Board 8 > Playing Tyrion Cuthbert, the best non-ace attorney ace attorney game

(+) Yeah! (+)

Or so I've been told.

Was on sale last week and figured I'd bite. Since Capcom seems content to let their series rot and all.

Less than 2 minutes in, I'm introduced to Ruby and I already like this game. I'll follow you anywhere, ma'am.

"Oh, Flinhart is speaking with my mo- my mentor right now."

OK, either my dreams are dead immediately, or this is even better than I could've imagined.

MrSmartGuy posted...

"Oh, Flinhart is speaking with my mo- my mentor right now."

OK, either my dreams are dead immediately, or this is even better than I could've imagined.

lol

I hope you like it enough to justify a playthrough topic! I've hyped it up as "it's better than Apollo Justice at least" and I know that's still kind of a high bar

I like how "girl dressed in red" has some red on her sleeve and that's about it. At least from the front, which is all Tyrion sees from his angle.

Going into my first trial without even getting to examine the crime scene? First major case is me defending a 19 year old girl? Main character's aspiration is to defend the weak? Considering the premise and the brief preview of court proceedings I saw earlier, it's kinda refreshing that it's not even pretending to be anything but a clear Ace Attorney clone.

Finished the first case. Took me a while, because the game is prone to freezing and crashing on me. No idea what's causing it. I verified the integrity of my files and tried a part where it hiccuped last time and it just straight up closed the game. Tried again and it never even stuttered. I guess I'll just be saving every few minutes in case it comes up more.

Anyway, enough about that, here's my thoughts:

• The lack of animation is throwing me off more than I expected it to. Aria having one frame of holding her cane, and the next being on the floor as a clunk plays out feels like it should be enough to convey what's happening, but I can't deny that I really miss the fluidity of Klavier slamming the wall behind him and Simon peeking back at the defense with a smirk.
• The contradictions are really gratifying to point out. Even though it was just an introduction, it felt like the game didn't want to hold my hand and point out what I should be looking into. It was still really simple stuff, and I never had to think about what I needed to do, but the fact that it trusted me with, like, 20 pieces of evidence in the first case is a good sign.
• I'm OK with the magic stuff. I assume the emotion stuff will come into play more in the future. I get a Wright vs Layton feel from how the magic stuff is handled in court. Everyone still has a good head on their shoulders to know what you're talking about when bringing up inconsistencies in magic. I do think it's funny that it's well documented that this light up the room spell can only work for EXACTLY 15 feet.
• The character design is awesome. I love the amount of detail put into everyone. Also, god damn, it isn't just Ruby, why is everyone in this game so hot?!
• I really love the tone and atmosphere the game sets. It's strictly better than the AA series in the way it handles court proceedings. They specifically point out that, yeah, we've gotten to the point that you've basically proven your client is innocent, but the people get paranoid when someone gets killed with magic, and they're going to want justice. The whole system is set up so that they can prolong the process and keep you detained for as long as they want, and that's basically as bad as being found guilty. So you still have all the motivation to find the true culprit without it seeming so stupid and ridiculous. And the main character having a vendetta on this particular process makes perfect sense and lets you relate to him easier. It's extremely smart.

Yeah, your reactions so far are similar to mine. I think the character designs in this game are actually quite good, but the animation is unfortunately very lacking - but I can't blame them too much because I think there's just one artist responsible for basically the entire game and they did a phenomenal job regardless.

The use of magic in the game is cool. I really like how the entries for spells read like D&D entries and that provides you with a lot of information you can use to find contradictions in.

oof the callout title, my topic may never recover tbh

Oh. The yandere girl from my dream showed up and then Ruby's advice got glitched out of existence. I'm sure that means nothing bad is about to happen.

This game knows how to play with the emotions of its players. Starting off a 2nd case announcing a murder while your milf mentor is unaccounted for. How rude.

MrSmartGuy posted...

This game knows how to play with the emotions of its players. Starting off a 2nd case announcing a murder while your milf mentor is unaccounted for. How rude.

It feels safe to say that the game was playing off of 1-2 here

Finished the first investigation phase. The game does a great job integrating the player into the magic it introduces. It feels like Tyrion's thoughts are exactly my thoughts at pretty much all times, way more than any Ace Attorney protagonist you had to play as. It's really refreshing.

Unfortunately, I have COVID, and I feel like I have sort of a brain fog and it makes it really hard to concentrate for long periods of times. I wanna continue, but I'm not sure I can, so I'll be picking this up in chunks over the next few days.

Feel better soon!

Don't know why I didn't mention this last night, but every single time Eris warps someone's statement into something else, I've actually caught what the dialogue was pre-za warudo, so I am acutely aware of what she's doing. And it seems like Celeste is, too, which is really intriguing.

Great game, enjoy the ride.

Really looking forward to playing this if it ever hits console or mobile.

tag

Having trial sections last 20 minutes is fucking weird. I did the first part of case 2, and I went from 2.9 hours played to 3.2 hours.

The way this game handles the main character reasoning his way through stuff is really interesting. I talk to Eris (she's got the giggles but is embarrassed and doesn't want us to see) and she tells me about Major Illusion, which creates a facade that can't interact with anything. I immediately recognize that the Bellwether Jan saw couldn't have been this because it knocked over a vase.

If this were Ace Attorney, we would have to wait until trial to point this contradiction out. But instead, Tyrion immediately goes straight for it and knocks it out before we do anything else. I'm kinda surprised, because that feels like it would be a natural progression for the player to make this logical leap instead. I don't know whether this is a good or bad thing, just...... interesting.

And they did it again. Wallace's locker was full of girly stuff, and Miriam's had Wallace's stuff, so it was obvious the contents were switched. But Tyrion recalls that people like to play a prank on Wallace by swapping his nameplate with random students'. I'm actually glad he did that this time, because it's been 2 days since I played and I didn't remember that myself.

I was beginning to worry that this case was going to turn out to be too simple, but the long "interrogation" I had with Miriam was super compelling and has me wondering about a lot of aspects of the case. For the first time, I have to say I have no idea where this game is going. This is exciting!

Actually, I think I've got a decent guess at it here. The headmaster killed her during the meeting, and animated the corpse to walk itself to the classroom. On the way, it bumped into Miriam, and that's why she's in a tizzy about how weird their meeting in the hallway, because she probably just, like, brainlessly groaned at her. Because it's being animated, perhaps all decay had stopped and that's why the estimated time of death is over an hour later.

He stole Miriam's sword long ago for the murder in an attempt to frame her because of her family's influence to get him ousted, and planted fake evidence of her cheating to establish a motive. When he went to stash the weapon in her locker, he got the construct to do it. However, the nameplates were switched, so it got planted in with Wallace's stuff instead, since that's where Miriam's nameplate was at the time. Then he gave it a few more orders, but one of them wasn't possible, so that's why it's stuck inactive in the locker room.

Meanwhile, he illusory disguises himself as her to make an appearance to further establish the time of death was later. I still don't know what bumped into Jan because none of the spells I have info on can fully explain what it is. An animated corpse can't speak the "be quiet" it said, and the two illusory spells don't have a physical form. So I'm stuck on that one part, but I'm pretty sure I've nailed most of the rest of it.

Ooh, OK, it told Miriam to be quiet, too. I'm guessing there's some latent directory in the constructs to make sure passersby in the hallway aren't too loud. So that Bellwether must've been a construct the whole time. Maybe the illusory disguise just doesn't contact things if the original thing or person doesn't?

Like, say I try to disguise myself as Shaq and then try to walk through a normal sized door without ducking. The disguise would just phase through the top of the frame. But if I try to disguise myself as another 6 foot tall person and walk into a wall, I'd still just run into the wall like normal.

Cool. Nailed basically all of it. Only part I missed was Miriam just being dumb and misconstruing what time it was.

I didn't mention the bad smell in my predictions, cuz I had no explanation for how that was tied into anything, and yeah. It didn't actually tie to anything. Somehow got that right too I guess?

yeah, case 2 has lots of neat parts! i remember feeling smart for figuring out that the whole "she was rude to me" was her saying "be quiet!" to everyone she passed. i was also disappointed the smell didn't matter much.

Yeah, I liked case 2 quite a bit. I feel like the trial segments are too short and there's a few elements of the mystery that don't quiiiite come together, but it's overall a solid step up in both complexity and intrigue from the previous case. The interrogation with Miriam was the first time in this game that I felt like the writing and the main characters REALLY came into their own. Celeste and Tyrion are both great in that scene.

Just finished Case 2 myself. There's some some minor issues like evidence bloat and less polish compared to AA, but overall it's been pretty great.

Yeah, there's definitely a lot of aspects that are a little unpolished or weird compared to AA but it's mostly stuff I give a pass

There's a very odd pacing problem where this game actually goes a bit too fast imo. I know I complain about a lot of dialogue bloat in the genre, where AA and Danganronpa might be the worst offenders, and yet now I see what it's like without it.

MrSmartGuy posted...

There's a very odd pacing problem where this game actually goes a bit too fast imo. I know I complain about a lot of dialogue bloat in the genre, where AA and Danganronpa might be the worst offenders, and yet now I see what it's like without it.

I would agree with this, but I still prefer too-speedy pacing over bloated pacing. If only because my time is way more limited these days.

This isn't my playthrough topic so I'll be vague, but I'm currently on Case 4 and it is easily my favorite so far for multiple reasons.

I'll withhold my opinions for now except to say that I think case 4 is good

Picked it back up this afternoon. Going into the first trial section and I'm actually pretty lost this time. Don't know who, how, or why any of this happened, other than it seems like the real Justin fell into the vat, which is what Rika saw, and then there was a second fake that fell in through the faulty guard rails afterward, which is what the other two saw.

Actually, now that I think about it, weren't there other spells from the second case that required someone to point at their target? Rika totally did this didn't she.....

Wait, maybe Justin is actually alive, and he was the one who orchestrated the whole thing to kill the Eye-Taker, who he'd manipulated to break the guard rail and then he disappeared, so he could alleviate himself from his debt?

I dunno, it's too early to speculate; I don't really have anything yet.

Oh no, Tyrion is becoming an asshole. I don't like Asshole Cuthbert.

Omigod you two, just fuck already

Oh. The body is confirmed to be Justin's. There goes that second theory.

Of course! They literally said that was the factory where they make the constructs! Figured that out as soon as Von Sanctus said the crest is on all the products they make.

OMG I'm dying at the Aster/Aria interaction. When the gibberish thoughts came on screen, I had a hearty belly laugh.

Aria is great.

OK it was just the obvious answer. Sure, I guess that makes sense. Whole lot of red herrings in this one. Ace Attorney allowed you to metagame when a case was winding down and you hadn't used one specific thing in the court record, so you knew it was about to be useful. Here, you only typically present about 2/3 of your inventory, which is..... an interesting way to play it, but I kinda like it?

MrSmartGuy posted...

OMG I'm dying at the Aster/Aria interaction. When the gibberish thoughts came on screen, I had a hearty belly laugh.

I laughed at this part so much too

It was nice to see the 18-year old genius prosecutor actually act their age for once.

Haven't finished the game but Aria is totally better than every AA prosecutor except for Edgeworth imo.

Still withholding all my takes for now but that moment with Aria was when I realized they actually wrote a good character. She kind of started out feeling like kind of a generic prosecutor OC and I was really impressed by how interesting she became over time

Echoing the others, but the scenes around there also had me absolutely dying of laughter and that was about when I realized, oh, I actually like these characters. It's rare for a piece of fiction to even get me to truly laugh at all, I don't know if I can say the ace attorney games ever did - so that's definitely one of the reasons I value this game despite its rough edges.

Yeah. I was actually a little disappointed in Case 3's mystery (it essentially boils down to Construct Shenanigans for the second case in a row) but the character interactions were top notch.

Oh God, I just found the scariest line in the whole game.

"It's a step ladder."
"I agree."

lol

I finished the first trial day. I don't know that there's much for me to say. I'm just kinda along for the ride, but the ride is really good.

Oh wait, I guess there is one thing I wanna put out there. The ships in this game are outrageous. EVERYONE in this game just needs to fuck already gawd

Wait, I'm confused on where you are. The previous post (about how a case can end without using all the evidence) made me assume you meant you were done with case 3, so you've done the first trial day of case 4, or?

Yeah, I stepped in for Aria and we're waiting for the will reading.