LogFAQs > #957148076

Anyway, Sholmes has decided that Nina's pet is the snake, and that the snake killed Kazuma via the vent. Now the actual mechanisms of the Deduction sequence are again quite fun, and it's fun investigating, but it feels a little cheap that we're not allowed to do this sort of investigation beforehand (especially, e.g., checking in the wastepaper bin.) It's also kind of painfully on rails. But hey, it's visually stylish and is probably the most actually engaging part of the case simply due to Sholmes's seamless acceptance of correcting him.

The result of the deduction is that... the glass is from a cat's bell and that Kazuma died from tripping over a cat. We then go through several more renditions of "HOLD ON, IT'S NOT OVER," with Sholmes finally unveiling the ace he's had up his sleeve the whole time... that Kazuma is holding Nina's earring in his hand. It's super-anticlimactic; just like how realizing that the professor was already dead in and watching Jezaille drink the poison represented the high point of G1-1, this case clearly reaches its emotional climax when we realize the means of death (though it feels insanely sad). Like, yeah, it turns out that Nina actually pushed Kazuma and that Strogenov wrote the letters. But... who cares? It was still mostly an accident. This just makes Nina slightly shittier of a person. Nothing's really changed other than 45 extra minutes getting added toward the end of the case, including this weird asspull about chickens being drugged, which is how they were able to pull the e-brake in the middle of the night... yeah, it's not good. Yeesh. On top of that, for the vast majority of the final segments, there's not a lot of resistance - Nina is mostly trying to confess to a lesser crime while Strogenov (who finally stats with his extremely booming HOLD IT) is just sitting there trying to make nice.

And just like G1-1, it relies upon a confession that mostly happens because of the good nature of the murderers - in G1-1, there was absolutely no evidence actually linking Jezaille to a gun; in G1-2, there is literally no actual police with jurisdiction who can possibly enforce punishment on Nina or Strogenov. That said, there's a Crime and Punishment-esque quality to it; it seems like the two are wracked enough with guilt that you don't actually need to nail them to the wall for them to give, which I guess is a little different from AA norm. They genuinely seem to want to atone. While it's incredibly obvious that Kazuma was intending to talk to Ryunosuke and not to rat on Nina, it's still kind of touching to have to walk through it and relive the moments with a more pensive version of Kazuma's Theme playing in the background.

In an epilogue that spares no words, Ryunosuke finally decides to become a lawyer in Kazuma's place, to Hosooga's consternation. But in his first moment where he steps beyond comic relief, Sholmes advocates for us: "Qualifications are no measure of a man. What matters is his character... no? And you've witnessed ample evidence of this man's exemplary character totally with your eyes. From the early hours of his morning until this very moment now, despite contending with the passing of his close friend and despite the accusation of guilt... this man has shown resourcefulness, intelligence, and above all, courage." Well damn. Nice way to cap a terrible case with a great moment. And it actually kind of feels earned.

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* How good is Bif Strogenov as a name? He's beefy and strong enough (the latter, a pun the game draws attention to) AND it sounds like a dish AND it sounds Russian.

* Susato manages to distinguish herself from previous assistants by being by far the most competent of them. In fact she's probably more competent than Ryunosuke himself, which means there's some sort of role reversal here in terms of the funny man/straight man dynamic that we're used to. In one case Ryunosuke theorizes (based on an empty teapot) that Russians are extremely thirsty. Susato points out that it's possible that Nina just hasn't boiled tea yet, and there's no way to know either way... but after consideration, we respond that they're DEFINITELY just excessively thirsty. We'd lay a thousand to oen on it!

* Susato also thinks we want to jump into any wardrobe we see.

* Ryunosuke calling intertia "ineptia" is fantastic.

* Main cast has been strong so far. I feel like Ryunosuke is an excellent protagonist; his goofiness and enthusiasm are really enjoyable in a way that Apollo lacked with his relatively derivative personality and Athena missed by simply being too arrogant. Sholmes is super-enjoyable; all of my issues with him are more with the game - ass-pulls, having to follow strange/exhausting logic, and the like. Hosonaga is a really nice steadying presence, and Susato is doing her job exceptionally well despite belonging to an AA archetype that's making me feel increasingly weird about playing this series.

* And yet this case... was pretty brutal. I saw Kazuma's death coming from a milliion miles away but wanted it not to happen; not every character needs death to be motivated, and Ryunosuke certainly didn't need it. Nina wound up being quite a low-tier character, and an even worse killer - no satisfaction at all here. Once again the final details of the truth seem almost completely irrelevant, and nailing the culprit doesn't really provide anything fun either. The case feels like it drags, and most of the most important plot details are almost trivially obvious for how long it takes for them to be revealed - sometimes because apparently the characters never actually move around the room until you're allowed to during a Deduction sequence. In any case, I think some of the mechanisms, music, and character quirks that I enjoy should carry on, so I'm still not too down on the game as a whole. Very iffy about the story direction, mystery-writing, and pacing though.
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness