Board 8 > Anagram Aces Ace Attorney Topic 4: Dual Destinies Edition (spoilers)

(+) Yeah! (+)

Tonate tries to cover up his crime with the blood and the bomb case and then Fulbright blows up the courtroom to cover up his crime and literally blows Tonate's cover in the process. 5-1 is a lot more interesting in retrospect once you understand what really happened.

---

Yeah AA5 does the anachronic order thing pretty well.

---

Episode 5-6? Don't know what it's called.

• Ahhhhh this opening is voiced, why is this one voiced and none of the others?
• I've been to these kinds of amusement park animal shows, this audience wide shot is missing some kids who were dragged here by their parents and want to go home.
• "Animal-assisted therapy is an established psychiatric treatment!" Here's another fact for you: the laws on what counts as an emotional service animal are written so vaguely that my sister got her dog registered as one so she could take it into places that otherwise ban dogs.
• Phoenix reacts to the pirate girl as if this is an unusual client. Phoenix, nothing is ever going to beat the gay French chef from 3-3, you're just going to have to accept that nothing after that qualifies as weird.
• Sasha complains that she already asked several lawyers who turned her down. That must've been some quick requesting, since the murder was just announced on TV.
• Man, that mullet pun, I had to actually look up the non-hair definition of the word.
• Apollo: "Why am I the one who has to stay behind?!" Well, Apollo, in fairness to Phoenix, Athena's power and his don't overlap in quite the same way as yours and his.
• Game, you don't need to make the pun "r-eel-y." "Reel-y" is already a fish pun, ****ing get your ****ing pun game together, man.
• I was holding out for Ema being the detective instead of Fulbright, but I knew in my heart of hearts that they would just reuse Fulbright... because she wasn't on the episode select screen.
• Honestly, I'm not even sure you'd put a whale down for murder. It may be different in Japan, but I distinctly remember a few years ago a whale killing a trainer in an amusement park and nothing being done because the animal was just too valuable.
• "The medical examiner said it wasn't a homicide, so we don't need an autopsy." I realize the story necessity of playing fast and loose with the rules here, but come on, they do autopsies for everything.
• "You two are our lifeboat!" That's really more of a metaphor than a pun, Sasha. And don't say it's a pun about lifesavers, we all know it isn't.
• Gonna be honest here: of all the pop cultural references, I did not see Sharknado coming.
• Man, Athena is way too accepting of Phoenix owning a magical psychic rock.
• I'm not sure if Rimes is racist or not, so I'll be safe and say that I really like the treasure chest benches in the background, that's cute.
• 22 year-old man: "I'm looking for a high school girl." Athena: "Is she your giiiiiiiiiirlfriend?"
• Wait, is there even a high school in that tiny village Maya and Pearl are from?
• I mean, let's be real here, Phoenix is trying to solve a murder mystery and he just happens to stumble into a spirit medium, and he asks her to refill the magatama instead of just channeling the guy's ghost.
• Got to Fulbright telling me no prosecutor will take the case, finally just ran out of time to play right now, so I stopped in the middle of the investigation.

---

It got voice acting because it's DLC! You can tell they put a little extra time and effort into this case. It has some of my favorite backgrounds in the series, the Aqua Tunnel especially.

I imagine the kids in Kurain are collectively homeschooled or something of that nature. I doubt there's a formally established school system.

Also, Athena is a Phoenix fangirl so she basically believes everything he says without question, and she has too much respect for him to even make fun of him much. It's interesting having an assistant who isn't always taking potshots at you for once...!

---

And yes, the general naming convention for the DLC case is just 5-6

---

Do we learn or did we learn how Phoenix helped Athena and convinced her to be a lawyer? I dont recall.

---

I don't think it's touched upon in this game.

---

No, the game never gets into the specifics of it.

---

• Dammit, my pet theory was that the prosecutor for this case would be Klavier. That would explain why they bothered making a unique model for someone whose role in 5-3 is completely superfluous. Alas, Fulbright says it's just going to be Blackquill again.

---

Anagram posted...

* Dammit, my pet theory was that the prosecutor for this case would be Klavier. That would explain why they bothered making a unique model for someone whose role in 5-3 is completely superfluous. Alas, Fulbright says it's just going to be Blackquill again.

I had the same theory because of it being so weird that they modeled Gavin, but yeah. I'm glad they used Blackquill though, he's my favorite non-Edgeworth prosecutor and he's great in this case.

I'm always good with more Blackquill.

---

I liked Blackquill but grew a little tired of him and thought the DLC case was a great chance to change it up. Ah well.

---

Eh, you didn't get a real Phoenix/Blackquill showdown in the main game (Phoenix is only there for half the case in 5-4 and Blackquill is only there for the last part of the case in 5-5, and plus he's on your side at that point), so it was good to give them a full case together in 5-6.

---

Phoenix and Blackquill have a pretty good dynamic I think. Blackquill I think just has great chemistry with all the leads though, he's a super fun prosecutor. He's snarky and a little mean without having a serious grudge against anyone like most of the series' prosecutors.

I like Blackquill because he's presented as this criminal who plays dirty with his mind games, but he actually has a pretty strong sense of what's fair and what's not.

---

LeonhartFour posted...

I like Blackquill because he's presented as this criminal who plays dirty with his mind games, but he actually has a pretty strong sense of what's fair and what's not.

The other thing I like about him is that he just seems like someone who is having fun mixing it up with logic debates and cutting questions, like, of all the prosecutors he's the one who likes sparring the most

Get your fill of Blackquill now because you'll really be wishing he was back for AA6.

---

• Wait, so the anime cutscene of the pirate show fighting is supposed to actually be recorded in-universe? Fine, I won't even bother asking where the cameras are located.
• I enjoy the irony of Blackquill chiding the others for "trusting a killer."
• Norma's breakdown animation is pretty bad. Not the worst, but pretty bad.
• "Am I expected to enter Trucy into this 'my kid is better than yours'-apalooza?" Careful, Phoenix, I'm not confident Trucy would beat the whale, hawk, or necklace.
• "What a minute..." Phoenix, get an editor.
• "Cause of death: thought to be from 65-foot fall!" How very specific, I'm very impressed at the medical examiner. Is it weird that in all these games, we've only ever seen one medical examiner, and it was the old lady who barely shows up in AAI2?
• I enjoyed Blackquill ending the happy music by hitting his desk.

---

Leonhart4 posted...

Tonate tries to cover up his crime with the blood and the bomb case and then Fulbright blows up the courtroom to cover up his crime and literally blows Tonate's cover in the process. 5-1 is a lot more interesting in retrospect once you understand what really happened.

And it even plays with the knowledge you do have from experiencing 1 before 4. Like, having the bit of knowledge that there's a corpse right in front of you the entire, and you even get to call the corpse's former owner to the stand before things go to shit.

---

MrSmartGuy posted...

Get your fill of Blackquill now because you'll really be wishing he was back for AA6.

I guess you could say that regarding Blackquill...
You should let him go, and move on.

---

• Holy crap, Athena's VA cannot sing at all.
• Phoenix: "Is that really true?" Phoenix, you're the one who can magically detect lies! You're supposed to be the one to tell me if they're lying!
• I refuse to believe that a sleeping pill designed for humans would meaningfully affect something with an orca's body weight.

---

I thought Athena's singing voice was fine!

---

• "HOW DARE YOU slander the noble profession of VETERINARIAN?!"
• Crabs' angry animation of kicking the stand is so mundane compared to all other angry animations that I was more shocked by it than probably anything else the entire game.
• Phoenix, don't worry. This series has already established double jeopardy laws in the Mask deMasque case, Orla is off the hook no matter what.
• "Isn't a lawyer supposed to act in his client's best interests?" Actually, this is a good moment to bring up how in AAI2, no one has any ethical problems with Ray Shields intentionally misrepresenting the warden lady to get her convicted of murder. I mean, she did it, but at least when Phoenix intentionally lost a case, he was being blackmailed into taking it in the first place. Why would she even take Shields' help, anyway?
• I love how the judge is always surprised by perjury.
• Did not expect the transformation.
• "Order! If we don't have order, Prosecutor Blackquill will yell at us!"

---

Anagram posted...

Did not expect the transformation.

aw yeah

And I love Crab kicking the witness stand. It's simple and yet really effective.

---

Anagram posted...

Actually, this is a good moment to bring up how in AAI2, no one has any ethical problems with Ray Shields intentionally misrepresenting the warden lady to get her convicted of murder. I mean, she did it, but at least when Phoenix intentionally lost a case, he was being blackmailed into taking it in the first place. Why would she even take Shields' help, anyway?

Well, Ray was an emergency replacement because E2-4's victim was Roland's original defense attorney.

But yeah, that entire trial sequence in E2-5 is pretty bad.

---

That was my biggest issue with AAI2. It was honestly horrible writing to have that happen (in a game with otherwise great writing!)

---

I don't think it really mattered who the defense attorney was in E2-5 to the defendant, since they were blackmailing the judge into a Not Guilty verdict, or so they thought.

---

_SecretSquirrel posted...

I don't think it really mattered who the defense attorney was in E2-5 to the defendant, since they were blackmailing the judge into a Not Guilty verdict, or so they thought.

I mean sure, but it's still extremely unethical of Shields to be working against his client's interests, even if he knows they're guilty

---

It kinda annoys me because it feels so inconsistent with the rest of the series. Oh, NOW the prosecution actually has the burden of proof?

Plus, that whole sequence was just one big repetitive cycle of, "But you don't have that one decisive piece of evidence, do you?"

---

I dont hate the AAI games, but I would have preferred one where youre in court and just have some kind of evil defense attorney as the rival, and is otherwise the same as a normal AA game.

---

• Crabs tells me to "focus on the orca's song" instead of just telling me what to do. This is an analogy no one has ever made before, but this reminds me of that episode of Stargate SG-1 where the main character meets an alternate dimension version of himself who tells him to "press the green one" and disappears instead of just explaining what he means. Unfortunately, the show got cancelled after that, so we never learned what the "green one" was.
• So the judge remembers Pearl from eight years ago, but can't tell the difference between El Tigre and Phoenix Wright? Okay.
• Cross-examining a whale yayyy
• Dammit, game, you're not allowed to show me a flip phone with buttons and then have Blackquill talk about apps!
• Yeah, I'd figured out there were two whales a while ago, though not the details of how it worked. Too obvious a trick.
• Quality breakdown from Rimes.
• So... Sasha and Azura just both happened to have the same random heart condition and the same incredibly specific job? Well, okay.

So, this was a nice little random adventure of no real consequence. I realize it's Phoenix getting his badge back, but other than that, it's completely disconnected and pointless, which is okay. It's just a little lighthearted trial with an unusual number of anime cutscenes and five seconds of luminol usage, and that's okay. I liked my idea better of Klavier being the prosecutor.

I will post my full game thoughts soon.

---

Anagram posted...

So... Sasha and Azura just both happened to have the same random heart condition and the same incredibly specific job? Well, okay.

yeah that coincidence was a bit too contrived

Anagram posted...

So, this was a nice little random adventure of no real consequence. I realize it's Phoenix getting his badge back, but other than that, it's completely disconnected and pointless, which is okay.

Well, it almost kinda has to be disconnected since it's DLC and there's no guarantee everyone would play it. I feel like if they put something essential into it, people would've complained about hiding important stuff behind a paywall.

I do think 5-6 has the biggest "classic Phoenix" moment in the game (along with Phoenix figuring out everything from random dead leaves) when he refuses to accept Marlon's confession and realizes something isn't adding up.

"The Dissin' of Phoenix Wright" is also one of the greatest testimonies ever.

---

I will say 5-6 has a weird pacing to it though. I feel like it's the only case in the series where the bad guy has the big transformation moment...and then they promptly shove him to the side for a while so you can cross-examine someone else.

---

I took a walk earlier today, and while I walked, I thought about Phoenix Wright, because I'm a huge dork. And I realized something: Phoenix is done. Becoming an ace attorney is more interesting than being an ace attorney, so Phoenix's story is over when AA3 is over. The original trilogy can sort of be said to have an overarching theme: Mia's death and Phoenix growing into a lawyer. And Phoenix succeeds, so that's basically the end of him as a character.

AA4 is sort of trying to be about "what do you do when someone is too powerful or clever for the law to catch him," and that's an interesting concept even if the execution is botched. It's obvious that AA5 is going for the Dark Age of the Law as a theme, and people not trusting it anymore, and Phoenix is partly responsible for that, but let's be real here: even if you ignore how this was never brought up in AA4, it has zero importance to AA5's plot. It's brought up occasionally, but you need a scene where someone refuses to cooperate with Phoenix because they hate lawyers (even Aura, who does hate lawyers, still cooperates fully). Phoenix doesn't appear to care tremendously about it, either. Edgeworth cares more about it. The Dark Age ending isn't a huge weight off of Phoenix's shoulders, he's just like "cool." I suppose you can't have him take a hard stance against forged evidence after his actions in AA4, though, so there's no way to win here if this is your theme.

To be clear: having Phoenix just show up as the main character who's already mature and competent robs him of that feeling of being up against the impossible. Worse yet, having him have no real involvement in what's going on robs him of any pathos. Avenging Mia by defeating Redd White, proving that truth matters by beating von Karma and Matt Engarde, and moving past Mia's death by defeating Godot are the definitive Phoenix moments because he grows as a character. Obviously, they realized this was a problem in AA4, and that's why they introduced Apollo.

Speaking of Apollo, why is he in this game? I'll tell you why. It's because the writers needed someone to care about what was happening. You would think it would be Athena, you'd think avenging her mother after seven years and bringing her murderer to justice would be her defining moment, but really, she barely helps and she doesn't seem to care very much. She just wants to save Blackquill, which is fine, but at no point is she like "I must defeat Fulbright!" And how do the writers make Apollo care? By introducing his secret best friend who was never mentioned until five seconds ago.

So here's my problem: all three characters just feel like they're along for the ride. We don't have a definite main character and we don't have a power trio of people who work together and share the spotlight, we just have three people who sort of care about what's going on in an abstract way. Athena should have been the main character of 5-5, and Phoenix should have not been in the game at all.

I guess I should also mention how the characters' backstories keep getting more convoluted. In the first game, kid Phoenix was just like "I'm gonna be a lawyer because I hated being wrongfully accused." Now everyone has to have insane tragic backstories. I still don't know Apollo's full backstory with his mother, but I know it comes up eventually, so I assume it's going to show up in AA6 and be even more tragic and ridiculous than Athena's.

Blackquill, okay. Blackquill is probably the best that can be done at this point. Edgeworth has that direct "I am your rival, deal with it" connection, von Karma is the unstoppable juggernaut who represents everything wrong, Franziska is a joke who gets replaced when things get serious, and Godot is the guy who challenges what you believe. All of them have some kind of direct connection to Phoenix that gets you invested. You're like "I really want to beat that guy's ass." Blackquill isn't boring and dumb like Klavier, and he has some actual pathos and character, but he's just not as good as the original trilogies' prosecutors. He has a direct connection to Athena, but you don't even learn about that until the last case. Again, if Athena had been the main character trying to piece together Blackquill's motives while battling him in court and we knew from the beginning their connection, that would have been more interesting than just having him be the "mysterious prosecutor" for five cases.

With all of that said, though, I know what they were going for: they wanted things to go back to the way they were in the original trilogy. This game smacks of being a direct response to AA4 and the AAI games. It just wants to be the original trilogy again, but because Phoenix has nowhere to go, it's just full of random bad guys and one interesting character (Blackquill) with no connection to anyone but Athena. In that regard, it's fine. It's good. It's a good game that accomplishes its mission of being full of fun little adventures, but it's not as good as the original trilogy.

• Games: AA3 > AA1 > AA2 > AA5 > AAI2 > AA4 > AAI
• Prosecutors: Godot > Edgeworth > von Karma > Blackquill > Franziska > Klavier
• Teenage Girl Sidekicks: Maya > Pearl > Trucy > Ema > Kay > Athena

---

Top Tier
3-5
2-4
1-4
3-4

Very High Tier
1-2
3-1
5-5
1-5

High Tier
4-1
E2-3
E2-4
2-2
5-3

Mid-High Tier
5-4
E2-5
4-4
1-3
5-2

Mid-Low
5-1
E2-1
3-2
5-6
E2-2
E1-4
E1-2
E1-1

Low Tier
E1-1
E1-5
3-3
2-3

Bad Tier
2-1
E1-3
4-2
4-3

---

I will do AA6 at some point, but not for a couple of weeks at least. I will try to keep this topic up until I finally get around to it, but I may just make a new topic when the time comes.

---

I feel like a lot of your complaints are echoed by other fans, and Capcom heard them, because SoJ definitely took pains to address them. Whether they actually succeeded is up to you!

---

Also, I feel like Blackquill was kind of meant to be a callback to all the previous main prosecutors. He has Edgeworth's cold, cerebral nature. He has Franziska's penchant for physical punishment. He has Godot's love for cheesy and illogical metaphors. And he has Klavier's fondness for, uh, giving everyone nicknames (is that really Klavier's defining trait other than the air guitar?). I think Blackquill is awesome as an opponent and as a character.

---

Leonhart4 posted...

Also, I feel like Blackquill was kind of meant to be a callback to all the previous main prosecutors. He has Edgeworth's cold, cerebral nature. He has Franziska's penchant for physical punishment. He has Godot's love for cheesy and illogical metaphors. And he has Klavier's fondness for, uh, giving everyone nicknames (is that really Klavier's defining trait other than the air guitar?). I think Blackquill is awesome as an opponent and as a character.

Blackquill is great as an individual character and does feel like a legitimate opponent, unlike Franziska or Klavier, and he's got some fun gimmicks that you mentioned. My problem with him is solely that he has no emotional connection to anyone except Athena, and we don't learn that until the end of the game, which means that he's effectively just a random mysterious opponent for almost the entire game. I guess that's technically also true of Godot, though, so I admit some hypocrisy in this analysis.

---

Hey so uh

You wanted an accident.

Here ya go.

---

Also WOW that is a low placement for 5-6. When I was saying earlier that 5-2 was my favorite case in the game, I actually wasn't counting the DLC and didn't want to hype it too much. I have 5-6 as my 5th favorite case in the entire series, and 5-2 at 7th.

---

MrSmartGuy posted...

Hey so uh

You wanted an accident.

Here ya go.

Haha, I forgot about that.

MrSmartGuy posted...

Also WOW that is a low placement for 5-6. When I was saying earlier that 5-2 was my favorite case in the game, I actually wasn't counting the DLC and didn't want to hype it too much. I have 5-6 as my 5th favorite case in the entire series, and 5-2 at 7th.

Haha, looks like we may just have to disagree on that one.

I know absolutely nothing about AA6 except that the prosecutor looks like some kind of Indian enlightenment dude? Well, that and that it's the last game in the series, so I guess that might tell me more about it.

---

I absolutely adore 5-6. I'm really partial to the whole aquarium theme and stuff, but what I really like about it is how it takes its position as a DLC case to play around with the player's expectations of how AA cases work, and it KNOWS it's doing this. Marlon Rimes is beautifully set up to be one of the case's harmless witnesses - he's the first minor character that shows up, and they give him a gimmick so that you don't think there's no reason for him to exist. And then Herman Crab is a great misdirect into making you think that he's going to be the bad guy - he first shows up on day 2 of the case, an AA classic, and he's kind of a jerk and seems like he has ulterior motives (he does but not at all in the way you think). I was legit taken aback when I realized that Crab wasn't the killer, and I wasn't thinking of Rimes at all - I don't normally vocally react to a game like this but when Rimes transformed I audibly laughed in surprise, and everything from that point on was just pure gold, especially when they had the one last swerve at the end where Rimes wasn't the killer at all. All of that stuff, for me, added up to being one of the most memorable cases in the series.

Paratroopa1 posted...

I absolutely adore 5-6. I'm really partial to the whole aquarium theme and stuff, but what I really like about it is how it takes its position as a DLC case to play around with the player's expectations of how AA cases work, and it KNOWS it's doing this. Marlon Rimes is beautifully set up to be one of the case's harmless witnesses - he's the first minor character that shows up, and they give him a gimmick so that you don't think there's no reason for him to exist. And then Herman Crab is a great misdirect into making you think that he's going to be the bad guy - he first shows up on day 2 of the case, an AA classic, and he's kind of a jerk and seems like he has ulterior motives (he does but not at all in the way you think). I was legit taken aback when I realized that Crab wasn't the killer, and I wasn't thinking of Rimes at all - I don't normally vocally react to a game like this but when Rimes transformed I audibly laughed in surprise, and everything from that point on was just pure gold, especially when they had the one last swerve at the end where Rimes wasn't the killer at all. All of that stuff, for me, added up to being one of the most memorable cases in the series.

I'll admit that it's possible that I underrated it, and I may reexamine my opinions after beating AA6. But I knew Crab was a misdirect the second I saw him. I knew from the beginning that it was between Rimes and Sasha, though I didn't see the final twist or his transformation coming.

---

Yeah I think you put it in words why DD didn't leave too much of an impression on me.

Still, they had to do something after AJ and they were in a difficult position. I think the main reason why Phoenix is back is because AJ (both game and character) was a bust for longtime fans and seemingly a meh for newcomers. They needed their mascot back, front and center.

Then again, like you said, Phoenix as a defense attorney in this game is just another attorney doing his job without personal stake, which makes the main storyline's stake a bit weak. OTOH subjectively, I'm just glad to have him and some cast back since I like them. Like how people tolerate longrunning shows because they're accustomed to the characters and want to see more of them.
Of course, it would be better with Maya and Gumshoe, but we can't have everything.

---

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks Athena is the worst of the teenage girl sidekicks. I've tried to like her so many times, but I just can't stand her.

---

LeonhartFour posted...

yeah that coincidence was a bit too contrived

Well, it almost kinda has to be disconnected since it's DLC and there's no guarantee everyone would play it. I feel like if they put something essential into it, people would've complained about hiding important stuff behind a paywall.

I do think 5-6 has the biggest "classic Phoenix" moment in the game (along with Phoenix figuring out everything from random dead leaves) when he refuses to accept Marlon's confession and realizes something isn't adding up.

"The Dissin' of Phoenix Wright" is also one of the greatest testimonies ever.

I like how this is like the one case in the entire series where you can just save everyone. AA is always about getting the killer to be punished no matter how tragic their backstory was. Here you can finally achieve a perfectly idealistic ending. It's not something that always happens, but it's nice to see it happening once.

---

Nah, Athena is alright.

I think TC is gonna like AA6, though.

---

You know what

Leon is right, the Dissing of Phoenix Wright is actually great. I shouldve given it more credit.

---

ZeldaTPLink posted...

I like how this is like the one case in the entire series where you can just save everyone. AA is always about getting the killer to be punished no matter how tragic their backstory was. Here you can finally achieve a perfectly idealistic ending. It's not something that always happens, but it's nice to see it happening once.

I mean, you didn't save poor Jack Shipley!

Also, I'm in the weird position of being one of the biggest DD fans on the board while simultaneously saying 5-6 is overrated. Don't get me wrong. It's really good, but I think it's 3rd or 4th best in the game, not the best case.

---