I'm really glad I took the time to play through the first Ace Attorney to see what it's all about. I'm also kind of glad I'm done.
I'm a bit surprised by my own liking of Visual Novels. Usually, I much prefer gameplay-heavy games to ones that ask a lot of reading of me, but the heart of this series really seems to be in that writing. It's kooky, fun, charming, mysoginistic as hell, all in the spirit of a game that came out in 2001.
But it really does engage the player, and it is good writing for the most part.
The mysteries have depth, and more often than not work very well at revealing surprising twists and turns.
The gameplay is minimal, yet the feeling of slapping evidence in someone's face and watching their jaw-drop as you weed out their contradicitions is amazing. There are a lot of instances of BIG jumps in logic for some of those puzzles though. It's far from airtight design, and requires checking a guide on the side quite often.
The one thing that really annoyed me is how long winded it all feels. Travelling from screen to screen is a pain. Going through dialogues is super slow and cumbersome. At times, there's also just way too much words for nothing. In the end, I just wanted to be done with it because of how tiresome skipping all those dialogues got, just to get to the trials.
I can totally see why this is a huge franchise. It has got fun characters, wild ideas for cases and a great central mecanic of cross-examination and high-stakes trials. But it's got that signature Visual Novel thing of being way too long for it's own good that got on my nerves.
Well worth a playthrough, even if I won't play the rest of trilogy before a good while !
I'm a bit surprised by my own liking of Visual Novels. Usually, I much prefer gameplay-heavy games to ones that ask a lot of reading of me, but the heart of this series really seems to be in that writing. It's kooky, fun, charming, mysoginistic as hell, all in the spirit of a game that came out in 2001.
But it really does engage the player, and it is good writing for the most part.
The mysteries have depth, and more often than not work very well at revealing surprising twists and turns.
The gameplay is minimal, yet the feeling of slapping evidence in someone's face and watching their jaw-drop as you weed out their contradicitions is amazing. There are a lot of instances of BIG jumps in logic for some of those puzzles though. It's far from airtight design, and requires checking a guide on the side quite often.
The one thing that really annoyed me is how long winded it all feels. Travelling from screen to screen is a pain. Going through dialogues is super slow and cumbersome. At times, there's also just way too much words for nothing. In the end, I just wanted to be done with it because of how tiresome skipping all those dialogues got, just to get to the trials.
I can totally see why this is a huge franchise. It has got fun characters, wild ideas for cases and a great central mecanic of cross-examination and high-stakes trials. But it's got that signature Visual Novel thing of being way too long for it's own good that got on my nerves.
Well worth a playthrough, even if I won't play the rest of trilogy before a good while !