Hello every one it is I ShadowSnake here with my very first blog entry. Yes I decided to join the bandwagon since of course ANGEL join in as well too. Well I'm not up for any long introductions and for explaining why I decided to start up my own blog because right I feel like getting to main topic in hand. Today I feel like rambling about a DS game considering that getting footage of these games is like next to impossible for me and I don't feel like downloading a DS emulator. (Yes I'm that lazy.)
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| "I was going to play some DS." -Retard Gamer- |
The game in question is Ace Attorney Investigations Miles Edgeworth (Ace Attorney 5 to be short). Before I get into the fifth installment of the series I'll explain what the Ace Attorney series for those unaware. The Ace Attorney series is pretty much a series of mystery/detective games that takes place in the courtroom along with investigations of various crime scenes. The object of games is that you that you are Phoenix Wright a dynamic defense attorney and your job is defend the defendants from unlawful accusations while pursing the truth and expose the real culprit behind each case along with typical detective like investigating. In short the story and characters are very memorable and plus the famous
The thought of having Miles Edgeworth as the main character did seem odd at first but considering that I've seen how important of a character he is and the fact he's actually not as generic as the typical emo pretty boy that you've seen in most animes or JRPG's ( This doesn't mean he's not fangirl bait) . Yeah at first glance he may seem generic but really he's personality actually turns for the better which actually makes him sorta unique unlike most emo pretty boys who continue to sulk and act like assholes for example this dude.
... yeah moving on. So to start off with the presentation of game it's alot better than the previous ace attorney games in terms of sprite graphics even though the animations are very similar with the Edgeworth sprites from the old games to this title. I'm really impressed with all the other characters sprites as well too. One thing to note is that Investigations mainly takes place at the crime scenes and there's no actual trials occurring which brings variety of environments instead of taking place mainly at the courtroom. (even though the 4th case of the game takes place inside the courtroom) Like all the games the soundtrack is really catchy especially this song.
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| Squall Master of the Ellipses |
... yeah moving on. So to start off with the presentation of game it's alot better than the previous ace attorney games in terms of sprite graphics even though the animations are very similar with the Edgeworth sprites from the old games to this title. I'm really impressed with all the other characters sprites as well too. One thing to note is that Investigations mainly takes place at the crime scenes and there's no actual trials occurring which brings variety of environments instead of taking place mainly at the courtroom. (even though the 4th case of the game takes place inside the courtroom) Like all the games the soundtrack is really catchy especially this song.
The cast of characters is actually really good to be honest. Considering that Edgeworth is main character of course Capcom had to include Detective Dick Gumshoe (I know just go along with it) that doesn't seem to be very smart and intelligent but at least has confidence and determination (Even though Edgeworth always cuts his salary due to his screw ups) and Franziska Von Karma who has the constant tendency to whip the fuck of people with her vicious whip every chance she gets (not to mention a sister figure to Edgeworth). Aside from these returning characters they are two new introduced in the game(not counting witnesses ), Kay Faraday a self proclaimed great thief who considers herself a sort of modern day robin hood who's goal is to steal the ultimate hidden truth. She claims to be the actual so called Yatagarasu.(I'll get to that later.) I like compare her to Maya fey consider that Kay is as enthusiastic as her and she along with Gumshoe are Edgeworth's assistants . Shi-long Lang is an Interpol agent who has a very high arrest rate and seems to hate prosecutors due to certain past event involving his family and serves as Edgeworth's rival in the game along with his unique voice clip "NOT SO FAST!" instead of the OVERHEARD OBJECTION! As for the other support characters they're alright I guess and some witnesses return from previous titles. (Which I won't spoil.)
The story is actually quite interesting and all the cases that you solve are actually linked together except they're told out of order. The games consist of five cases but I'm only going to explain the first case and the central links between all the cases in order to give a simplified explanation. The first case begins with a conversation with two people discussing a trail but then suddenly one of the two people ends up killing the other. Edgeworth comes back from a trip and enters his office only to discover that the murder occurred in his own office. After discovering this, Edgeworth gets a gun pointed to his back by a mysterious person but just ends running away. After exposing the culprit behind the murder it turns that the culprit was a member of a highly organized smuggling ring and this is when the term Yatagarasu is introduced. The central plot of game is finding the truth about the smuggling ring and putting an end to it. I guess you can say that the smuggling ring is the antagonist of the game. The Yatatagarasu is a legendary thief who's goal is to steal hidden truths from corrupt organizations and expose them to the public without the thief's targets ever knowing. Kinda of interesting if you think about it. The dialogue is good for the most part but at times can be kinda cheesy but overall the dialogue fits well with game it does a great job keeping you interested plus it's told in third person perspective where you actually see Edgeworth himself talking to people unlike the other games that had .
Now onto the main gameplay. The gameplay is divided into two parts:
1. Investigations of the crime scenes.
The story is actually quite interesting and all the cases that you solve are actually linked together except they're told out of order. The games consist of five cases but I'm only going to explain the first case and the central links between all the cases in order to give a simplified explanation. The first case begins with a conversation with two people discussing a trail but then suddenly one of the two people ends up killing the other. Edgeworth comes back from a trip and enters his office only to discover that the murder occurred in his own office. After discovering this, Edgeworth gets a gun pointed to his back by a mysterious person but just ends running away. After exposing the culprit behind the murder it turns that the culprit was a member of a highly organized smuggling ring and this is when the term Yatagarasu is introduced. The central plot of game is finding the truth about the smuggling ring and putting an end to it. I guess you can say that the smuggling ring is the antagonist of the game. The Yatatagarasu is a legendary thief who's goal is to steal hidden truths from corrupt organizations and expose them to the public without the thief's targets ever knowing. Kinda of interesting if you think about it. The dialogue is good for the most part but at times can be kinda cheesy but overall the dialogue fits well with game it does a great job keeping you interested plus it's told in third person perspective where you actually see Edgeworth himself talking to people unlike the other games that had .
Now onto the main gameplay. The gameplay is divided into two parts:
1. Investigations of the crime scenes.
2. Confrontations of the witnesses or culprits.
Investigation works sort of different compared to the previous titles of the Ace Attorney games. You mainly stared at background images and navigating from place to place was mainly through menu selection. Don't get me wrong. I not saying that the gameplay in the older games is bad. I just think it could have been better in a sense. But in this one, you actually move around with in game sprites. To me this is a huge improvement and it makes looking for clues and keep track of everything quite simple. However some critics stated the moving controls were stiff with the touch screen but there's a solution to that . It's called using the D-pad. To me movement works better with the D-pad than the touch screen. To have Edgeworth run just hold the B button in case you don't like walking. The controls work well and the good thing about it is the option to either use the buttons or touch screen. Whatever suits you best. However there's one thing I want to address even though this doesn't play a huge part in the investigating portion and isn't that much important in general. Is it just me that I'm having difficulty getting the microphone to work with this game. It will work...when it feels like it. Sometimes it takes multiple tries to get it work when yelling the phrases OBJECTION!, HOLD IT!, TAKE THAT! or EUREKA! (which is Edgeworth's new phrase btw.) But at least it works better than this.
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| "IT IS MAGMA!!! *Gibberish*" -AngryJoe- |
Back to investigation. Basically the object of these portions is to scatter the crime scene and search for clues. Sounds simple but there's more to it. Not only do you have find evidence while examining everything but you have to use the brand new Logic system and find hidden contradictions at some locations of crime scenes and also talk to certain characters and present evidence to dig more information and answer certain multiple choice questions. The hidden contradictions is what brings Edgeworth to say his new phrase EUREKA! How it works is that you search through a certain image and press the deduce button on a certain spot that you think doesn't fit well with a specific evidence that you have and you present it and EUREKA! you discovered the hidden contradiction. This one of those moments where a famous detective ends up discovering something interesting and later on gets to bottom of a case. However these parts can be hard to figure out on your first run since it can be hard to figured what spot to deduce and what evidence to present. It's the hardest part of investigation process if you ask me. The Logic system is very well executed and feels like you dive into the mind of Edgeworth. How it looks is that while you investigate or talk to certain witnesses you will notice certain parts of the dialogue are highlighted in green (Note this doesn't refer to phone conversations). When this happens you gain logic thoughts (which I like to call them) in your logic inventory. When you access this inventory you have to connect two logic thoughts that you think make a possible logical connection. If they match you either gain new logic thoughts, new evidence, or simple progression of the case. If not you lose health or as Edgeworth puts it stray from the truth. I think in the first case of the game Gumshoe asks Edgeworth about logic(ok it was tutorial purposes I know.) and I was like really. It kinda reminded me of a line that Blondy said as a joke in his Sword of Sodan review.
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| "DURR! Logic what's that?" -BGG- |
umm please don't kill me. Well anyway after you found certain evidence and progressed you get a giant investigation complete assuming you didn't lose all your health form the logic system and deducing. Don't worry you regain 50% health after investigating. But to summarize what I just explained about this, I say it works to a certain degree. Well after some story telling it's on to the best part of the games the confrontations.
The confrontations is is pretty much the same as the courtroom gameplay in all the other Ace Attorney games. The only real difference is that it take place in different areas which brings a certain amount of appeal. The objective is convincing. You have to explain with evidence on who is the culprit and explain how he or she committed the murder. What you do is you have Edgeworth cross examine a certain witnesses or the culprit. This is when the story gets really good as it builds a great feeling of suspense and tension and the music sounds so epic that it makes the conversations sound like a fight actually. What you have to do is read all the statements of the testimonies carefully and find the flaw in it. You do this by looking for the statement that shows a contradiction and present evidence with Edgeworth say well you know. However there are times where you have to press and dig out more information. Pressing actually forces the person in question to revise their testimonies with a new statement which will mostly likely be the flaw you are looking for. After presenting the flaw you are given segments where you present more evidence to back your accusations. Evidence isn't the only thing you have to present because at times you have to present profiles so keep that in mind. Presenting wrong evidence at wrong statements will cause lost of your health bar so think carefully. These parts can be put your intelligence to the extreme test since the cases get harder and harder as you progress and it's a great type of challenge. Despite the fact I cheated with GameFaqs.Yes I caved sue me. After the whole process you will learn to love the breakdowns of each culprit after you successfully prove their guilt and then case closed. I like how Edgeworth doesn't show mercy and glares epically at the culprit while adding a really awesome quote.
Despite the gameplay and story being really good they're exist some flaws that have plagued this franchise since the very beginning. First of all there is no multiple save slots (which I'll give credit for being able to save at any given time at least) lack of any real replay value (if you're like me you might wanna go back to it for the story and at least it was long.) unable to fast forward text until you actually read it all at least once (Well to be fair there's a good reason for that) the minor mic error (which can be overlooked easily) and the last part of the final case. To be honest I thought it drag out too much (play it and you'll know why) and wasn't as interesting as final case in Apollo Justice which I thought was best last case compared to all the other final cases in each game. But despite these I really enjoyed it.
Closing thoughts well Miles Edgeworth may not be the most original character but at least he has a well developed personalty and he actually points the finger of justice. Yeah in the first game he was sorta of a emo jerk but at least the later game he becomes less emo and actually becomes more likable. Plus he dresses up like Austin Powers. He actually fit well as the main character and going along with that he had great supporting cast of characters. I'm really excited of the fact that there's sequel in the process and I'm so looking forward to it. As for gameplay still good despite being almost the same with confrontations but as for investigating it was well improved. Overall I recommend this to all fans of mystery games and ace attorney fans who have yet to play it . If you can get this to work on emulator then by all means try it out. Thank you for taking the time for reading my thoughts and that's everything. Take care.
