As a big fan of both Layton and Phoenix Wright, I found this to be a pretty enjoyable experience. The trials are generally weaker than the average PW game and the puzzles are generally weaker than the average PL game but it still ends up being a solid combination with a compelling mystery and fun interactions. The introduction of magic in the court trials puts an interesting spin on the usual formula and the original characters fit well with the styles of both series. I held off on playing this game for a long time because I had only heard that it featured the most absurd plot twist of all time, which ended up being pretty accurate. This is pretty standard fare for Layton games, so I don't think it should ruin the game for anyone and personally I found it very entertaining.

Fun game with a surprising amount of care put into it that reminded me of my days spent playing handheld yugioh games. The story is pretty standard for a cardgame series, but sometimes that's really all you need to get that specific childish charm and I appreciate their efforts to make an extensive story mode with a world you can run around in and do sidequests and stuff. I also really love shadowverse character designs and the character quests have their fair share of nice moments. A few characters like Kagura and Rei are bizarrely irrelevant for most of the story though which ends up feeling rather odd.

The gameplay is really fun with a wide variety of decks to build and fight against, though when the difficulty ramps up in the lategame it can get rather frustrating. Winning and losing based on the luck of the draw is naturally going to happen in any cardgame, but it becomes a lot more exhausting when it blocks your progress and you just have to keep ramming your head against the same cards over and over rather than just moving on to a different opponent. It also would've been nice if the cards were split up over more packs since cramming hundreds of cards into just 3 packs means you'll be pulling a looooot of dupes and it makes building specific decks kind of annoying.

MIMORI CUTE

Extremely impressive successor to JSR that captures the style to a T. Like with JSR, it's a blast to just grind around town and paint the walls to some funky music and it even adds some solid improvements to the formula like boosting and trippy dream stages. Even the story is pretty cool despite the short length and the cutscenes were well-done. The combat is pretty awkward and weightless which is a shame because they actually did put some effort into making fun boss fights but thankfully it's not a main focus. Also it's much more subjective but I definitely preferred the soundtrack in JSR overall. The birthday cake defenders might jump me for this but I can't imagine anyone enjoying listening to a lady say "got my nails done, got my hair done" on loop for more than 10 seconds.

Good game. It's rock solid fast-paced mecha action without clunky movement which we definitely need more of, but it comes with some glaring shortcomings. The dull story presentation and bite-sized missions make it difficult to really care about what's going on despite a few really cool setpieces and the poor balancing makes some fights jarringly easy and others frustratingly difficult. There are a lot of cool weapon options but the ricochet system and focus on staggering for damage disincentivizes anything but close-range combat which makes shotguns/gatling guns the clear choice for almost every mission while most other weapons just feel weak in comparison. The camera is very bad at locking on to enemies which isn't really an issue for most of the game but when it comes to the faster ACs, Ibis and the last boss it becomes extremely annoying and you just kind of have to whip your camera around and hope you find them before they shred you. All that aside, it's still fun to blast enemies, zoom around maps and customize your AC.