Man. I love fish, I love animals, I love taking pictures of both of these, and I loved Endless Ocean on the Wii. This game is not like the originals. I started this game with a higher opinion of this than I think a lot of people, it was fun, kind of clunky mechanically, but the core was strong enough to be a good time. The more I played though, the more baffling decisions I encountered. There’s so many axed modes and features from the Wii game that this feels like if you ported the idea to an iPhone game more than a third entry of the Endless Ocean series, which sucks. I got my money’s worth out of it, and overall it’s fine, the features cut are things I could overlook if the game was as good as the originals and it’s just not. Not to mention, I have encountered so many glitches that halt progression, and even gotten softlocked out of the ending from what I can tell because one of the items I need to complete the 99 tasks you have to do to pad the game out to hell and back just didn’t spawn in the already rare randomly generated formation, all of this just makes me wonder how this game was okayed in the state it’s in, missing any of the typical “shine” from a Nintendo published title, with things that scream a lack of QA testing.
Overall the lack of an aquarium mode the change to randomly generated maps from set maps, making exploration a lot more tedious to get what you want, and just lack of good QOL features… makes the game all in all very disappointing.

If I could jump that high...would I ever find the ground again?

Is it bad to jump that high into the sky of nostalgia? To let yourself slip away and put your head into the clouds? Will those clouds of nostalgia turn you against your peers who don't see the vision? The vision of a children's playground for you to jump around to your heart's content? Planting yourself on a little conveyor and riding on it like a first-person roller coaster? Pretending to pet the non-threatening round green birds that chirp "kiwi!" if you dare to shoot them?

I wish I could jump like Robbit, I wish I could shoot lasers like Robbit, and I wish I could make funny noises whenever I took a step forward like Robbit. Why is life such a bore? Why can't it be just playgrounds and rainbows? Why can I not be just like my hero Robbit? Fighting funny evil men with funny palm tree jellyfish henchmen.

Was it my mom's fault that she bought me this during a time where I got nothing for a majority of the year due to being a poor December baby? Is she to blame for this mess? My poisonous care for a simple video game that I had played too much? The rare time where I can attach my mom to a game instead of my gamer dad? My yearning for days that I didn't need to care about getting up for work in the morning? When I didn't have a constant worry for the struggles of others? Is it truly bad for me? To just make me forget, and make me care only about smiling and struggling to hold back my emotions? To just, feel once more?

Is it bad for me to feel like a kid again? For just one hour?

Why must life be so grounded...?

Let's go Robbit, let's jump and go...for old times' sake once more....

Today is my birthday! And for such an occasion, me and my bestie are playing through the Ace Attorney trilogy, in what is the first revisit I've had to the original games since I was a child

Anyone who knows me knows the importance the AA trilogy had in my early years. As an adult, I'm somewhat forced to view the game in a different manner, but I can also now look back to see the purpose this held to me, in the past. To be a child in the western world is to be ignored, I think. Especially a child like me who could understand these things more than most. Adults play little lords who can offer no refuge from the agony they bring, purposeful or not. It always seemed to me that everyone was making base mistakes that I could never fathom, that reflected off them and burned into me because children have no say in anything that goes on around them. And I could never understand their actions- I could never understand the screaming, I could never understand the deeply ingrained violence, I never understood why no one listened or could even parse things that were immediately obvious to me. Or why no one felt spurred to change. For years, I just ghosted the world feeling like one big tear all the time, very alone, but I would rather be alone than be with people like that. But I never forgot it, the extreme frustration of being that child. The child who is forced into situations with no voice and no autonomy, getting punished when I myself could not say anything back, lashing out and being unable to convey my desperation. Its pure bile and anger to be there.

I had so many feelings and thoughts about this growing up, the above can only be a tame simplification of many years of displacement. But one day, I caught a glimpse of a weird lawyer game on my shitty little ipod's app store in 2013, and things kind of changed. As I played, suddenly, I could see what it was like to have a voice. I could see what it was like to have friends, to find a family. I was introduced to a manner of things through Ace Attorney, a new manner of thought even, which at the time felt very cathartic to me. It reinforced a conviction that I've held since I could remember and I could see myself a little in it, sometimes. It was a comforting space. As an adult who knows more about the world than I did then, the writing isnt so mind-blowingly fantastic. But boy, as a child was it sure fucking incredible. To shout your objections and have pure, undeniable proof of what you meant at terrible people who otherwise would never see it. It was the spark of that more than the actual meat of it.

As for this game itself, it's more about what it did for me rather than what it is. To encourage thinking for ones self, to encourage that faith in an informed conviction. And that which fueled my fire for creative work, that I am still drawimg today. I talked about this a lot in my aai2 review, and I will talk about it again, but the introduction of Miles Edgeworth resonated with me so much back then. Who doesnt want to watch their shitty father bash their head into a wall- but that meant so much to me then. Actually, I forgot that this character largely introduced the concept of homosexuality to me. I would have figured myself out sooner or later, as I would with all these things, but at the very least I finished this game back then with an appreciation for a masculine demeanor and a strong need for a fitted suit.

I'm kind of rambling, and not well, but its my birthday so I'm allowed to. In present times, I'm noticing many spelling errors and sometimes a lacking of tone. And sometimes I feel like it relies too much on a joke so that the whole thing comes off as clowny, but I also feel like it might just be the english translation that made things this way. This was the first of its kind after all, and I've seen how the series has grown, so I can cut it some slack. Turnabout Goodbyes and Rise from the Ashes are still fantastic cases, and what's been even more fun than running down memory lane is watching my best friend experiencing it with me for the first time. I cant explain how much I absolutely love every piece of these games, though. They feel like a part of me, and I'm fairly proud of that. Its been a blast, and I cant wait to rediscover the rest of the series again.


Dont forget DL-6!

I think this game is slightly worse than the first one, but still kicks major ass. The exploration is still there, and you even get to keep your shit from the last game, so you just get even more fun shit to your movement kit. The combat is still fun, so fun I wished some bosses had more health cause they are kind of easy. The game is very pretty and I generally felt like I was in Star Wars and that is just something that you can only get with AAA. Just being in this high fidelity alien world is amazing.

The parts I think it lacks in though are just there are less planets than the first game, and only 2 of them are real "explore them" type planets. The other ones are pretty much set piece planets (there are stuff you still need to go back to get later, but generally you explored the planet fully the first time). The first game had like 4/5 basically equivalent planets to explore, but they are smaller and less open than the 2 in this game.

They decided to make the 2 explore able planets more like open world philosophy, with a heavy focus on 1 of them. Koboh is a spoked wheel design where there is a center area to freely explore surrounded by more "linear" locations. This works fine, and there is some visual differences between these areas, but it still all on the same planet. The other planet is all desert and, quite frankly, deserts are boring! There isn't really a lot here so its fine but still thats the only other real place.

Also the story isn't as good, its serviceable here so not bad, but the first one gave me that patented Star Wars Feeling™.

This being modern Star Wars, there is a lot of fan service, and I fucking love that cause it pulls from every era in the universe. You have the original movies with storm troopers and the empire. You have the prequels cause this game has fucking BATTLE DROIDS BABY, THEY ARE HERE AND I LOVE THEM. You have the newer movies with some of the newer droids that added to the empire roster. There is even a bunch of High Republic shit in this game too, its all fucking here. You even got architecture for those 3, you go in a seperatist ship, an empire space station, and a bunch of High Republic ruins. The fucking Crossguard claymore ass light saber is even a stance you can use in this game like YEAHHHHHH. The fan service rules.

Speaking of the stances, you start with the 3 from the last game (single saber, dual bladed saber, and dual wielding), but you also get 2 new ones; The crossguard and fucking blade w/ a blaster. The crossguard honestly felt too slow for this game, but the blaster is so fun. It feels awesome to shoot your blaster while you are doing your saber combo.

I do really wish this game had more platforming challenges because the platforming was fun. There are rifts that lead to like combat challenges, but also Mario Sunshine bonus levels with platforming. Most of them are combat and there are like 4 platforming challenges. I was more! There are things you can dash through that reset your jumps and dashes! Its fun!

Final point is that every game should have a double jump even if you dont need it because double jumping just feels good to do, and with the animations in this game that simple act is just beautiful to me.

It's been a journey of give and take: whenever I was really in the flow, it always managed to find a way to snap me out; and whenever I was losing my grip, it always found a way to yank me back in. Every great aspect of the game had its evil antagonistic clone that wasn't *equally* bad, but powerful enough to hurt the game's stronger points. Each great and charming character obscured by a slurry of aggravating witnesses, with humour that at a moment's notice can swing between genuinely funny and aggravating to even mash through. The great drama, spectable and flow of the trials broken by how abruptly they can grind to a halt when they demand the use of details from earlier conversations that have absolutely no record in the moment. And the compelling stories, themes and character arcs numbed by all my problems dragging me out of the experience as they grew harder to ignore.

I'm happy to concede that some of this stems from my own personal problems. I'm not incredibly attentive and my memory isn't very good, so a lot of the details I forgot might have been easier to keep track of for others. For similar reasons I felt like I had to push through most of the cases in one day, which naturally led to a lot of fatigue especially in the longer cases. Problems that started out feeling small but only got larger and more gnashing as I pushed through, to the point where even as I was watching the (probably really good) climax to the trilogy, I couldn't shake my resulting lack of investment and the feeling that I only finished it up out of obligation more than anything else. All that said, I did have more fun with the games than I'm probably letting on - I think the fact that I cleared three of them despite my brain's impressive resistance to everything these games expect from you speaks for itself.

I was a bit hesistant to post this considering most of it is dedicated to me talking about how challenging I found the silly lawyer games on a highly personal level but I don't think it holds any less 'merit' just because of that. We can try to ignore and talk around it but ultimately our own personalities and preferences are going to affect how we view and engage with anything, and that goes as much for my highly-personal musings as much as somebody else's ostensibly 'objective' review. Besides, I think stupid people deserve a voice as well <3