get you to kick their asses which just becomes really annoying after past a certain point. More often than not, I found myself in situations where I had to drop the game and go take care of some stuff so I tried to save the game via a telephone booth just around the corner but I took two steps in that direction and a lengthy side-story cutscene started playing, which, if I don't watch, I won't be able to rewatch like I can do with the main campaign cutscenes from the main menu afterwards. Once the cutscene ended, I walked maybe 3 feet before a large group of punks insisted on getting their asses handed to em by me. Great, that's another 10 minutes. By the time I finish with them and get to the telephone booth, I find a boss-level enemy camping there who is waiting for me to show up so he can rob me by challenging me to yet another fight and then defeat me. Obviously, I don't have that much time to waste so I turn around and start walking to another one of the phonebooths and the entire cycle starts again. It's infuriating how much inconvenience a simple save can cause you just because the devs tried to be creative instead of giving you the option to save from the "Escape" menu. To top it all off, there are absolutely no autosaves in this game either so if the game crashes or you have to leave the game while you're in the middle of a 90 minute cutscene, too bad because you gotta do it all over again.
The world-building, well... I can't comment on it because everything was in Japanese (oh, and be ware that all of the audio for this game is in Japanese as well but you get English subtitles which is, honestly, more of a strength of Yakuza 0 than a weakness because the original Japanese cast has done a mindblowing job of conveying the emotions through their voice which I doubt could be replicated as well if it was dubbed). Neither Kamurocho nor Sotenbori feel like a lived-in city like Grand Theft Auto's fictional ones do. Maybe that has something to do with everything being in a foreign language, I can't say. 95% of all billboards are Japanese. The mini-map doesn't auto-rotate making navigation pain in the ass until you learn the towns' layouts like the back of your hand (I never managed to but that's probably because of how little I've played). And the most disappointing of all- the constant fights you're dragged into unwillingly. I mean, past a certain point, you wish the game had an adaptive dynamic AI state or a "level up" about you that makes most gangs cower away from you because of your reputation. But nothing like that happens as every Tom, Dick and Harry drunk off their ass want to start a fight with you and then magically become pro fighters with a lotta health. Not to mention that during said "ambient encounters", I've seen civilians disappearing into thin air as the game scrambles to convert a street side into a barricaded arena (which you can't leave until you're done) which further destroys the live-in feel of the towns.
All in all, I HATED this game at first but as the story progressed, I found myself constantly craving to fire the game back up again because I was so addicted to it. A solid 8/10 from me because the story alone compensates for ALL of it's drawbacks, even the ones I have not listed in my review. This is my new favorite along with Fallout New Vegas and Mass Effect.
Shooreh Pippi, friends.
submitted by Controller works fine in big screen and in test app. However, when I boot up Yakuza the controller does nothing. If I touch an analog stick the ps4 prompts pop up on screen but still nothing on the controller works. Anyone else had this issue or are successfully playing the game with an x1 controller wired? For Yakuza 0 I don't recommend to use DS4 at all, because with the PS4 Configuration Support activated, Yakuza recognize the controller as native, and it shows PS4 buttons in screen. If you don't know what Configuration Support is, go to Steam (the option in the upper left corner of Steam), Settings, Controller, General Controller Settings. Xbox Game Pass for PC: Steam: Denuvo Anti-Tamper DRM was removed on March 11, 2019. Monetization. Type ... Tools for unpacking the par archives and modding the PC version of Yakuza 0. Disable Xbox 360 Controller Vibration. Download and extract the two files in Disable 360 Rumble to same folder as game exe. Disable HUD. Open DS4 Windows on your PC and reconnect your DS4 controller. Your game controller would popup inside the Controllers section. Solution 2: Re-enabling DS4 Controller. Some users have also experienced this issue even during the gameplay i.e. DS4 controller stops working and gets disabled automatically. Yakuza 0 on PC recommends a controller so much that it tells you, “Real Yakuza use a gamepad.” Unfortunately, there’s a glitch with gamepads in Yakuza 0, which will prevent the game from detecting button inputs, even though it detects that one is connected. Fortunately, there’s a fix for this bug that’s not too hard to pull off. Xbox Game Pass for PC. Yakuza 0’s reputation speaks for itself. ... Tips to get the new Xbox wireless controller working on PC. Xbox Phil Spencer explains how developers profit from Xbox Game Pass. Yakuza 0 on PC recommends a controller so much that it tells you, “Real Yakuza use a gamepad.” Unfortunately, there’s a glitch with gamepads in Yakuza 0, which will prevent the game from ... Game Pass xCloud Controller not working So I've been trying to play games on my android device with my controller, I have it connected and when I launch the game both joysticks and the rest of the buttons except A, Y, X, and B don't work. Controller not working with Yakuza 0 on GamePass I have a ps4 controller setup on DS4 windows so that i can play my games on gamepass without a xbox controller. No other games seem to have this issue but Yakuza 0 picks up my controller but doesnt register my inputs. any suggestions? Having a few problems with Yakuza 0 via Game Pass PC and my Dual Shock 4. Sticks won't move, buttons won't work - only thing usable is the touchpad. Not sure why it's not working. Was able to get it working on Gears 5 (also via Game Pass) and DS4Windows with no issues whatsover, so far it's only Yakuza 0 having that kind of problem.
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