Lurker > Team Rocket Elite

Yeah the case does go on rather lengthy tangents. Like the gas stuff on day 1 does eventually matter but it takes a long time to get there and Ryunosuke is somehow allowed the time to get there. I mentioned this above but I did feel like it was a bit of a jump to figure out that the gas pipe was poisoned. Like the discussion was mostly around food and drinks at the time instead of just things that a person might put their mouth on. I can definitely see why someone might think Shamspeare is obnoxious because he is. But, I guess I just found that endearing in the end.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

We start part 3 of the trial with William Shamspeare and Olive Green taking the stand. Green says she doesn't know anything about a poisoning or anything about Shamspeare. Unsurprisingly, we'll have to do this the hard way. Shamspeare claims not to know who Green is at all. Apparently I got the time and date wrong for when Green woke up. She didn't wake up until early on the 21st which is after the poisoning incident. My G1-4 notes say she woke up around the end of that trial so maybe I wrote that down wrong or something.

Green and Shamspeare testify about what they were doing on the 17th around the time of the G1-4 incident. Green says she was just walking on Briar Road at the time while Shamspeare claimed to be at The Slug and Salad which is the place mentioned in the letter Green got. We use the piece of envelope in Shamspeare's room to show a connection between the letter and Shamspeare. Wouldn't it be crazy if Green was the one who sent the letter to Shamspeare before stealing the letter back? That would explain why Shamspeare appeared to be the one following the letter and Shamspeare really doesn't seem to know who Green is. Green still insists that the letter was originally sent to her but that just doesn't make any sense when combined with the fact that part of the envelope showed up in Shamspeare's room. Ryunosuke wasn't too far behind my thought process. He now says that Green must have stolen the envelope and card back after breaking into Shamspeare's room. It's pretty funny watching Shamspeare's reaction to everything going on. He has absolutely no idea what is going on and why he is apparently being targetted.

We get more testimony from Green and Shamspeare. Shamspeare now remembers that he did receive the note. He followed the instructions but no one showed up at the Slug and Salad. He didn't notice the letter was missing until his meet up with Soseki. I think Shamspeare is telling the truth here for once. But, it is a bit silly that he apparently legitimately forgot about all this until now. >_> Green is still trying to deny everything. So we need to connect Green to Shamspeare's room. I struggled a bit trying to figure out what to do here. Like I see the angle where Green is trying to get revenge on Shamspeare for killing Ross but it wasn't clear how to make use of that. Turns out I needed to present the bottle of strychnine. We are back to pushing the idea that Green was the one who set the trap for Shamspeare!

The new proposed timeline is Green broke into the room on the 17th, put poison on the gap pipe and stole the letter. Shortly afterwards, a knife fell on her to kick off G1-4. Due to police presence and Soseki not being in the room, Shamspeare took a break from blowing into the gas pipe. Soseki came back on the 20th and the night of the 20th was when Shamspeare tried to kill Soseki again and finally triggered the gap pipe trap. How long does it take for strychnine to evaporate? Van Zieks implied it wasn't that long when he said the gas pipe could not be tested for strychnine. But, for this timeline to work, the strychnine had to sit on the pipe for a little over 3 days. Anyways, Ryunosuke then connects this back to the letter. It was bait to get Shamspeare out of the room. Green was the one who sent it to him and stole it back to hide the evidence (and then kept it for some reason). Shamspeare is furious at this. He really has no idea who Green is and just found out she really tried to kill him. Ryunosuke says the motive was revenge for Ross.

The next thing Van Zieks wants explained is why Shamspeare even wants to kill Soseki. Green has given up on pretending she didn't break into Shamspeare's room and mentions how she stole an important looking key while she was there. Shamspeare is upset at this as well and says he inherited the key. So it looks like he really was Selden's cell mate. Van Zieks helpfully says this can be verified if necessary. Ryunosuke suggests that Selden told Shamspeare that the treasure was hidden in Selden's old room and Shamspeare was resorting to murder to get access to the room. For one final push, we use Sholmes's magic skinprint to show how Selden's treasure can be located. With the treasure now out of reach, this finally breaks Shamspeare and gets him to admit to his crimes.

Shamspeare goes over what he did and it mostly confirms what we already figured out. One question I had was why he didn't rent the room between Ross dying and Soseki showing up. It turns out he did try but Garrideb wouldn't let him change rooms. Shamspeare also claims he wasn't actually trying to kill anyone and just wanted to chase Ross away. Although, even after he unintentionally killed Ross with the gas pipe trick he used it again on Soseki. So the fact that he killed someone didn't really bother him that much.

Green then fills us in on what she did. She worked out that Ross's death might not have been an accident after coincidentally hearing that Soseki had the same problem even after the gas pipes were fixed. One thing that was bugging me was why she even had the poison in the first place but she got it from the black market not the hospital. I'm not sure why I believed her story of getting it from the hospital. It wouldn't be in an ominous looking unlabelled jar if it was from the hospital. <_< After that, she planted the trap. If Shamspeare was innocent, nothing would happen until Metermann tries to blow into the gas pipe someday down the line. If Shamspeare was guilty, the trap would trigger. She confirms she sent the letter and placed the trap while Shamspeare was out hoping to catch him red handed.

This resolves everything regarding Soseki and the poisoned gas pipe so we get our Not Guilty!

We meet Soseki and Sholmes after the trial and Soseki said he has decided to cut his study tour short and head back to Japan. Didn't he already say that after G1-4? I guess this time he means it. Last time he took too long to get out and got caught in another case. There's also still the issue of Selden's treasure and we go figure that out the next day. Hidden in the ceiling of Soseki's room is a large jeweled collar with blood on it. There's a large B on it and a crown symbol. B for Baskerville, perhaps? Not that I have any idea what that would mean. Sholmes looks unhappy to see this show up. He has Gregson take it away as evidence and has everyone promise not to talk about this entire case.

Finally we get some voiced lines by Ryunosuke hinting at something happening about two month after Susato's letter arrived that connects to this case. It is apparently related to the Great Exhibition of London. Wasn't that already supposed to be happen? Why another 2 months delay? I'll have to find out about that later!

Case G2-2 End

This was a good case. I wasn't really expecting that from Green after first meeting her. She's almost like a different person in court. I guess that's how much Ross meant to her. I went back and checked G1-4 regarding what it said about Green waking up and I did mess up in my notes. It said the Green would be waking up soon not that she already woke up. That messed up a lot of my predictions about how things would go. Shamspeare was a lot of fun and he had good reactions to finding out what Green did. One thing I did find disappointing was the case was hyped up as something that was of worldwide importance but that really only came into play at the very, very end. The actual events of the case itself didn't really mean much. I also feel like this was another case where the jury kinda feel out of importance as the case approached the end. I guess these cases are bloated enough as is, but I do enjoy the scenes where people on the jury just happen to have specialist knowledge that's useful to the case.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

Trial Part 2 begins and the results of the tea test are in! Gregson says the liquid in the soap was confirmed to be tea. He also says there was no poison in the tea! So case closed? Nope, it isn't that easy. Van Zieks calls Shamspeare back to the stand to testify how he was poisoned anyways. Shamspeare claims that he used the tea in Soseki's cup to make the ice coins and Soseki simply didn't put the poison in his own cup. But, this contradicts how Soseki's cup did not have a ring. That means Soseki drank he tea immediately. Van Zieks tries to get Shamspeare to change his testimony to say he made the ice coins out of the tea in the teapot instead and Shamspeare takes him up on it. Is this the first time Van Zieks was feeding testimony to the witness? I feel like he never did that before but maybe I'm misremembering. Shamspeare once again points out that he didn't eat or drink anything else that night so the tea must be how he was poisoned. The jury seems happy with that explanation. I was half wondering if Quinby would be a hold out but nope. Another six Guilty votes!

It's time for another summation examination! One big problem is we just haven't been able to show a way Shamspeare could be poisoned other than via Soseki's tea. Susato is of the opinion that we need to show another possibility to get out of this. Can we really do that? I have no idea how else Shamspeare could have been poisoned. From Juror No. 3 and Quinby we find out that blowing into a gas pipe can make gas lights flicker. We also find out that blowing hard enough can make the gas lamps and stove go out altogether. I guess that's what is happening to Soseki. Ryunosuke wants to check the mouth of the gas pipe in Shamspeare's room for poison! But, why would there be poison there? Van Zieks objects during the summation examination. Is he allowed to do that? For more evidence, Ryunosuke presents the skin prints showing that Shamspeare is trying to do something to the lamp. Is this really admissible as evidence? Van Zieks steps in and puts a stop to using the magic skin prints photo. It isn't admissible as evidence but that doesn't stop us from using it to manipulate 3 jury members to considering continuing the trial. For one more push, we also point out that Soseki's testimony earlier confimed that his gas stove mysteriously went out that night. That gets Fairplay on board for four Not Guilty votes. The trial continues!

We run into another problem. Testing the gas pipe for strychnine won't work. Even if there was poison, the poison would be long gone by now. Anyways, Ryunosuke makes it formal and points the finger at Shamspeare to accuse him of trying to kill Soseki! I'm guessing Shamspeare was also responsible for killing Ross as well. Van Zieks brings up a question. Even assuming the gas pipe was poisoned and Shamspeare tried to blow into it, there's still the issue of who poisoned the gas pipe. That's a very good question. Wait a sec, did Green figure out that Shamspeare was responsible for killing Ross and in turn placed a trap for Shamspeare? That's crazy but I don't see any other options. How would that even work? Van Zieks is trying to say that Soseki is the only one who would even think of putting poison on the gas pipe as a way to kill Shamspeare. Susato says we need to name the true culprit to turn things around. Ryunosuke points the finger at Olive Green! We're really doing this! Ryunosuke wants to call her in to testify. Van Zieks is cooperative as always and agrees to call her in but, we need to go on a one hour recess first.

During the recess, Sholmes finally shows up after sleeping in. He tested the bottle of poison that Green had and it turns out it was filled with strychnine. Oh dear, is Green really responsible for placing the trap? Gregson shows up as well. He gives us a copy of info from the files on the Selden case. Selden had a cellmate when he died. I wonder if that cellmate was Shamspeare. Considering how willing Shamspeare is to kill maybe Shamspeare is Selden himself who swapped places somehow. That's all the time we have and the Baliff calls us back in.

Trial Part 2 end!

I must say, I can not stress enough how shocked I was to find out how Green might be connected to all this as the culprit. She didn't even seem connected at all when the case first began. I mean I guess I still don't know if she did it but who else could it be at this point? Ryunosuke figuring out the gas pipe was poisoned seemed like a pretty big leap to me. How did he even think of the possibility of that? But, if that's the only other thing that Shamspeare put in his mouth that night I guess Ryunosuke has to go for it even if it sounds crazy. Somehow, it might actually be true!

The events around Green and the poisoning incident create more timeline stuff:
Feb 17, 5:00pm - Green gets hit by a falling knife while walking down Briar Road
Feb 20, 3:00pm - Green wakes up around here. We were told this at the end of the trial in G1-4
I think sometime here Soseki meets Shamspeare just before Shamspeare heads out. I'm not sure what time this is, though.
Feb 20, 8:00pm - Shamspeare returned home
Feb 20, 9:00pm - Soseki visits Shamspeare's room
Feb 20, 11:00pm - Soseki goes back to his own room
Feb 21, 1:30am - Shamspeare is poisoned by strychnine somehow
Feb 21, 5:30am - Ryunosuke and company meet Green at the hospital

Green said she took the bottle of poison from the hospital so she could only use it after she woke up. Not a big time frame but Shamspeare was conveniently out of the room at the time. Although, if he locked the door I'm not sure how she got in. Assuming Green is the one responsible for the poison, I am curious about whether she will be honest about what she did or not. Like is she okay with Soseki taking the fall for her actions? Maybe Green will try to pin everything on Shamspeare. Since her poison trap activated, she would know that he tried to kill both Ross and Soseki. So a lot of interesting questions that still need answers!
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

Investigation day 2 begins! We go visit Iris and Sholmes to get a recap on Van Zieks backstory. He brings up the Reaper's curse but it must be a coincidence. Like we eventually find out Graydon was the one who killed McGilded and Van Zieks had no control over that. Sholmes also mentions how Van Zieks used to have a Japanese friend 10 years ago but won't say more than that. We try meeting up with Green in the hospital next but we don't get much info out of her other than she will be discharged from the hospital soon.

After that we meet up with Soseki at the prison and he reitterrates that they drank the tea before the Romeo and Juliet battle. Shamspeare is lying about everything and we have no idea why. Soseki also mentions that the previous tenant of his room was a capital offender. It kinda cuts off there so I'm guessing I'm here too early and need to go somewhere else first.

So next thing we try is to investigate Shamspeare's room again. Gregson is here but the result of testing the tea aren't done yet. Sholmes is also here and it is time for some forensics! Sholmes has a magic spray that can tell us what items in the room were touched by Shamspeare. This is Shamspeare's room so shouldn't that be everything? We give it a try anyways and we do find two locations of interest. Under the floor we find a secret area and near the painting on the wall there are a bunch of hand prints for no reason.

In the secret area there's a newspaper article about Selden, a death row inmate who died due to illness in prison. He allegedly left behind stolen goods valued at 1000 Pounds but no one knows where they are. Perhaps they are left in one piece somewhere? I'm guessing Selden is the former tenant of Soseki's room. There's also a photo of Garrideb and a young man along with an empty tin box. We go back to Soseki to ask him about Selden and he confirms that Selden used to live in the room he is renting now. Selden died in prison 3 months ago. Oh, there's a tenant between Selden and Soseki who also lived in the room. I was thinking that some details didn't add up. This person is the one who died in the room mysteriously. Or not so mysteriously. The person officially died of asphyxia and his room was found full of gas at the time. Soseki says he also has a similar problem of gas unexpectedly filling the room at night.

Next we hit up Garrideb to ask him about Shamspeare and the photo. So Shamspeare only showed up about three days after Selden died. Apparently he wanted Selden's room but it was already rented out. It was rented out to Duncan Ross who is the man in the photograph with Garrideb. Ross is also the person who died in Soseki's room before Soseki rented the room. Ross moved in about a year ago into Selden's former room and died about a month ago. Since then, Garrideb said he had the gas pipes fixed but somehow Soseki still has the same problem. One last thing before we go, Garrideb said that he had a love letter written by Ross from just before Ross died but it didn't have an address so he couldn't send it off. But, there is a name. Olive Green. I guess this is how she's getting connected to the case! I expected the love letter to get added to the court record so we could go show it to Green but I guess not.

We go see Green at the hospital anyways. We show her the picture of Ross and it surprises her so much she knocks over her bottle of medicine. Is it supposed to glow magenta like that? Green was engaged to Ross before he died. He only moved into the Selden room to save money for a wedding. That's rather sad. Green asks us to leave but suddenly Sholmes is here. He said he's here to help prevent a new case from happen so we look at the glowing medicine. Oh dear, a poor rat tried to drink the medicine and it died. ;_; It turns out Green was second away from committing suicide via poison when we interrupted her. After being found out, Green is more willing to talk to us and apparently she's more connected to this case and G1-4 than expected. She received a letter saying to meet an unknown person on Briar Road at 5pm on the 17th. That's the exact time of the unfortunate G1-4 incident and is the reason she was even there. In the end Green says she won't try to kill herself again. She has the feeling she at least needs to see the current events through. Also that ripped envelope that Green had looks like it matches the piece in Shamspeare's room. But, I don't understand why he would send out a ripped envelope.

That's pretty much all of the time for investigating. Susato brings up how we still don't know the results of the tea test. We'll just have to find out tomorrow!

Investigation Part 3 done.

This case throws around a lot of dates and times. Like I think the timeline of events currently looks like this:

12 months ago - Selden is arrested. He was living at Soseki's place at the time.
12 months ago - Ross moved into Selden's former room. (a bit after Selden was arrested)
3 months ago - Selden dies in prison due to illness
3 months ago - Shamspeare moves in to the first floor room (3 days after Selden died)
1 month ago - Duncan Ross dies
1 week ago - Soseki moves into the room (more like a week and half now)

So the picture I'm getting is that Shamspeare is after Selden's treasure and people keep moving into the room before he can so he needs to keep killing them off. No clue what Shamspeare was doing between Ross dying and Soseki moving it. There was a fair amount of time in between. With that said, poisoning himself and trying to frame Soseki for it seems to be a rather lousy way of getting rid of Soseki. We also still need to find out why talking about this case is such bad news and that it somehow causes problems in Japan.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

The trial begins and Van Zieks is the prosecutor yet again. We sure see him a lot. Speaking of familiar faces, there sure are a lot of them on the jury. 5 out of the 6 are the same as in G1-4. The only change is Joan Gerrideb got swapped out for a new lady. So much for random selection. Oh, wait it isn't random. Van Zieks says the same jurors were brought back when possible.

The first two witnesses on the stand are Gregson and Soseki. It's not often that the defendant gets to take the stand although I guess that just happened in G2-1 as well. Gregson gives an overview of the case. Shamspeare was poisoned by strychnine and was found in the morning with his room locked. Van Zieks claims the tea Soseki brought over was poisoned. But, this could not be confirmed since there was no more tea left. Soseki went back to his room at 11pm but Shamspeare wouldn't turn out his lights until 1am. Gregson says it takes around 30min for strychnine to kick in so clearly there's a timing problem here. Soseki said they drank the tea around 9pm so the timing doesn't work out. Van Zieks says it still works out if Shamspeare drinks the tea after Soseki left. Unfortunately, there's no way to prove what the real timing was.

To help sort things out, we get the next set of witnesses. The new witnesses are William Shamspeare and Adron B. Metermann (a drone bee?). It seems like we'll have another rarity where the victim is providing testimony. Rare, but somehow not actually unheard of in the Ace Attorney world despite almost all victims being murder victims. >_> Metermann is the man is yellow who showed up a few times before and works for the Altamont Gas Company. He was keeping an eye on Shamspeare during the time of the incident. Apparently, Soseki knows ju-jitsu and that's how he beat Shamspeare while dressed as Juliet. Are literary debates always supposed to be this physical? It seems like Shamspeare and Soseki get along well. What happened that caused Shamspeare to accuse Soseki of trying to kill him? Shamspeare said he drank the tea around 1am which is a lie since it's different from what Soseki said. So it does seem like Shamspeare is out to get Soseki for some reason. We haven't been able to make much progress so the jury has given up on us. Six guilty votes again! Time for a Summation Examination!

Van Zieks and the Judge treating the summation examination as a waste of time for never working seem weird at this point. Like Ryunosuke has already used it successfully quite a few times now even excluding G1-5 which hasn't happened yet. During the summation examination we find out that Juror No. 4 is the wife of Augustus Altamont, the owner of Altamont Gas Company. She says that Shamspeare is likely stealing gas but they still need to prove it. Metermann was spying on him for this reason. The jury turns on Shamspeare pretty hard here since they now aren't sure if he's telling the truth. They want to hear more about his character. That was a pretty short summation examination.

So now we randomly decide to go down the rabbit hole of working out how Shamspeare is stealing gas. Juror No. 4, aka Quinby Altamont (Queen bee?), takes the stand with Metermann to help figure it all out. The gas meter turns out to have a hole in it. I have no clue how they missed the hole before since apparently they've been going over the whole thing in detail. The talk of coins made me go check up on the red disk in the soap and it's gone! When did it disappear? It still has a the coin shaped hole in it and Metermann says this could be a way to produce fake coins. But no fake coins were actually found in the meter. Shamspeare was making coins out of ice! After being used, the coins would drain out the hole in the coin box. That's pretty creative!

Figuring this all out is nice and all, but why does it matter? Susato covers for Ryunosuke and says that Shamspeare is a liar and a thief. Van Zieks counters back that it doesn't matter. There are currently no other possible culprits. Suicide can be ruled out and Soseki was the only visitor. Ryunosuke says the recent cross examination changes the situatation. Wait, it does? I don't see how it does. Let's go with "Was the poison in the tea?". Ryunosuke points out that the fake coins were made off the tea! They can now be tested for poison. It'll take some time to get this done so the trial is done for the day. So it looks like our first multi-day trial!

Trial Part 1 done.

I don't recall much Shakespeare so I get the impression that a lot of the references that Shamspeare are going over my head. He's definitely quite a character anyways, though. I just don't get why he's out to get Soseki. Even if we show the tea isn't poisoned that still leaves a big question regarding the true method that was used to poison Shamspeare. There aren't a lot of potential culprits either since I doubt Metermann or Quinby are the culprits. So currently things look like Shamspeare severely poisoned himself to the point he nearly died to frame Soseki because ???. I guess that's why we need another day of investigating!
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

Case G2-2

Four months have passed since G1-5 so it's at the end of August now. Ryunosuke is meeting up with Iris for breakfast and says he got a letter from Susato. Six months ago there were two cases involving Soseki on Briar Road and Susato is telling Ryunosuke to review the second case. G2-1 made a few references to the case so I wonder if G1-5 did as well. Garrideb did seem unusually unhappy with Ryunosuke when Garrideb was on the jury. Iris mentions that she wrote a story around the case but Sholmes veto'd it before it could be published for some reason. Ryunosuke and Iris decide to review the details of the case. Ryunosuke also drops a bombshell that he is literally not allowed to practice law in Britain at all. I guess asking for government secrets to be played in court really did come with repercussions but we'll have to deal with that later.

We pick up the case in the early morning of February 21. The G1-4 trial was February 20 so this is the very next day. We meet up with the victim of G1-4, Olive Green. In the end, we don't learn much from her other than that she's an art student. Sholmes brings up how it'd odd that she was at Briar Road when it is so far away from where she lives but there's not much time to pursue that line of questioning since a message arrives from Soseki. It looks like we've got a murder case to investigate!

We head to the location of the incident which is the first floor apartment under where Soseki lives. The victim's body is still there and it looks to be that playing card person from the end of the G1-4 investigation. He's also the resident of the room we are in. We talk with Gregon and find out the victim's name is William Shamspeare. IIRC in G1-4 it was said that this person liked to have literary debates with Soseki so the name checks out. His body was found by Soseki and Garrideb when Shamspeare didn't wake up at his usual time.

When did Sholmes sneak into the background? I don't think he was completely off screen this time so he must have snuck in at some point. "So far, all I've managed to deduce is what actually happened." It would be nice if that was actually true. >_> In any case, it's time for act one of the Herlock Sholmes's Logic and Reasoning Spectaculars! Sholmes claims the victim died due to eating soap and this is another closed room so this must be a suicide. Why is there actually a half bar of soap on the table? Anyways, we find the other half on the ground so Shamspeare wasn't eating it. It looks like Shamspeare may have been poisoned via the tea he was drinking. Wow, Ryunosuke is going full on boke during the Great Deduction and Susato finally snaps at him. I guess even her patience has limits! Soseki's books were found at the crime scene so we have our defendant!

Gregson takes Soseki off which gives up a chance to look around the crime scene. There are some loose bricks in the bricked up window with more bars of soap? There sure are a lot of bars of soap around. We also find some teacups, a part of an envelope and discover Shamspeare is alive. Wait, what?! I don't know what to say about that. I guess they did say the body wasn't fully examined yet but I never expected this! Gregson is also now back and kicks us out of the room. So is there even a crime? Shamspeare might have just been sleeping.

Out on Briar Road, we seen the man in yellow again but he runs off so next we go question Garrideb. One thing from G1-4 that wasn't really resolved was why Garrideb seemed to know his tenants schedules in such detail. Maybe we'll find out now. Garrideb said he got home at 6pm yesterday and Shamspeare was out at the time and wouldn't be back until 8pm. Shamspeare would then go to sleep at 1am. Garrideb also reveals the secret of the gap lamps. He can tell when the ones on the other floor are lit or go out based on how much they dim the lamps in his room since the gas is all connected.

Next up we meet with Soseki in prison. Ryunosuke has wonderful news for Soseki. In the worst case, he can only be tried for attempted murder! Isn't that just fantastic? Soseki accidentally lets it slip that he did meet Shamspeare last night. He brought tea as gift and debated Shakespeare for a while. When Soseki left, Shamspeare was still in good health. Soseki says his room is cursed because the previous tenant died there and he also has nightmares of suffocating each night. Is there an issue with gas poisoning or something in the building? The previous tenant in Soseki's room died of mysterious causes. Finally, Gregson shows up again to helpfully inform us that Shamspeare and claims he was poisoned by Soseki.

Investigation Part 1 and 2 done!

I got the impression that Soseki and Shamspeare were on good terms with each other so I wonder what made Shamspeare think Soseki tried to kill him. Right now the players in the case seem pretty small time so I'm interested in seeing how this will somehow end up having international implications. Since Soseki brought the tea I'm guessing it didn't actually have any poison in it. Although this case is supposed to be related to poison so maybe it did somehow.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

Yeah, he blew himself up there.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

Yeah, I think I remember that line now. Also he went in hard on Rei as well. Like the knife attack he had to work out on the fly and making Rei look guilty could be argued as coincidence. He might have done the same thing even if Rei left the room. But, he followed that up by taking a misleading photo of Rei to make her look more guilty and sent that in to the police.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

I believe Soseki actually said something along those lines. He knows what it is like to get in trouble so he was able to think of asking the victim for more info before they went.

I can sympathize a bit that Menimemo felt his cause was just. But, that falls apart a bit when he proactively tried to frame Rei for the crime. I think he tried to give a brief justification for this but I forget what he said.

I did like the twist that the Judge and Mikotoba knew each other and the Judge was in on it the whole time for Susato's disguise.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

The trial beings again with a very happy looking Auchi. Turns out the dagger was not poisoned. Jezaille was clearly poisoned so how did she get poisoned? Raiten Menimemo is called to the stand so maybe he can fill us in. He apparently found out about Jezaille being able to do what she wants despite being a murderer just because she's a British citizen and he isn't happy about it. Although, it isn't exactly clear to me why Britain is okay with this. The person Jezaille killed was also a British citizen. Britain should have a problem with that even if it happened on Japanese soil. As a result, Menimemo followed the group to the beach. The beach hut walls were flimsy so he was able to see inside through a hole in the wall. He said he saw Rei pull out a knife and stab Jezaille so I guess that makes Menimemo the culprit!

Soseki also returns to the stand to talk about Jezaille's dying words. Jezaille was briefly still alive when Soseki arrived and he had the sense to ask her who the culprit was. Soseki should be reliable so this should be helpful. Except Jezaille pointed at Rei who was unfortunately standing in between Jezaille and the culprit outside of the hut. We literally have a reliable witness accurately relaying the victim pointing directly at the culprit's location and it still causes problems for our case. Things are never easy are they? It was around this time I got the impression that Soseki might be jumping between English and Japanese but it's all in English so I can't tell. Soseki does clarify that Jezaille might have been pointing to the empty back of the hut but he's not sure. In any case, this is an opportunity to propose what really happened. Susato points out that the culprit was behind the hut and used the small gap in the hut walls to stab Jezaille. The only one who could have done this is Menimemo!

Menimemo fires back that it doesn't matter if Jezaille was stabbed because she was poisoned first. He outright admits that he was the one who stabbed Jezaille and claims he had no reason to do that if he had already poisoned her. Does stabbing Jezaille after she was poisoned really not count as murder? >_> It really feels like both parties should get in trouble in that case. Although, even if this was true this wouldn't help Rei. We need to show she didn't poison Jezaille either.

Menimemo claims Rei was arguing with Jezaille about Dr. Wilson and Rei barges on the stand to say the argument was over the poison. Soseki refers to a bad experience with a poison? When was that? I don't remember a poison in G1-4. To justify why Menimemo still had to stab Jezaille, Susato presents the article about the poison and it turns out I didn't even realize half off the problems that would be caused by using the new poison. Due to the unique properties of the poison, it would be immediately obvious where it came from. No one from the lab would use it because they would all be the first ones suspected of the murder. Menimemo only realized how special the poison was after he already used it so he needed to kill Jezaille before the unique effects showed up. Menimemo wants us to present evidence of how he stole the poison and got it past the lab security but it's obvious. Susato says she can prove how the poison was stolen and presents the fountain pen. The pen tests positive for the poison and that's the decisive blow!

When Menimemo went to interview Jezaille about being a killer, she just laughed at his face and mocked him. Combined with the injustice of Jezaille walking free, it pushed him to the point where he decided to take justice into his own hands. He also mentioned some sort of coverup related to the trial from 9 months ago and thinks that Britain and Japan cut a deal of some sort to set Jezaille free. He tried to get the story printed but couldn't due to government pressure. He doesn't say what the deal is so I'm not sure if he found out.

In the end, we get out Not Guilty! We meet up with Hosonaga and Soseki after the trial. Hosonaga brings up that we still don't know why Jezaille killed Dr. Wilson. I suspect we won't until we find out what was up with the list of names from G1-5. Mikotoba is also with us and Susato asks why she was called back if he was always in good health but doesn't get an answer.

Menimemo suddenly shows up again! He makes an ominous claim that Mikotoba was involved in Kazuma's fate. But that was an accident, right? Apparently there was a cover up regrading Kazuma's death. In Japan, they think he made it to Britain. I wonder if Susato already knew about this cover up. Surely she's mentioned Kazuma at least once since coming back only to realize that the person she was talking with didn't know he was dead. But that's all the info we can get from Menimemo since the Judge shows up and puts him down with a Judge Takedown. Wait, the judge has a name?! Seishiro Jigoku. Still not the A. Shin we are looking for. Also Judge Takedown was actually a Seishiro Sling. Seishiro and Mikotoba head off to deal with diplomatic issues but Soseki says he has some more information for Susato. Apparently Susato got called back to Japan right after he submitted a report about what he went through in Britain. Mikotoba even came to visit Soseki to specifically talk about the second case Soseki was involved in. There was a second case? Didn't he leave Britain like a day after his trial ended? Also it sounds like Sholmes forbade everyone from talking about that second case in public. So Susato then writes to Ryunosuke to review her notes about that case, the case of the haunted lodgings.

Case G2-1 End

The case was okay. The most interesting parts are the ones where it is setting up something for a future case like Menimemo revealing the coverup regarding Kazuma's death or dropping hints about another case Soseki was in which I guess isn't really a future case. While it was good to see Hosonaga again, he didn't really get to do much. Soseki's return was solid and it sounds like his role in the story isn't done yet. I'm a bit curious how Susato will get back to Britain. But there are plot developments on the Japan side so she might need to take care of that first.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

That can actually trigger another quirk in Moonlight Bangle. It is possible for a unit to have negative defense. This happens when a unit with very low defense also has defense reducing in combat debuffs that push the stat below 0. Most of the time it is counted as 0 defense. As in a 50 Atk hit into a unit with -10 Defense still only does 50 damage. One exception is Moonlight Bangle. Using Luna, Moonlight Bangle will take 40% of that -10 Defense and subtract 4 damage. So a normal hit does 50 and if Luna activates, the attack now does 46.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

I actually have no idea how exactly the defense tiles reduce damage. So it might increase the damage dealt by the special.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

Brave Eirika's Black Aether ignores 110% of Defense which leads to a very silly interaction between damage and enemy defense:

https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/7082593/
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

It was in Aether Raid. Normally Bonfire only barely kills Eirika. So with a bit of support, Eirika survived the Bonfire with like 3 HP then KOd with Blacker Luna.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

One of the first things I did after training my +9 Fallen Edelgard was... get her blown up by an unmerged Brave Eirika. So it appears I am slightly late to the Fallen Edelgard party. >_>
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

Got my +10 Micaiah:
https://imgur.com/NE35id8

Took 2158 Orbs which is pretty much average so I'm happy with that. I also got a Fallen Edelgard +9 out of it which was my second target on the banner. I'll likely spark to finish her off when that comes around in January.

The full list of 5*s is:
11 Legendary Micaiah
10 Fallen Edelgard
8 Ashera
2 Fallen MorganM
2 Fallen MorganF
1 Legendary Edelgard
1 Thrasir
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

Grand Kirby posted...

Wow, this game fell off the Switch Top 10 message boards hard. It was like #2 last week, right?

What the hell is "Baldo: The Guardian Owls"?

Might be a glitch. The board still has a fair amount of activity.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

Case G2-1

The game opens up with Susato in front of a grave. It's been 2 months since she has returned to Japan and she's now involved in another incident. Susato is the lawyer for the case?! I didn't expect that at all. I guess it would have to be Susato if this takes place in Japan since Ryunosuke is still in Britain. Also, I think the victim might be Jezaille Brett?

The date is August 13 so I think the Great Exhibition is supposed to be happening right now. We're back in Japan's court and get confirmation that the victim really is Jezaille. Murderers who get away sure like showing up dead. The defendant is Rei Membami who is Susato's friend. So being the friend of a judicial assistant is apparently sufficient cause to get into trouble. Rei doesn't seem to recognize Susato for some reason. You know, I just remember they said way back that women weren't allowed in the Japanese courtroom. So, I guess Susato is in disguise? Susato's father Yujin Mikotoba confirms this. I'll still refer to him as Mikotoba and I'm sure that won't cause any confusion at all. It also looks like he will be the assistant for the case.

The prosecutor is Taketsuchi Auchi again and as part of the disguise Susato is going by the name Ryutaro Naruhodo who is allegedly a cousin of Ryunosuke. This is Susato's first time as lead but she's already better at hitting the table than Ryunosuke was when he started. Jezaille was killed the day before her departure to Shanghai while she was on a beach trip. Cause of death was getting stabbed in the back while in the beach hut. Jezaille was assigned a detective to make sure nothing went wrong. The detective is Hosonaga isn't it? I like him a lot but I must say his skill as a bodyguard is questionable.

The first set of witnesses are Satoru Hosonaga and Soseki Natsume. I did not expect Soseki at all. He sure likes getting into involved with trouble. Soseki's involvement is he was at Yumei giving a guest lecture, then he did an interview with Mikotoba followed by getting invited by Jezaille for a beach trip. As expected, Hosonaga was Jezaille's escort. Obviously Hosonaga and Soseki aren't intentionally trying to hide anything so it's just a matter of trying to make sense of what they saw. Soseki heard a scream that could have pierced the heavens. But, that's not right. When a person gets stabbed in the back they don't scream. It's more of a gasp because the breath is driven out of their body. Anyways, Hosonaga and Soseki rush to the scene and end up seeing Rei pulling the knife out of Jezaille.

The problem is pulling the knife out of a person who got stabbed isn't necessarily a good idea since it can make the problem worse and Rei should know that. I'm a bit surprised that Susato didn't know that. That sort of feels like the kind of thing she would know about or have a reference on hand to look it up. Susato counters back by saying that Rei withdrew the knife due to suspicions that the knife may have poison on it based on the symptoms that Jezaille was showing.

So Rei was in charge of a new poison with unique symptoms and some of it was stolen. She suspected Jezaille and was confronting her at the time that Jezaille got stabbed in the back. They were alone in the hut at the time, so where was the culprit? Auchi presents a photo of Rei holding the knife in Jezaille's back. But, I'm not sure how that changes anything. That's still consistent with the claim of Rei pulling the knife out of Jezaille. It also shows there was another witness somewhere! Based on a defect in the camera used, Soseki says he thinks the photographer is Raiten Menimemo. Menimemo was also the person who interviewed Soseki and Mikotoba earlier and took a photo was the same defect. We break for recess to call him in!

During the recess we get to catch up with Rei. She confirms that Jezaille really did get stabbed in front of her and that no one else was in the hut. Mikotoba also gives us a bottle of liquid that can be used to test for the new poison. After that, the Bailiff calls us in.

That's it for Part 1!

I was pretty hyped for Susato as a lawyer but I'm not liking it as much as I thought I would. I think part of the reason is being able to see inside Susato's head doesn't make her seem as smart as usual. This is compounded by the tutorial case having to explain how the game works so Susato needs things explained to her that feel like things she should already know. I also think she went a bit too far with copying Ryunosuke's animation. I don't mind Ryunosuke being an inspiration but it just felt a bit much.

The pen with the initials on it reminded me that McGilded literally committed murder with a dagger with his initial on it. That's a lot of confidence that he will get away with it and he mostly did! At least until Graydon stepped in.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

GiftedACIII posted...

I think Graydon could've avoided all this if he waited a day and simply bought the music box from the forfeited items shelf. It's unlikely the police would've got to it by then. His first music disc was already in police custody so that was a lost cause.

He said he didn't know that it already expired or he would have done exactly that. I think he only found out it was on the forfeited items shelf after he already broke in.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

I wrote down Graydon in all of my notes so that will probably make things worse. >_>

Anyways, the small box is a music box! Can we play the music disk now? Ryunosuke wants it played and Gregson is absolutely against it. Van Zieks sides with us so the disk finally gets played. It's Morse code! I was wondering what it could possibly be since it doesn't seem like it could have been a recorded voice. Please translate Juror No 5! That message must be something absurd. Graydon says the music box is broken but Ryunosuke disagrees. I wonder if the Morse code message was translated from Japanese. Wait, it was probably always an English message to begin with even in the Japanese version. Ryunosuke suggests that the sound is Morse code and contains stolen government secrets and the culprit would have done anything to get it back. If so, why did Graydon leave the music box behind? There's also the question of why Mason had the disk full of secrets to begin with.

We move on to Graydon's testimony regarding stealing secrets and the Skulkins want in again. The Skulkins just sold out Graydon! I can't believe they just did that! They are NOT okay with selling out the country and now outright point the finger at Graydon being there during the crime. It seems like they're upset that Windibank died as well. Also, it turns out I'm dumb. Graydon correctly points out that a single note is not enough to encode Morse code and two notes are required. I guess this is why Juror No. 5 can't translate for us. But that's okay, the music box had a secret second half so we just need to find where the second disk is.

The Skulkins are apparently on our side now and spill the beans on their history with Graydon. It turns out they were old friends. They also know that Ashley Graydon used to be Ashley Milverton. Susato isn't here but she bails us out with her research on the omnibus case. Mason's last name was also Milverton and Graydon is Mason's son! Ryunosuke presents the second half of the music box. The claim is Mason was trying to sell a second disk to McGilded. When things went wrong, the second disk would end up at Windibank's. Graydon finally admits to being at Windibank's that night but still denies being involved in either murder or stealing government secrets. But, just showing that Graydon was shot should be good enough. The Skulkin gun shot Sholmes's pouch. Windibank's gun shot Graydon. That means it must have been Graydon who shot and killed Windibank. Therefore, Gina can her her Not Guilty now, right? Nope. Graydon has another card up his sleeve.

Graydon says he saw Gina shoot Windibank through the peephole in the door. As a result, Gina's coat got covered in blood. Van Zieks tells us that real luminol exists to test for blood. Well that's not good. We already know Gina's coat is covered in blood. That's another six Guilty votes so it is time for the third Summation Examination!

Or not? The Baliff starts speaking to us and it is Sholmes! I don't really get Van Zieks. He says he doesn't like Ryunosuke much but is frequently very cooperative except for when he isn't. Sholmes says Susato gave us one last going away present to use as a last resort. The present is the Cat-Flapomat! How does that help?! Wait, is Sholmes implying that Susato made the peephole in the storeroom door. The peephole doesn't exist in the 1:00am photo but it does exist in the 1:30am photo. That's abusrd! Susato, what have you done?! I can't believe that that detail was sitting in the Court Record the whole time!

Ryunosuke asks to cross examine Graydon again. I guess we aren't doing a summation examination after all. I present the 1:00am photo to the line about Gina throwing the gun out the peephole but that doesn't work even though I think it should. Gotta present the Cat-Flapomat instead. With no peephole, Graydon's testimony falls apart! We also use the security photos to show that the peephole didn't exist at the time of the murder but it still isn't enough.

So we take a different approach yet again. We need to figure out why Graydon knows about a peephole that didn't exist when he was at Windibank's. There's also the issue of how he knew about the blood on the coat but that's not a real issue. He briefly stole Gina's coat from her so he might have figured it out then. Ryunosuke thinks Gregson leaked info about the peephole to Graydon during Gina's testimony in exchange for the second disk. Did the peephole really never come up between Graydon first arriving and his testimony using it? It feels like it might not have, but I would have to go back and check. To prove Gregson made a deal, Ryunosuke demands that Nash be searched and we find the disk! Graydon passed the disk to Gregson who hid the disk on Nash but that's not enough to get past Ryunosuke! I'm not sure if Nash was in on this though. It seems like he wasn't which makes sense since Gregson wouldn't trust Nash to keep it a secret.

Graydon still won't crack from this since it still doesn't prove the disk came from him. So we go crack Gregson instead. We threaten to play the music box with both disks installed. Gregson suddenly panics over this and says Ryunosuke insisting on this may make him an enemy of the entire British government. But, Ryunosuke will stop at nothing to protect his client! Van Zieks is very helpful as always. He wants the truth so he won't get in the way. Won't he get in trouble for this as well? I suspect he doesn't care! The music box plays Morse code for a bit before Gregson breaks and asks for it to stop. He finally admits to feeding Graydon information about the peephole in exchange for the disk. Ryunosuke says this finally shows that Graydon was the third intruder who shot Windibank.

This finally gets Graydon to admit to his crimes. He met McGilded one day and got an offer for lots of money in exchange for government secrets from his job as a communication officer. Graydon reached out to Mason to build the special music box and the disks. McGilded would give 10 Guinea for the first disk and 1000 Guinea for the second. 1000 Guinea is a lot! That's enough to build a mansion in the most prestigious area of Tokyo (Thanks Susato!). Graydon never told his father was the real contents of the disks were but Mason eventually got suspicious from the amount of money it was bringing in. One time Mason said he wanted to do the exchange for the disks. That was the night of the omnibus murder. Even Graydon doesn't know why the deal fell through. Only that his father was dead and McGilded still got the second disk. For revenge, Graydon also used his money to have McGilded killed after the omnibus trial.

After that, Graydon tried to recover the two disks and the music box. He figured out Gina had the ticket from the trial and followed her. But, after that fell apart and the police took one disk, he used more extreme measures to try and get the second. That fell apart as well when Windibank turned out to be inside his shop at the time. Graydon managed to get the disk but Windibank showed up and shot at Graydon. Graydon ended up shooting back and unfortunately his one shot turned out to be lethal. After that he ran for it. And that's everything that happened.

The judge asks the jury for the votes and we get our six Not Guilty votes! Gina still has to deal with perjury from the omnibus murder trial and also for breaking into Windibank's. Finally Juror No. 5 steps in with a translation of the music box! I'm thinking Mason figured it out and the disks contain a different message but I'm wrong. Juror No. 5 says that the two disks put together did NOT make up a Morse code message. It was completely meaningless. We know for a fact that Graydon was selling secrets so what went wrong here? In any case, we get our fireworks and confetti!

Van Zieks and Ryunosuke have a little chat after the trial. It looks like Van Zieks has taken a specific interest in Ryunosuke. He only became prosecutor for the case to go up against Ryunosuke. I guess that's why we didn't hear anything about the prosecutor for the case for such a long time. He also hints at a Japanese friend who betrayed him but beyond that continues to be cryptic about his past. I guess I need to wait until the second game to find out what happened.

After the trial Ryunosuke meets up with Gina, Sholmes and Iris. While Gina isn't guilty of murder, she still has a bunch of other charges to answer for so she's still not free. But after all this, Gina says she might be trying to get out of the pickpocket business. The prison carriage arrives so Gina needs to go now. She thanks Ryunosuke for believing in her and then she's off! Iris and Sholmes inform Ryunosuke that due to weather conditions, Susato's ship can't leave yet. Isn't it kinda bad that Susato is still in the country since she has that whole manipulating the crime scene

Trial is on break while Benedict is called in. We take the chance to finally ask Gina what happened in Windibank's. Gina snuck into Windbank's and got surprised by Windibank appearing. She panicked and ended up taking Windibank's gun and got caught on camera. They go to the storeroom to look for the manuscript. Soon afterwards, the Skulkins arrive. Windibank is a pretty good guy. Despite everything, he wants Gina to say behind and out of danger. Gina gives Windibank his gun back while he goes to investigate. But not long after that, two gun shots ring out and Windibank is now dead. Gina does in fact take the gun and lock the door before passing out to create the closed room. At this point, we already figured most of that out so it would have been helpful to have the information sooner!

Court is now back in session with Nash, Ringo, Gregson and Benedict on the stand. Although, Benedict's real name is Ashley Graydon. Graydon was likely shot at the scene of the crime. How is he actually he and uninjured? It turns out he isn't and is just covering up the wound. Nash helpfully informs us that Graydon was shot two days ago and Nash is worried about Graydon constantly waving his arm around. Nash is a good guy but I don't think Graydon wanted to hear that. Ryunosuke tries to connect Graydon to Windibank's by pointing out the connection through McGilded's disk but Graydon says the disk was his in the first place. He knew McGilded and shared music box disks with him but accidentally left one in his coat when he pawned it. In any case, the police took the disk so breaking into Windibank's to steal it wouldn't work.

Next we try to connect Graydon by saying there was something else of McGilded's at the pawnbrokery that Graydon was interested in. The small box in the other ticket. Van Zieks says the security photos prove that nothing was stolen. Helpfully, he provides two photos for this so it is stereoscope time! It looks like nothing was stolen but a small box was moved and that's likely to be McGilded's box. It'll take about half an hour to go fetch the box from the pawnbrokery. In cases like this, Van Zieks normally has all the evidence on hand but I guess even he can't bring everything from Windibank's. Graydon slips up and says McGilded pawned the coat along with the box. I thought he was maintaining that he pawned the coat? No one seems to mind that he said that, though. To show why the box and disk are important, Gina needs to be called to testify about the omnibus case again.

Ryunosuke recaps the case quickly and convinces Gina to tell the court what she told us about the case. Van Zieks tries to scare her with claims about getting charged were perjury but we all know perjury doesn't really matter in the Ace Attorney world. Van Zieks is bluffing. After Gina finishes people are mad at Ryunosuke for helping McGilded get off. I guess they don't know that Ryunosuke wasn't really in on it. Gina said it sounded like there were talks of money so based on the disk being labeled as "McGilded" is sounds like Mason was the original owner of the disk and was selling it to McGilded. A person in debt preparing to hand a disk to their creditor and somehow winds up dead instead. I feel like I've heard this story before! Anyways, in the end Gina didn't know what to do with the ticket she got from the now deceased McGilded. Just before the deadline, she decides to pay off the loan and retrieve the item. Is there really a problem with that? If it expired, the item would just be put up for sale anyways. Finally, the Baliff arrives so it is time to find out what the small box is!

That's it for part 3!

We go off on some tangents here since we need to show that Graydon was at the scene of the crime. And so far we still haven't been able to do that. >_> Maybe if we keep trying stuff we'll eventually figure something out. Also, the names Graydon and Gregson are way too similar. I feel like I'm always just a hair away from writing down the wrong one. <_<
---

My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

The Skulkins and Gregson are on the stand again. They say that just before the gun shot they heard a voice yelling out "Gimme that gun!" which is weird because Windibank got shot in the back. Nash said Windibank was holding a gun when he yelled that out. Wait, what?! Why is Windibank holding a gun? Nash says Windibank and Gina were pointing guns at each other so now there are three guns at the scene and one is missing? It would have been nice if we asked Gina what happened. Like in a lot of cases the defendant doesn't really know much about what went on. But, it seems like Gina should have had useful information for untangling this mess of a testimony. In any case, this contradicts the photo of Windibank not holding anything and also Windibank was shot in the back not the front.

The Skulkins change their story again. Windibank confronted the Skulkins while holding a gun and threatened to shoot if they didn't drop their weapon. This shows that the Skulkins did have a chance to attack Windibank. Ryunosuke now has a proposed solution to the closed room. Windibank fled back into the store room and was shot in the back at the same time from the Skulkins in the main area. Gina then locked the store room from the inside the protect herself from the Skulkins.

Van Zieks isn't buying it. The fact remains that the two guns (I guess the Skulkins were lying about the third) were each shot once and we know the Skulkins shot Sholmes. That means Windibank must have been killed by his own gun. He also takes this chance to bring up the music box disk to discredit Gina's character. That means it's "luminol" time. The blood is green! So the blood on the calendar is Benedict's not Sholmes! I was wondering how that could have worked considering Sholmes was shot in the stomach and the answer was that wasn't the same bullet! With that said, why didn't Sholmes leave any blood behind after getting shot? In the end, the jury finds Van Zieks convincing so we get six Guilty votes again. RIP.

The judge kicks off the Summation Examination since he knows Ryunosuke will ask for it anyways. One thing that bugs me. Why are people treating Gina like a thief for trying to get McGilded's disk? Gina got the coat redemption ticket and password from McGilded. She paid Windibank the proper amount to pay for the coat. The coat, and whatever is in it, should rightfully be hers! During the Summation Examination, we find out Juror No. 4 was Sholmes's surgeon. He needs help from a ballistics expert like Vilen. "Those two statements clearly contradict the idea that all I do is pit jurors against each other!". I found that amusing. We work out the the bullet likely hit Sholmes's pouch which we now get from Van Zieks. After examining the pouch, we find a third bullet! We have two guns that fired one bullet each and three bullets that were fired that night. That's a problem. While we don't convince any Jury members to change their vote, we do convince the judge to continue to trial anyways.

Nash, Ringo and Gregson take the stand yet again. Van Zieks asks the Skulkins if they had an accomplice and they deny it. Ryunosuke thinks they are lying and tries to push that point. Now Van Zieks is suddenly against the idea even though that's what he was suspecting just a moment ago. He wants proof but that's okay. The defense is ready! We use the green blood on the music box disk and calendar to show that Benedict was at the scene of the crime. I'm not sure why magic "luminol" is admissable but it apparently is! Wait, no it isn't. Van Zieks say shady magic chemicals shouldn't be admissable as evidence. Iris says it doesn't matter what Van Zieks thinks and that it is up to the jury. We get four Not Guilty votes so the trial continues! I do feel bad for Van Zieks there. He's right that it isn't well tested enough to be considered as evidence. Iris's stuff likely does work but something like this can be abused by McGilded types.

The judge would like to call Benedict to the stand but there's a problem. The name is an alias so they don't know where to find him. Fortunately, there is a photo of him from the security cameras that Sholmes installed. Also, as luck would have it, Benedict is a co-worker of Juror No. 5. So it looks like we can call in Benedict after all!

Trial Part 2 done!

It looks like we're finally making progress but at the same time it feels like there's still a long way to go. Is Sholmes going to be all right? It sounds like he was pierced by a shard of glass and his surgeon left it inside him. Or maybe he didn't. If he did, surely there would be complications by now, right? The mysterious music box disk has been around for a while now. What could possibly be on it that is so important. Gregson also hinted that government officials were trying to cover up the disk as well.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

Trial Part 1 begins which means Susato is gone now. Gina and Iris are at the court with Ryunosuke. Iris brings us a newspaper that has info about the weather. The newspaper is naturally in English so I can read it and I imagine it was in the Japanese version as well. I wonder how the Japanese version handled the translation since I don't think they had subtitles when the cursor is moved over foreign language text. Iris says she will be joining Ryunosuke at the bench for emotional support. That's good to hear but what is Sholmes up to? Iris knows that as well. She says Sholmes isn't awake yet. That's strange. He should be awake already, right? But no time to ponder that, the Bailiff calls us in!

Looks like the prosecutor is Van Zieks after all. I wonder why the game was hiding that until now. It's also time to meet the jurors... wait is that THE Vilen Borshevik?! Juror 1 is John Garrideb. No. 2 is the maid from G1-3. No. 3 looks new. No. 4 looks like G1-4 Juror No. 6 except now wearing a doctor's coat. No. 5 looks like the typewriter juror from G1-3. Juror No 6 is literally Vilen Borshevik and he's trying to get to the Crystal Tower. >_> I am shocked that they actually went somewhere with that plotline from G1-2.

We get some details about the overall crime. Windibank was shot in the back and died instantly. Gina was the only other person in the closed room. The closed room had one entrance and it was locked from the inside. You know, it just hit me that we never asked Gina for a detailed account of what happened inside Windibank's. We just spent all our time asking her about G1-3. Like she was found passed out but maybe she had some info from before that happened. Now the murder weapon gets added to the court record but it's too late to try presenting it to Gina for more info.

The three witnesses are Nash Skulkin, Ringo Skulkin and Tobias Gregson. Gregson is mostly there to keep the other two in line. The Skulkins caught me off guard. I was expecting Benedict to be one of the witnesses and maybe that playing card person from G1-4 that didn't do much. The Skulkins have a gun and Ryunosuke showed that it was fired and hit Sholmes. The calendar was used for this so I guess the green blood belongs to Sholmes. Van Zieks uses this against us. The problem is the Skulkin gun was only fired once. If the shot hit Sholmes, it didn't kill Windibank.

Van Zieks then presents the photos from the security cameras that Sholmes installed. The 1:00am photo shows Gina holding a gun while facing Windibank. Well that's not good. >_> Gina wouldn't kill anyone so I'm sure there's an explanation but I don't have it yet. The jury doesn't want to wait, though. Six Guilty votes means time for a Summation Examination!

We have a chat with Juror No. 1, Garrideb. It turns out he had problems getting tenants since G1-4 so he's not too happy with Ryunosuke right now. Juror No. 4 said he operated on someone yesterday. Did he operate on Sholmes? I get the feeling he did. To Juror No. 6: "Please tell me you're not Vilen Borshevik". Is it safe for Ryunosuke to ask that? We get the 1:30am photo to check if anything was stolen but nothing sticks out. There's some stereoscope stuff to compare the images but it just doesn't work for me so I have the game do it. Maybe this works better on the 3DS? It looks like the objects on the table got moved somehow which means the Skulkin testimony so far may be unreliable. This is apparently enough to get the jurors to changes some votes and continue with the trial. The Skulkins get called back up.

That's it for Trial Part 1!

I didn't really think I would like the Skulkins much but they are actually pretty funny. Seeing who was on the jury was kinda amusing since there are a bunch of famliar faces selected at "random" from the 6 million people in London including literally Vilen Borshevik. The 1:00am photo came as a shock. I wonder if Gina is aiming at something behind Windibank for some reason. Overall, not much progress is made on figuring out the case. A lot of time was spent piling up evidence to make my client look bad.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

The 1:00am photo should be stricken from the record for making my client look bad.
---

My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

If I'm looking to avoid danger or trouble, I would avoid bringing any of the lawyers. Or Maya. >_>
---

My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

Investigation Part 4! It's finally time to take a good look at the crime scene. I tried to examine the blood on the calendar and Iris helpfully informs us that she had effectively invented luminol. I can't help but feel that dragging in future tech like this partially defeats the purpose of making a story that takes place in the past. >_> It turns out this stuff is better than luminol! Blood from different people will change to a different colour. This would be super useful in cases where blood from multiple sources mixed together. Although in the past, there aren't any DNA databases around yet so we still need to figure out whose blood turns what colour.

We also find a redepmtion ticket with some blood on it. The blood seemed to come from a gloved hand which reminded me of the blood on McGilded's glove in G1-3. Oh, the game actually lets me take a guess as who the blood came from so I go with Mason. The characters seem to agree but I'm not sure it makes sense. This ticket is for the coat. That means Beppo got it when he turned in the coat then Gina got a hold of it. I don't think McGilded had a chance to touch the ticket unless Beppo gave it to him to give to Gina. But, I'm pretty sure McGilded told Gina to get the ticket off Beppo.

Next place to explore is the storeroom. Gregon gives us some info here. The one and only key to the storeroom was found in Gina's pocket. Although, Sholmes showed it wasn't that hard to cheat and copy a key so there could always be more than one key. Speaking of Sholmes, his operation is now done but he's still sleeping. We find Iris's manuscript inside the storeroom as expected but the box it was in was broken in to. We also find Windibank's gun that was originally in Gina's hand. Windibank said he only ever put one bullet in the gun and right now it's empty so it looks like it was fired at some point. Finally we examine Windibank's blood and it turns blue. The mysterious blood on the calendar was green and Mason's was purple. Some blood got on the music box disk a while back but we don't get a chance to test that yet.

Visiting hours are almost done at the prison so we head back to Gina to make sure she's okay with Ryunosuke defending her. I was going to present the gun to ask Gina about it but it was never added to the court record. Why wasn't the alleged murder weapon added to the court record? >_> After pressing Gina about it she finally admits that she did go to Windbank's to look for the manuscript and Ryunosuke noticed that her coat has some blood on it so it's testing time! That's a lot of purple! The coat is covered in Mason's blood. Is Gina really okay with still wearing it? She wasn't exactly happy about getting some of Mason's blood on her hands. The blood could only have come from when Mason was stabbed with the knife. The true culprit of G1-3 is Magnus McGilded!

Iris asks Ryunosuke if he believed McGilded was innocent. Ryunosuke said he was trying to believe. That he wanted to believe. That was pretty much my reaction to G1-3 until pretty close to the end. I sort of wish it was a bit more ambiguous regarding whether McGilded was guilty or not since I've been pretty sure he was guilty for quite a while now.

Kazuma's theme hype! It's a flashback to G1-1 where Kazuma talks about a lawyer's greatest weapon being their belief in their client. Can I trust Gina after everything that has happened? I always trusted Gina. Ryunosuke says that no matters what happens until the end, he'll be on Gina's side. Gina finally gives in and lets us represent her tomorrow! Although, apparently Gina got Susato to sign the papers for her. Is that really allowed?

It's the night of April 16th and Ryunosuke is having one last chat with Susato. Susato leaves at 4am tomorrow which is way before the trial starts. Susato gives Ryunosuke her note on G1-3 so it seems like we'll need them. Ryunosuke is of the opinion that Susato has done a fantastic job as a judicial assistant but Susato seems to be of the opinion that she has failed at her job for some reason. I wonder why. I'm also of the agreement that she has been a big help. It's a sad farewell but I'm sure she'll show up again. Hopefully both alive and not as a defendant.

There's one last scene at the end where Susato meets up with Sholmes who is now awake and apparently asks him to help with something. The assistant position in the trial is now open, so maybe that? Although, I think the prosecutor slot is also still open...

Investigation done!

It sounds like the current case is going to deal with G1-3 a fair bit. Like right now it still isn't known who set the omnibus on fire and killed McGilded. Stronghart and Gregson have also been hinting at a bigger case going on right now that is related to McGilded.

GiftedACIII posted...

It's optional but if you present the representation papers to Gina (or examine it, I forget which) you get some info on Gina's literacy.
Yeah, some of the minor mechanic details of the Mcgilded case are never answered. The tools in the omnibus being one, and another is why the witnesses saw two different moments of him getting stabbed.
A possible answer i got for the first one is that Mcgilded initially wanted to keep Gina secret only to reveal her later but that's kind of silly.

It was presenting the papers to Susato and the window to do so isn't very big. I believe Gina also said in the past that the different redemption tickets look the same to her which is likely because she can't read them.

Furst and Fairplay never saw the stabbing at all only the knife stuck in Mason. Beppo said he was just mistaken about seeing a stabbing somehow. The three of them all oversold their testimony.

LeonhartFour posted...

Gina said she removes them before the omnibus takes off so she can fit under the seat, and presumably, she puts them back when the omnibus gets back so no one gets wise to her scheme. Either that, or poor Beppo gets stuck doing it!

She might do that in the normal case (I forget if she said she did). But at the very least, at the time the omnibus stopped in G1-3 there were no tools to put back in the storage area since they would be back where the omnibus left from. Someone would have to bring in new ones from somewhere to edit the crime scene.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

I think Mason got stabbed once in the stomach, right? That doesn't seem like it should cause instant death.

Gina also mentioned she hid the ticket in a bush overnight before coming back to get it. So I think she really did steal it from Beppo or Beppo was told to give the ticket to her. The game doesn't go into much detail regarding what McGilded told Beppo.

The password stuff makes sense. Once again, I don't think the detail was actually mentioned in game but it does seem reasonable that McGilded said what password to use since he used Windibank before and would know about the password system.
---

My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

The start of Part 3 shows the crime scene more clearly. Gina is passed out and holding a gun while Windibank has a gunshot wound. The storeroom is locked from the inside so this is another closed room! Ryunosuke heads back to meet up with Iris and fill her in on what's going on. Windibank is dead and Gina is the prime suspect for the murder. Sholmes is in the hospital for the gunshot wound. I suspect there's at least one more Great Deduction in this case so he'll probably show up out of nowhere at some point. Susato is still away being questioned by the police so Ryunosuke gets to go investigating with Iris this time!

We head off to go see Gina in prison. Gina still has a lot of trust issues so she has been turning away the public defenders that have been sent to represent her in court. Does this mean the prosecutor won't be Van Zieks? If it was, no one would want to take Gina's case, right? Gina sure like Iris a lot. She is still lying about her reasons for going to the Pawnbrokery to protect Iris. Gina tries to claim it was for money but that's obviously not the case. Gina also mentioned an unforgivable lie but won't say what it was. In the end she gives us another Windibank's redemption ticket that she found in the coat. It's for a small box so maybe it was the music box that goes with the music box disk?

I try to see Sholmes as the hospital but he isn't in his room since he's about to have his operation. Next I want to go to the pawn brokery but I take this chance to reload an older save file to explore the place from before the crime. This actually reveals that there is only one key to the storeroom and Windibank always keeps it on his person. Ryunosuke also says Sholmes would be the prime suspect if the pawnbrokery is ever burgled but It doesn't quite turn out like that. >_>

Back in my current file I meet with Gregson and find out I can't examine the crime scene until Gina names us as her official representatives. One thing I've been wondering, can Gina read? It seems unlikely she ever attended school but maybe someone else taught her. Being asked to sign papers you can't read would be a problem. Gregson calls this case simple as well to keep the trend going but as always I have my doubts! We find out from Gregson that the two mysterious persons from last night have been caught. Also we find out that Susato is waiting for us to pick her up after her meeting with Stronghart so next we go to do that.

Susato needs to head back to Japan because her father is sick. That's unfortunate but I'm sure I'll see her again. She's leaving tomorrow so there's not much time left. It also means Susato won't be there for Gina's trial. We fill Susato in on what's going on before heading off to see Gina again to get those papers signed.

Susato and Ryunosuke try to get Gina to open up a bit and she finally does. Ryunosuke thinks that the lies Gina told were related to the McGilded case from 2 months ago and Gina confirms this. I thought she was mostly telling the truth during the trial. Oops. So it turns out the Mason and McGilded boarded the omnibus together. At the time, McGilded had the coat and music box disk as well. McGilded paid Beppo 10 guineas to deposit the coat (which had the music box disk in it) at Windibank's. McGilded told Gina to go get the ticket and make sure the two month time limit doesn't lapse. McGilded also goes over how Gina should rig her testimony in court. He threatens Gina so she had no choice but to do what he says.

Gina says that's why she isn't a person worth trusting. Naturally, Ryunosuke responds by asking her to sign the representation papers for court tomorrow. He says he needs them to investigate and Gina can still back out later if she wants to. Gina is also informed that Sholmes got hit with a bullet. Gina seems to like Sholmes a lot as well since can't keep up her tsun act and is visibly worried about him. In the end, Gina does sign the papers so we can investigate but still says she doesn't need a lawyer.

Part 3 ends and there's going to be a part 4.

There are still some things that don't make sense with G1-3. Like why was the storage compartment filled with tools again only to remove them later? Gina was definitely there and definitely hiding under the seat. I also didn't quite catch how Gina was supposed to get the redemption ticket from Beppo. I guess she can just steal it but then she won't know the password. Gina also repeatedly mentions a "thud" sound in regarding to Mason but she never mentions Mason crying out in pain after getting stabbed. None of the other witnesses do either.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

We get kicked out of Windibank's and we aren't allowed back in. Now I'm even more mad I wasn't able to finish examining things before. Gina gets to keep her coat but lost the music box disk. Since the violin issue was sorted out, Sholmes invites everyone to dinner with Iris but Gina is being tsundere and runs off. We head back to the Sholmes's suite to chat up Iris before dinner. Iris finally reveals her father's name is John H. Wilson and Ryunosuke finally makes the connection to the G1-1 victim. But, Ryunosuke and Susato decide not to push this subject any further so Iris still doesn't know what happened to her dad. We find out Sholmes was able to make a copy of McGilded's music box disk but we still have no idea what music box it goes with. While on the subject of Iris's stories, Susato accidentally lets it slip she knows the name of an unpublished Sholmes story called "The Hound of the Baskervilles". Susato seems unwilling to explain why she knows that. But no time for that, Gina now arrives so it's time for dinner!

At night, Susato is finally ready to talk about the telegram she got. She apparently needs to meet with Stronghart tomorrow morning. Only she got the request to come so Ryunosuke isn't invited. Next, Iris shows up with Gina. For unknown reasons, Susato still doesn't want to talk about why she knew the title of the unpublished manuscript. Gina thinks that Sholmes sold the manuscript instead of pawning it and that's how Susato found out from all the way in Japan. But, Iris is of the opinion that Sholmes wouldn't do that. At least she hopes, he wouldn't. After that, everyone breaks up for the night.

A bit later Sholmes wakes Ryunosuke up. It's still the middle of the night and Gina has gone missing. Also, for some reason, the light is on at Windibank's pawnbrokery. I can see where this is going. I'm guessing Gina will be the defendant for the case. Surely not the victim? I like Gina. Please don't kill her off. I was a bit worried about where Susato was but she showed up as well.

The date is now April 16. I remember Windibank saying he always changed the calendar date at midnight so I wonder if this will come up now the date has rolled over. Anyways, we all head inside the pawn brokery. We see two shadowy figures and Sholmes gets shot! He's still alive and yells at Ryunosuke to chase after the mysterious people who just ran outside. Unfortunately, Ryunosuke is too slow and loses track of them. Ryunosuke goes back inside Windibank's with an officer. He looks around the place and arrives at the door to the store room. The door is locked but when he looks inside through a window he sees Windibank and Gina passed out. I didn't get a good look but I think Windibank was bleeding and is likely the victim.

That's it for Investigation Part 2.

Well things fell apart quickly. I'm wondering if the officer brought in was really one of the two shadowy people but I think it was just a generic officer so probably not. Susato sure is hiding a lot! I can imagine a reason why she might need to hide what she knows about the manuscript from Iris but I'm curious why Ryunosuke also needs to be left in the dark. I also just noticed that Sholmes went to the trouble of creating a replica of the music box disk but this apparently didn't matter enough to make the court record. I guess it would just confuse things when we got the real one back.

GiftedACIII posted...

Besides the Layton games I believe GAA1-5 is the longest case until we get a defendant. I'll admit I actually thought Gina stole the redemption ticket from the man the first time I played lol. I wasn't trusting of Gina at all.

I believe Gina's profile was already updated at this time to say she was Iris's friend (Iris wouldn't reveal this until a bit later) and I think that was part of the reason I thought she was telling the truth. Although, even if I didn't see that I think I would have trusted her anyways. IIRC Gina explicitly admitted to pawning stuff she stole but also made it clear that she didn't steal anything in this specific case. Also was this really longer to get a defendant than in 6-5? IIRC that also took a long time before we even found out there was a case. Someone should try timing this.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

Case G1-5

Two months have passed since G1-4 and Ryunosuke hasn't had a chance to take on any new cases since then. Apparently Van Zieks hasn't been in court for the last two months either. I think we're still a few months away from the Great Exhibition as well. Before this case started, I thought G1-5 would take place closer to the Great Exhibition but I guess not. Susato receives a telegram and while something is clearly bothering her she doesn't yet want to talk about it. Putting that aside, we head off to meet up with Iris and Sholmes for breakfast.

Sholmes is down in the dumps after the sudden disappearance of his ability to play a violin after he got it back from a pawn broker. This is all used to introduce how a pawn broker works. They are used as both storage and a way to loan money by handing an item over as collateral. It turns out there was a mixup and Sholmes ended up with a viola instead of his violin. So it's off to the pawn broker to fix the mistake! Outside on Baker Street Susato says she wouldn't have any regrets if she ended up before a court of law. I think it's a bad idea to tempt fate like that. There are still 6 cases to go including G1-5 which doesn't have a defendant yet.

Windibank's Pawnbrokery is also on Baker Street so we head on in and meet Pop Windibank. Surprising no one, it was Sholmes's fault the instruments got switched and the issue is quickly sorted out. We also get introduced to the make shift security cameras in the shop. Sholmes invented special film so the cameras work perfectly even in the dark. Does something like that even exist today? >_>

A bit later a young girl with a speech pattern that sound familiar show up. Is this Gina? It turns out it is! She's trying to pawn a music box disk and thinks Windibank is low balling her on the value. Suddenly a man in white shows up to further complicate matters. He claims that Gina stole the redemption ticket for the coat and music box disk from him. Gina denys this. I believe in Gina. I think it really is her coat.

Windibank uses a password system for claiming items and somehow the man in white, knows the password. But, I assume Gina knew the password as well if she was able to retrieve the item. The person in white's name is Eggert Benedict and he also knows the exact date the coat was deposited, February 15. He misspeaks and hints that the coat isn't really his. I always knew Gina was telling the truth! To try and figure out what is going on, we call on Sholmes for another Great Deduction!

Sholmes tells us that Benedict is trying to dig a tunnel from the pawn broker into the sewers which is connected to the bank across the street so he can steal lots of money. Why did we want Sholmes's opinion again? It's up to Ryunosuke to fix things and work out that Benedict is really here to steal the coat and the music box disk.

In regards to the music box disk, I finally get around to looking at it in the Court Records. There's a note on it. "For McGilded". What in the world?! It looks like the coat's real owner was McGilded and it was deposited on the same day as the G1-3 murder in the omnibus! Maybe this case will resolved what really happened that night.

Benedict pulls out a gun and tries to get the music box disk by force but luckily Gregson shows up to save us! Benedict is forced to give up on the coat and music box disk and makes a run for it. Gregson takes the music box disk into custody since he is collecting everything related to McGilded for an investigation into something big.

That ends investigation part 1.

That was an interesting start. Seeing McGilded's name come up was a big surprise! I also like Gina so it's nice to see that she's back. One thing I'm a bit mad about is that I got interrupted in the middle of investigating the pawn broker and was forced to do plot stuff for the entire remainder of the section with the game constantly telling me I couldn't investigate.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

If you are on the fence, you might want to wait and see who is on the Legendary Hero banner at the end of the month (leaks suggest Colorless tome Micaiah).

There's also the upcoming Double Special Heroes banner featuring:
Harmonized Dorothea, Duo Lf, New Year Velouria, Plegian Katarina, Plegian Tharja, Valentine Alfonse, New Year Plumeria and Plegian Raphael
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

I think I first heard that line from Spock before I found out where it really came from.

Edit: Wait, I'm in the wrong topic. I shouldn't be here yet. >_>
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

<Good> Finals
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

Van Zieks helpfully informs us that all we need to do to continue the trial is show who and how the victim was stabbed. That sounds simple enough. Ryunosuke manages to bring up the possibility that the window was open because of the fire and Joan admits that he's right. She also confirms she was throwing flaming books at the time of the incident. Juror No. 5 remembers a story where he accidentally lost the money he earned that day and his wife threw a knife at him. So it seems like I might have been right and Joan threw a knife out the open window. That's what Ryunosuke thinks might have happened as well. This is also enough to get four jurors on board to let the trial continue. Susato wants to call Joan to the stand! But, it gets rejected. That's unfortunate. Usually assistants don't get to do stuff like that so it's a shame it got turned down. We do get more testimony from Roly and Patricia, though.

Roly and Patricia pretty much kill our theory dead. The windows don't open enough to toss an item to the other side of the street. Items would just fall straight down outside the Garridebs place at best. With that said, it means we still don't know how the book got the other side of the road. Ryunosuke wants to push to get Susato's idea accepted since they need Joan to testify but, they need to find a way to do this. After reading Roly's warrant card again, an idea suddenly hit me. Roly didn't move the body out of his area so he could go to dinner, did he? He wouldn't, right? Patricia said she dropped her bouquet when she saw the victim but after she came back from going to the police box, the bouquet was nowhere near the victim. Roly moved the body, didn't he? The bouquet was found just outside the window of the Garrideb household. Sounds like Roly moved the body. I totally thought these two witness would be trustworthy but Roly betrays me! Ryunosuke accuses Roly of tampering with the scene of the crime and Roly finally admits to it.

I sort of feel bad for Roly. He seems like a normally good guy who cut corners at just the wrong time to protect his wedding anniversary plans. He all but saw Soseki commit the crime. How much of an issue could it really have been to move the body from one side of the street to the other? It turns out, a lot! But, with this information, we finally know how the burning book made its way to the other side of Briar Road. Also, the true scene of the crime means the knife throwing theory is back on the table.

The defense calls for Joan to take the stand. Ryunosuke does this but I think it would have been cool if Ryunosuke had let Susato lead here and ask for Joan to take the stand since it was her idea and make up for the time Susato got shot down. Joining Joan on the stand is John Garrideb. I forgot that he's also a possible witness. The Garridebs say that while they have knives similar to the generic one that hurt the victim but, even they have no idea if one of their knives went missing that night. That's a reasonable claim, so I wonder how we'll figure out what really happened. I found it amusing when Ryunosuke was wishing there was some sort of technology that would let them identify the owner of an item and Susato literally brings up fingerprinting. Turns out that the technology exists but isn't accepted as evidence yet. So we need to do something else. At this point I still don't really know what is up with the tenant on the first floor but it seems unlikely he is involved at this point.

We find the decisive evidence in John's pipe. The broken tip of the knife is a perfect fit. A book went out the window and the victim stopped to pick it up. A knife soon followed. Ouch. "This was nothing more than a series of unlikely events that culminated in an unfortunate accident". Just "unlikely"? Anyways it seems like we've finally reached the unfortunate truth of the matter. It also sounds like the victim woke up. So somehow we've reach the end of a case with no one dying. \o/ It's a formality at this point but we get our six Not Guilty (and voiced!) votes. Cue confetti and fireworks!

After the trial we catch up with Soseki and he's super happy to be free! But, it looks like he has decided to head back to Japan after this whole ordeal. Ryunosuke and Susato still need a place to stay and Sholmes suggests staying in the attic of the building he lives in since a vacancy just opened up. So the new home office from now on is none other than 221B Baker Street!

Case G1-4 End

This is another case that's a bit unusual. At the end of it all, I see why they decided for the victim to survive the attack even though they wouldn't really participate in the case. It would be a bit of a downer (again) if it turned out a person died from all this. I do feel bad for Joan since she obviously never expected something like this to happen but at the same time she shouldn't be throwing knives around like that! Should be using a more refined weapon like a bow instead. The Garridebs were alright as characters but Patricia was great. I'm not sure exactly why but I ended up liking her a lot. It surprised me that the playing card tenant never showed up at all after his initial appearance. He lived near the scene of the crime and showed up in the case but otherwise was completely unrelated. In the end, we never do find out why Van Zieks took up the case. I thought he would show up after the case to at least give us a cryptic clue but nope. Not even that much. There's also the issue of the Reaper's curse. I doubt anything seriously bad is going to happen to Soseki at this point but ultimately this plot point is still hanging since it could be months before the curse kicks in.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

Based on LeonhartFour's comment it sounds like I'm wrong. In regards to GiftedACIII, I'll have to get back to that later.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

LeonhartFour posted...

Juror No. 3 looks like Furst, but I don't think it's supposed to be him. The hat is too nice!

I thought that was part of the gag. He changed his clothing and hat and now no one recognizes him. Not even Fairplay who is also in the jury. I'm also going off memory so maybe I'll notice something else wrong if I put pictures of them side by side.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

The trial for Soseki begins! Juror No. 1 is Fairplay and I think Juror No. 3 is Furst? No.4 is Joan Garrideb of all people. The first person to take the stand is Gregson who tells us the victim's name might be Olive Green and that she hasn't woken up yet. We get to examine the knife used in the attack which oddly has no blood on it. I guess they wiped the blood off the knife for some reason. Van Zieks once again says that at the time of the incident only Soseki and Green were in the area. No one else could have committed the crime. We try to nitpick some details regarding the book store Soseki went to that day but ultimately make little progress. The jury has seen enough. We get 6 Guilty votes in the blink of a eye. It was actually pretty cool how they bothered to put in some voice acting for all the jurists casting a Guilty vote.

It's time for a summation examination but nothing really sticks out as being wrong. We manage to come up with the possibility that Juror No. 6, who was near Yore Books at the time while wearing a green coat, might have been the person Soseki saw. Also, there was some construction that may have caused Soseki to avoid the crime scene altogether. That's enough to make the trial last a bit longer but Van Zieks tears it apart afterwards. It's kinda weird how Japan uses Metric and Britain uses Imperial units but I guess that fits with the time period. I'm a bit curious how well known a Yard would be even in modern Japan. Van Zieks calls up the next witnesses.

Roly Beate and his wife Patricia Beate take the stand. This series sure loves its "patrol" puns. Anyways, Patricia unambiguously claims she saw the victim fall then explicitly saw Soseki run away from the scene of the crime. This is backed up by Roly who is a police officer. I'm of the impression that these two are telling the truth and aren't hiding anything at all. It seems unlikely they are mistaken about what they saw as well. So it'll be tricky to figure out how to work around it because it means Soseki really was there and that there really wasn't anyone else.

One oddity does arise from Patricia's testimony. Somehow the victim got a hold of Garrideb's burned copy of the book "The Lion's Pride". I'm not really sure what to make of that. Like it does tie the fight the Garridebs had to the case. But, it makes no sense that the book made its way to the crime scene. I guess somehow the burning book must have been thrown outside and across the street. Maybe a knife was as well? But ultimately, this line of reasoning isn't going anywhere since the only possible culprit is still Soseki. The jury is fed up and wants to vote Guilty. So they do! 6 Guilty votes. RIP.

Next up, Summation Examination Round 2!

I find it hard to believe that Roly or Patricia are lying about anything. They just seem way too trustworthy for that. It's not like Soseki is claiming a different version of events either. Soseki is also of the opinion that there wasn't anyone else there when the victim was attacked. So I think he really was there and we were wasting our time trying to suggest he wasn't. The Garridebs are now connected but it isn't clear how that helps. The playing card themed person, the first floor tenant, also hasn't shown up yet so maybe he'll reveal something useful when he does.
---

My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

That is true. Sometimes I have a hard time following what Sholmes is thinking.
---

My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

Back on Briar Road we bribe Gregson into telling us where Soseki lives. It turns out the place is right on Briar Road and that Soseki is renting the place from John Garrideb. Since it was right by the crime scene, we're off to ask Garrideb if he noticed anything. We find out that Garrideb lives on the third floor, Soseki moved into the second floor a week ago and there's also another tenant on the first floor. The layout of the residences was a bit confusing until I remembered that Britain counts floors slightly differently than in North America. The first floor there is the floor just above the ground floor (which is on the ground). Garrideb and his maid, Joan, were in their home when the incident took place. However, due to the fog they would not have been able to see the crime even though they weren't that far away.

Next up is to check out Soseki's room. Garrideb told us Sholmes should be here but he isn't. Wait, now he is. I was investigating the room a bit so it seems like I triggered an event somewhere. The only useful piece of evidence we find from investigating the room is a receipt from the day of the incident. Sholems fills us in on more world building with info about old window taxes and how maids are a status symbol. He also tells us that Garrideb is hiding something but he doesn't yet know what or if it is important to the case. So we all head back to figure it out!

It's time for another Great Deduction! Garrideb was keeping then sold a lion. The lion was responsible for eating the carpet to damage it. Sholmes is doing this on purpose. He must be doing this on purpose, right? >_> As usual, Susato makes Ryunosuke fix the deduction. I guess normally Iris handles that for the books? After fixing it, we work out that Joan is Garrideb's wife who is pretending to be a maid. The carpet was damaged in a fire two days ago at around 5pm because of course it was. None of this seems important enough to get an entry in the Court Records, though. RIP. Visiting hours are almost over at the prison so we need to get back that and follow up with Soseki. But, when I try to do that I automatically get hijacked and go to Briar Road. A playing card themed person shows up. They look guilty. They couldn't look more guilty if they tried. >_> We have a short chat with him after we interrupt his fight with another unknown person wearing yellow. It turns out this playing card guy is the tenant from the first floor.

Finally, we get back to the prison. It struck me as odd that Ryunosuke, Susato and Soseki would be holding their conversation in English rather than Japanese but I guess that was a necessary plot decision for Sholmes to drop in since he doesn't know much Japanese. Sholmes confirms that Van Zieks is not undefeated and that the defendants who get off the hook end up disappearing within a few month. Things like accidents or illnesses will strike them. That's definitely interesting. Like there's no way Van Zieks is actually having these people killed so I do wonder what is happening here. After talking a bit with Sholmes (I must say I can't say I remember Sholmes believing in Ryunosuke in G1-2...), Ryunosuke decides to believe in Soseki and defend him in court tomorrow. With all three (3) pieces of evidence in the Court Record.

Investigation Part 2 done. Did we actually find anything out about the crime? Maybe some of the seemingly unrelated events will get tied into the case somehow.
---

My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

Case G1-4

Based on the opening sequence this looks to be a case about a woman who gets stabbed in the back with a knife. The date is February 19 so this is the very next day after G1-3. We are meeting up with Stronghart who says Ryunosuke passed the test and is now a full on lawyer. He also has another case lined up for Ryunosuke. We also learn from him that McGilded passed away yesterday! I'm not sure what to think of that. I expected McGilded to show up later to tie a future case to G1-3. Now I'm really curious if G1-3 will ever be fully resolved. It turns out there was no inspection planned and McGilded was the one caught in the fire. For the new case, the trial is tomorrow and the defendant doesn't have a lawyer yet.

For more details we talk with Inspector Tobias Gregson. Gregson also says this is a simple case but I've heard that story before! Susato knows what's up. She knows this is going to be super complicated as well. The prosecutor is Van Zieks again and I apparently got the wrong idea about him before. He wasn't an undefeated prosecutor. The defendants he goes after are considered cursed because something bad happens to them even if they do get a Not Guilty verdict. McGilded dying in the fire is one such example. Gregson says we can go meet the defendant at the holding cells so that's what we do next.

The defendant speaks Japanese! His name is Soseki Natsume and I think this is a reference to a Japanese author. Soseki is a very animated person. He said the victim was stabbed with a knife right in front of him but somehow he couldn't see the actual attacker. That's not a good sign. Soseki wants Ryunosuke to defend him but Ryunosuke still isn't sure since the previous trial shook him up pretty badly. He wants a bit more time to make a decision.

Next we head to the scene of the crime, Briar Road. I investigate the area but there's not much to find. Gregson is there and reiterates how there were only two people in the area at the time of the attack: Soseki and the victim. He also tells us there are two witnesses to the crime as well. Gregson mentions how there's an oddity with how Van Zieks is the prosecutor. Normally, Van Zieks only takes on trials for particular bad criminals but in this case the victim is still alive so it isn't even a murder case. The makes things look bad for Soseki but I still believe in him! Sholmes was involved with hunting down Soseki so we want to go look for him next. Fortunately, Susato is a stalker and already knows Sholmes lives at 221B Baker Street. So, off we go!

At Sholmes's place we meet up with the mysterious pink haired girl from the end of the previous case. Her name is Iris Wilson so I did hear it before. I'm guessing she's related to Dr. Wilson from G1-1? It turns out that Iris is the author of The Great Adventures of Herlock Sholmes stories. But, Susato said the author is supposed to be Dr. John H. Wilson. Wait, why didn't this ever come up before? Also, why didn't Ryunosuke react to that name? We talk with Iris a bit about her situation and Dr. Wilson from G1-1 just never comes up at all. Iris eventually leaves us with the information that Sholmes is likely at Soseki's residence and that we should go ask Gregson about it.

That brings us to the end of the first part of the investigation. I like Soseki so far. He's another defendant who does a good job coming off as a person one wants to defend. I enjoyed Susato's reactions to looking around Sholmes's place and how reality measured up to what she pictured in her head. I feel like a lot of these things might be references to something but if so they all pretty much go over my head. As for learning about the case, I feel like I still don't know very much! My Court Record is still very empty. A lot of the information seemed to be more about the general world than the specific case.
---

My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

I actually just recently noticed that as well. I also like how Ryunosuke uses Japanese honorifics when thinking to himself because that will be in Japanese even when he might be speaking English at the time.
---

My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

Part 3 begins! When it was stated that the mystery girl was around 15 years old I briefly thought of Pavlova but she shouldn't have been in the country at the time of the incident. In any case the new girl and McGilded take the stand. It sounds like the new girl was hiding inside the storage compartment below the seat that McGilded was sitting on. At this point I went to examine the omnibus again. There's a giant blood stain on the floor of the cabin that I don't recall being there. Am I dumb? Did I just not see it before? The camera controls don't use inverted Y-axis like I'm used to so they always feel off to me. Even so, I'm sure I would have looked at the floor at some point. Also, the storage area under the seat in the omnibus? I don't think it was empty before. Weren't there tools or something inside when I checked before? I wish I wrote that down in my notes but I didn't.

The mystery girl is finally introduced as Gina Lestrade. She's guilty of being a thief but she doesn't seem to be the one to kill Mason either. She confirms she was hiding in the storage compartment. McGilded says there was no way she was guilty so he took the fall for her. Some of jurors are now changing their votes. Wait. We have SIX not guilty votes?! We won! That should be a good thing except it doesn't seem like it. >_>

Van Zieks isn't having any of this. He confirms that the storage compartment was full just after the incident just like I thought it was. What is going on? Did someone alter the scene of the crime in the middle of the recess? Van Zieks goes and says it. The evidence has been tampered with. McGilded is now being very pushy with getting Ryunosuke to say the storage area was empty at the start when it wasn't. This is bad. This is bad. This is bad. Is McGilded guilty? My faith is wavering. I had 2-4 spoiled for me back in the day so I never really had to deal with that! For the record, I'm still going to say he's innocent but beliving is kinda hard!

"It wasn't empty". I can't lie when I know it wasn't empty. Also I like how the trial can continue with 6 Not Guilty votes but it comes to a grinding halt if there are 6 Guilty votes. It's not fair. I guess Van Zieks talks 3 jurors into changing their votes to Guilty, but we had to change 4 to continue the trial. Still not fair. Ryunosuke constantly saying things are bothering him is scaring me.

Gina helps solve one more mystery. She was the person who the previous witnesses saw with blood on both of her hands. This is just looking worse and worse for McGilded. Gina says she tossed out the stuff in the storage area when she hid in it. That's a reasonable claim but then why was it filled back in when the police got there? Also, she's likely telling the truth about being in the cabin since we know there needs to be a third person to make the blood on hands thing work. Things can work out if Gina was outside of the storage area when McGilded boarded but I'm not sure that makes sense since it means she would have been a direct witness to Mason being killed. Also, she clearly gets mad at McGilded for sitting on the seat so it feels like she really was there somehow.

Gina never heard Mason enter the omnibus. What?! But, that doesn't work at all. She even saw McGilded get on the omnibus alone. This is insane. How did Mason even get in there? I'm guessing that both seats have a storage compartment but one handle is just missing so it doesn't seem like it. Save me Juror No. 5! You should know what the omnibus layout is! Now I need to say how Mason got in?

"He was in there already" - Nope
"He was put there after he died" - Another penalty
"There's another entrance" - There we go! I did consider the skylight but it wasn't clear it could be opened.

McGilded takes charge and implies that Fairplay and Furst are the culprits and dropped the body in via the skylight. I'm feeling worse and worse about McGilded being innocent but I want to believe!

Fairplay and Furst take the stand. Gina is a thief and likely the most trustworthy person on the stand right now. >_> McGilded just keeps looking more and more suspicious. I think I've finally cracked. I told myself I would believe until the bitter end but I can't do it. He's guilty, isn't he? Official prediction: Guilty. McGilded is the one to point out the contradiction in Furst never doing business with Mason. I noticed the hat in the picture ages ago and never would I have guessed that it would be McGilded presenting it. Gina says the skylight can open but only from the top. Why didn't they just ask Juror No. 5? He probably knew this from the start. >_> Furst and Fairplay really seem like they didn't know this, though.

There's a bloodstain on the open skylight! But, I can't believe that Furst and Fairplay are guilty. I just had a thought. I think the blood on the skylight was planted there during the break. Same with the blood on the flood of the cabin. McGilded knows about the blood stain in the floor of the cabin somehow. He's looking really guilty right now!

Van Zieks confirms what I thought, the blood on the skylight was planted. Ryunosuke says it could have been possible for the evidence to be tampered with and also adds the blood stain on the floor to Van Zieks's list of problems. I've been leaning guilty for a while now but I'm a lot more certain now. McGilded killed Mason. That's crazy!

The trial has reached a road block and can't continue pursuing a guilty verdict. Susato says if we let things go on, we likely cruise to a not guilty verdict. But, is that okay?

"The defendant could be guilty"

It doesn't matter, though. With no other way to proceed, we get our Not Guilty.

In the end, we still don't know what really happened. As such, Susato and Ryunosuke congratulate each other on winning but at the same time are unhappy with how it ended. We talk with McGilded and find out there's going to be another inspection of the omnibus and McGilded will be there taking part.

Just before the end we also meet a new character. A girl with pink hair shows up. I've seen her in pre-release material. I think her name was Iris Watson? Iris Wright? Something like that.

And finally there's a cutscene of the omnibus catching on fire and seemingly someone being trapped inside. Well that's not good. I wonder who it is?

Case G1-3 End

This case certainly escalated a lot by the end. I'm still thinking that McGilded killed Mason but ultimately there's no guilty verdict. I don't have an answer for how Mason got inside the cabin or why the storage compartment wasn't empty. I assume a later case will reveal the answer but I'm curious how that will work. McGilded really got me with his act from the start. Even after finding out he was a crooked money lender I still maintained faith for a very long time. But, I just couldn't hold out until the end. With that said, I'm going to look very silly if he is somehow innocent in the end. I do wonder if there are any particularly unique game over lines since McGilded had a lot of things rigged in his favour. I'm guessing they are mostly just normal "Guilty verdict" ends but maybe not.

One last thing. The victim of the first jury trial is called Mason. That's a coincidence, right? >_>
---

My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

It's a good thing we got this collection. It would have been a waste if they put that in the game and it never got localized.
---

My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

Case G1-3

I get another cryptic opening sequence about a murder in a carriage that goes sideways. So it seems like this case will be related to that somehow. Ryunosuke and Susato are now in London and meet up with Lord Chief Justice of the British Empire, Mael Stronghart. He has a cool clock theme going on and gives off "final boss prosecutor" vibes but that likely won't come up for a while. Ryunosuke and Susato report on Kazuma's death and to propose Ryunosuke become a lawyer in Kazuma's place. Stronghart reacts to the comment about Kazuma planning to do something in London so maybe he knows what it is. Stronghart proposes a test where Ryunosuke defends a client in a trial today. It's a murder trial because of course it is. Stronghart says it's a simple case so there's no way to lose but we'll see about that. I select "I'll do it" but Ryunosuke is not having any of that. Susato and Ryunosuke won't do it since it isn't fair to treat a real trial as a game. This draws a reaction from Stronghart so he tips his hand a bit more. The defendant doesn't have a lawyer at the moment so Ryunosuke is his last chance. That changes things considerably so Ryunosuke and Susato rush off to Old Bailey where the trial is. I do wonder why the defendant can't get a lawyer.

At the Old Bailey we meet a man with a very tall hat who I assume is the defendant. We also get some introductions to how much a guinea is worth. I can relate to trying to use lines from things I've read or played in real life and Susato definitely looked happy getting to do that here. The defendant is Magnus McGilded and he seems like a nice enough guy. But, despite how much money he is willing to offer, he can't find a lawyer. The reason appears to be because the prosecutor is Lord Barok van Zieks. I think I've heard the name "van Zieks" before, is he another undefeated prosecutor? Yep, he is. Another series staple confirmed. Now I'm really wondering why Stronghart said the case would be hard to lose when it seems like it will be impossible to win. But, that's all the time we have and the trial now begins!

In the courtroom there are witnesses lined up on the stand already. Oh, wait that's actually the jury. Van Zieks shows up and this is his first trial back after a 5 year hiatus for some reason. Anyways, the trial is for a murder that happened 3 days ago around 10 in the evening. The victim is "Thrice-Fired" Mason who was stabbed by a dagger while riding an omnibus. The only other pasenger inside was McGilded. Sounds like a simple case to me but not in a good way.

Three witnesses are brought in: Beppo, Bruce Fairplay and Lay D. Furst. Looking at the court record, Britain already has colour photographs. That won't be a thing in Japan until at least 2019. I wish there was a picture of the omnibus. I'm not sure how much an omnibus looks like a bus. Ryunosuke is with me on this. He doesn't know either! Van Zieks has us covered and brings in the omnibus and we get to do a makeshift investigation sequence of the crime scene. "Phoenix Wright Omnibus" Very funny. I wonder what it says in Japanese? The jury also seems to believe this is a simple case as we rack up 5 out of 6 guilty votes just while trying to collect information. After Van Zieks brings up how McGilded is a crooked money lender, the 6th and final Guilty vote comes soon afterwards. Oof. This trial fell apart quickly.

Susato to the rescue yet again! She looks up an old process called Summation Examination that gives the defense one last shot. I'm not sure if it is only for the defense. It would be interesting to see if a prosecutor can use it to stop a Not Guilty verdict somewhere down the line. Van Zieks is on the ball. He attacks Susato for using an old reference book but ultimately he does know what the procedure is. This is our only out so despite Van Zieks's complaints, Ryunosuke decides to go for it.

The first Summation Examination is a pretty simple affair since it's the first one. There are problems with the fares that were paid (enough fare for 5 passengers were collected) and also issues with the timing and direction the victim was stabbed. Ryunosuke is able to overturn 4 of the Guilty votes in short order. One scene that sort of stuck out as pretty neat was when Susato was narrating Ryunosuke's thoughts for him. The first time I read it I thought it was an error in the name tags!

The witnesses are called back and Beppo says he overcharged the 4 passengers closing the door on the possibility of a mysterious person X. He also didn't actually see the victim get stabbed. However, another issue comes up where Fairplay and Furst are both adamant that the culprit got blood on both of their bare hands and stand by the claim in the face of hard evidence otherwise. There's also room for doubt regarding how much the witnesses could really see through the skylight. So it's time for a gamble. There was a third person in the carrage out of sight and that person was McGilded! The two people the witnesses saw were the victim and the true culprit! The true culprit was the one with blood on their hands! With all that said, I have no idea how such a person X could escape from the crime scene without being noticed. It turns out that was because McGilded himself helped hide person X. McGilded suggests the possibility that the person might be in the courtroom right now when a smoke bomb goes off forcing the courtroom to be cleared.

Next up is part 3! Wait, 3? I guess we changed to part 2 somewhere in the middle.

This case feels odd. Like it feels pretty long but it doesn't feel like I've made much progress yet I'm think I'm near the end already? Since a new person has now appeared, it's hard for me to guess where the trial goes from here. It would be straightforward if it turns out person X is the culprit but it also feels like they might not be and that leaves McGilded as the only other possibility. So far Van Zieks doesn't really stand out. He's better than Nahyuta but definitely no Blackquill (but who is?). I think the case did a good job in the beginning with creating a connection with McGilded in a short amount of time to make it feel like he is someone you want to defend. But, as the trial goes on it seems there is more to McGilded than it seemed at first.
---

My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

That's pretty neat. It was close enough that I though it might be a reference and I forgot that the von Karma family name was slightly different in Japanese.
---

My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

Part 3 begins and Sholmes claims the murder from last now has been solved. It looks like I'm nearing the end. My initial feeling is that Kazuma died by accident but this doesn't really line up with the evidence. Like maybe Kazuma did write the dying message and it was a meant to tell the Russian speaking crew to go rescue Ryunosuke from the wardrobe or something. But, that doesn't match up with the post-mortem report saying Kazuma died instantly.

Sholmes is trying to break open the closed room via the ventilator. The identity of the speckled band is a snake! Now that I think about it, this was revealed in the opening cutscene but I just forgot. The claim is the Pavlova's mystery pet is the snake and it went through the ventilator, killed Kazuma then came back the same way. The great deduction sequence is quite long and I'm not entirely sure how much the later parts matter since the situation will change a lot after Ryunosuke fixes up the earlier parts (that Susato viciously tore apart with her seemingly bottomless well of knowledge).

Ryunosuke works out the true identity of Pavlova's pet is a cat! Although this just opens up the question of where the snake came from. The cat's name is Darka and the real speckled band is a cat's toy. Ryunosuke also finds a matching half of a glass bell in the wastepaper bin. I'm pretty sure I tried to search that bin during the investigation phase but I don't recall if there was an excuse on why I didn't find it. So in the end it sounds like Kazuma really did die by accident. He tripped over Darka and fell just the wrong way. What a sad way to go. Although, there's still a bunch of unanswered stuff. Like where did the dying message come from? What about all the headaches going around? The emergency stop trick to lock the door also remains unused. At least I find out that the snake's name is Pirozhko.

Susato is also unhappy with the explanation and continues to press Pavlova for the truth. Ryunosuke is with her and points out that the dying message and location of the glass bell parts have not been resolved sufficiently. I assumed that Darka just brought back one half of the bell when it came back so I was mostly guessing on presenting the glass bell. One interesting part about the dying message is there should have only been two people who knew Ryunosuke was in the wardrobe: Kazuma and Ryunosuke. So, how did the true culprit find out?

Ryunosuke finally gets around to showing how the emergency stop can be used to break open the closed room in a different way and also used the log book to show something happened last night. It looks like the chicken was drugged as part of an elaborate plan to allow Pavlova to sneak on board. Pavlova and Strogenov visited Kazuma's room after the accident and rearranged it to make Ryunosuke look guilty to try and protect Pavlova as much as possible. I'm still not sure why they knew he was there, though. Is this finally the end? Nope. Sholmes says we are still not done. Kazuza was holding one of Pavlova's earrings when he died. That's a big problem for Pavlova. What in the world happened in that room last night?

Pavlova sounds like she's finally ready to tell the truth. She visited Kazuma's room to go get Darka back and at the time Kazuma was still alive. Pavlova panics when it seemed like Kazuma was going to call an inspector and pushes him. Even that shouldn't have amounted to much but due to Darka getting in Kazuma's legs, things ended up with his untimely death. A real shame. After that, Strogenov helped rearrange the crime scene and during this process found Ryunosuke in the wardrobe. When he was done, he pushed the emergency stop button to create the closed room while all the non-crew members were fast asleep. I think that tied up all my remaining questions. There's one last deduction. Where was Kazuma really looking? The wardrobe, of course! He was going to ask Ryunosuke for advice. Pavlova apologizes but Kazuma is still gone.

Pavlova will be handed over to the British police when the ship reaches London and Sholmes will help with immigration issues. But now Ryunosuke and Susato need to figure out what to do next. With Kazuma gone, there's no one in the lawyer position which means the study trip will be called off including Susato's part. Ryunosuke volunteers to take up that position and spend the next 40 days on ship learning to become a laywer. Susato also gives Kazuma's sword, Karuma, to Ryunosuke. There's one final scene where we get Kazuma's theme one final (?) time. In a flashback, Kazuma once again reiterates that he has an important thing to do in Britain but we'll never find out what.

Case 1-2 End

Overall the case was pretty good although it is a bit depressing that things turned out like they did. If any number of minor things went differently, everything would change. RIP Kazuma. Strogenov and Pavlova are fine as characters. They aren't outstanding but nothing particularly wrong with them either. The captain of the ship got mentioned a few times but ultimately never showed up at all. For quite a while I thought he would. I'm not sure what to make of Sholmes at all. Like near the end it was Sholmes who pushed the emergency stop button to reveal the trick to the closed room. Was he really just screwing around as he claims? I wouldn't put it past Sholmes. He also really does seem to pop out of nowhere in unexpected places all the time. Susato was helpful and I like how she plays an active role in pushing for the truth of the situation. Hosonaga was in perfect form as always.

Onward towards London!
---

My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

NeatoAnAccount posted...

You're discussing metroidvanias with people who don't know what metroid is? This is like saying we should change the name "wavebounce" in Smash Bros because it's meaningless to people who've never heard of wavedashing and doesn't tell you anything about it.

I can't speak for the Smash community, but in the part of the competitive Pokemon community I'm in the topic of terminology making it hard for new players to understand what is going on does come up. Like "Big Six" doesn't mean much to anyone who doesn't already know what it means.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

Leonhart4 posted...

Yeah, I like Hosonaga a lot, too. His fist pump animation is one of my favorites in the game so far.

Also, a lot of stuff in this case is a reference to a story called The Adventure of the Speckled Band, as you may have guessed. There's a lot of misdirection in this case that will completely go over your head if you haven't read it. For instance, Grimesby Roylott is the name of the culprit in that story.

Oh, I unfortunately have not read that story.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

Part 2 was a lot shorter!

Since we can't investigate Pavlova's cabin, we check back with Hosonaga. He's in pretty bad shape and nearly got thrown off the ship for helping Ryunosuke. He really did risk his life to help us out. What a guy! It looks like Kazuma's post-mortem report is ready. Cause of death appears to be a broken neck. The report (barring future updates) says death was instantaneous. So Kazuma definitely didn't write the dying message. Sholmes did an analysis on the mark on the floor near the piece of glass and it seemed to be shoe polish. So maybe the glass came from a bottle of shoe polish? One final thing is Hosonaga mentions he has a headache like Ryunosuke. I guess there was something in the food last night? As I recall, Ryunosuke ate it all since Kazuma didn't like eating chicken (a rare misstep in his character). Also, now that I think about it the books in Pavlova's room were also slanted the same way as the books in Kazuma's room for some reason.

Back in the hallway we get an update from Sholmes. Apparently the log book normally has the phrase "nothing to report" in it when there is actually nothing to report. Instead the log back was suspiciously blank last night which suggests something did happen. Sholmes and Susato also confirm they have headaches so there was definitely something wrong with the food last night.

Since it is now unguarded, we go back to investigate Pavlova's room. "The bolt wouldn't just slide across of its own accord, would it?" Did Susato just spoil the surprise? That sounds like what might have actually happened somehow. Especially when combined with what happened to the books on the bookshelf. Maybe someone hit to emergency stop button which is what caused the books to tip over and the door to lock. Ryunosuke says that can't happen, though. But, he's wrong. The ship literally does an emergency stop which both causes the books to get knocked over and the door to lock itself. Ryunosuke sort of lucks into the answer but that's still one part of the mystery down.

Hosonaga comes knocking on the now closed door and Part 2 comes to an ominous end.

Two parts down and still no trial. I'm not really sure how a trial would even work since the boat is near Hong Kong right now. In modern Japan, a trial could be held on a moving train so a boat probably would have been doable as well. Not as easy in the current time period, though.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!

Case G1-2

The case opens up with a cryptic opening sequence of Sholmes and Wilson finding a snake that is referred to as a speckled band. I wonder what that's about. But no time for that since we then jump to Sholmes in the middle of solving a closed room murder. The culprit is... Ryunosuke! I guess he gets to be the defendant in 1-2 as well. The identity of the victim is Kazuma. ;_; That's a shame. I guess that explains why I didn't seem to hear much about Kazuma before the game came out. I doubt he'll be cheating death via spirit channeling but maybe I'm wrong!

Everyone is on a ship to London. Kazuma convinced Ryunosuke to stowaway on board which is why Ryunosuke was in the wardrobe. The facts of the case are Kazuma's room was locked from the inside when he was killed and the only other person in the room was Ryunosuke. There's also a dying message in Russian. Dying messages don't exactly have the greatest track record but considering this one is written in Russian, I think it's safe to say Kazuma didn't write it.

Sholmes shows up and finally introduces himself as Herlock Sholmes. Susato knows who he is. He's the most famous detective in the world! I'm not exactly sure what to make of him. I did see a bit of him from pre-release material. Sholmes apparently knows a Dr. Wilson. Probably the same Dr. Wilson from 1-1 but he doesn't go into detail. Sholmes dumps some info on us and helps to translate some of the Russian. Sholmes once again confirms it was a closed room. We also get an article on the revolutionary Vilen Borshevik and ballerina Nikolina Pavlova. Sholmes doesn't really know much Japanese, though so Susato has to help read Kazuma's diary entry about a speckled band and whsitling noise from last night. Overall investigating Kazuma's cabin doesn't turn up much useful information. Ryunosuke finds a few things but the closed room remains closed other than a vent that is too small for a human to get through.

Hosonaga shows up! I really like Hosonaga and he continues to shine here with his unwavering faith in Ryunosuke being innocent. Hosonaga's special orders were to be Kazuma's body guard. Oof. He really takes his failure hard. He tries to make up for it by letting Ryunosuke and Susato leave the room to investigate more. In regards to Susato she the investigation partner and I like her well enough but at the same time don't have much to say. Maybe that will change after she warms up to Ryunosuke since right now she still thinks there's a chance that Ryunosuke killed Kazuma.

In the hallway outside, senior crewman Bif Strogenov shows up. According to his log book, nothing out of the ordinary happened last night. We also find out the neighbour is Grimesby Roylott before Strogenov is called away. Next up is going to the neighbouring cabin to meet Roylott.

Sholmes enters with us (I thought he would already been in the room) and accuses Roylott of being Vilen Borshevik and kidnapping Pavlova. It doesn't really make sense so Susato suggests swapping out a few words to fix it. It's time for the first Dance of Deduction! Sholmes removes the handcuffs for the dance of deduction so Capcom doesn't need to make custom animations. The Dance of Deduction presentation is super cool and leads to discovering that Roylott is really Nikolina Pavlova who is hiding a pet of some sort.

We've run into the problem that Pavlova doesn't seem to be the one who killed Kazuma either. In any case, Ryunosuke asks Pavlova about what happened last night. She says she didn't notice anything and she's not keen on letting us investigate her room either. There's also the mystery of how she got on the ship since she must have boarded last night but there was no stop the previous night. My current guess is the mystery pet is wearing a speckled something and got through the vent but why that would even matter is still a huge question mark. We get thrown out of the room.

Part 1 complete.

The closed room mystery is interesting so far. I'm still at a loss on how it happened or if the culprit has even shown up in the case yet.
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My bracket looked like random picks compared to his.
Congrats to azuarc for winning the GotD 2020 Guru Contest!