I can see the appeal of this. Playing it at all did eventually lead me to the Ace Attorney series which I have been enjoying a ton. The visual presentation is very appealing and memorable, and at first that convinced me that is find something to like here. In the end I can't really tolerate this at all though.
I'm not too familiar with this genre yet, but with my limited knowledge I'm not a fan of this game on a design level. A lot of the trial mechanics seem designed to try and give it "gameplay" and make the trials more tense, but they mostly just annoyed me. I did play the Android version for some reason, so there's a good chance I would've been less bothered if I had tried it on an actual console. Even so, for me the appeal of this genre is the combination of the story and logic, and playing shitty little minigames doesn't really add anything. The tension added doesn't feel earned.
The trial mechanics also invent an incentive for hanging out with different characters during your free time, since you get bonuses after interacting with someone enough. I like the idea of choosing which characters you interact with to learn more about them, but in practice I've never been super engaged by this kind of mechanic. The encounters have to be pretty short, and are very limited since important plot elements or character moments all get reserved for the main story. I suppose you could make the argument that these short, forced interactions are intentional and demonstrate the distrust and unease created by the situation the characters are in. I wouldn't give this game that much credit though.
The story is the hardest part of this whole thing to discuss because I didn't actually finish the game. There were characters and moments that I thought were cool, but there were never any moments were I was shocked or thrilled by any twists or left pondering about the game's deeper meaning. Maybe I was just failing to engage because of my previously mentioned problems with the game, but it didn't leave me feeling satisfied even though I wasn't hating it either.
I was enjoying it all enough to coast to the end even with my gripes until I got to Chihiro's arc. I won't even go into detail because it's genuinely fucking awful and left me pretty upset! You could argue that Chihiro isn't actually supposed to represent a trans identity but I don't think it really matters one way or another what the intent was. I played a bit past that but didn't find anything worth sticking around for, so I dropped it.
Overall, I can see why people like this series and I enjoyed a bit of it myself. However the most memorable thing I was left with here was a reminder that society generally views people like me with pity and disgust and that's not a great takeaway! It might have soured my overall view of it. Either way, I won't be returning to this.
I'm not too familiar with this genre yet, but with my limited knowledge I'm not a fan of this game on a design level. A lot of the trial mechanics seem designed to try and give it "gameplay" and make the trials more tense, but they mostly just annoyed me. I did play the Android version for some reason, so there's a good chance I would've been less bothered if I had tried it on an actual console. Even so, for me the appeal of this genre is the combination of the story and logic, and playing shitty little minigames doesn't really add anything. The tension added doesn't feel earned.
The trial mechanics also invent an incentive for hanging out with different characters during your free time, since you get bonuses after interacting with someone enough. I like the idea of choosing which characters you interact with to learn more about them, but in practice I've never been super engaged by this kind of mechanic. The encounters have to be pretty short, and are very limited since important plot elements or character moments all get reserved for the main story. I suppose you could make the argument that these short, forced interactions are intentional and demonstrate the distrust and unease created by the situation the characters are in. I wouldn't give this game that much credit though.
The story is the hardest part of this whole thing to discuss because I didn't actually finish the game. There were characters and moments that I thought were cool, but there were never any moments were I was shocked or thrilled by any twists or left pondering about the game's deeper meaning. Maybe I was just failing to engage because of my previously mentioned problems with the game, but it didn't leave me feeling satisfied even though I wasn't hating it either.
I was enjoying it all enough to coast to the end even with my gripes until I got to Chihiro's arc. I won't even go into detail because it's genuinely fucking awful and left me pretty upset! You could argue that Chihiro isn't actually supposed to represent a trans identity but I don't think it really matters one way or another what the intent was. I played a bit past that but didn't find anything worth sticking around for, so I dropped it.
Overall, I can see why people like this series and I enjoyed a bit of it myself. However the most memorable thing I was left with here was a reminder that society generally views people like me with pity and disgust and that's not a great takeaway! It might have soured my overall view of it. Either way, I won't be returning to this.