Valkyria Revolution (PS4): Oh Valkyria... What has Sega done to you...

So a little over 5 years ago (Jesus Christ) I had written a review for a game I thought was great that almost nobody played. It was a bizarre blending of anime, JRPG, tactical RPG, 3rd person shooter, and first person shooter. All these mechanics should have made it some ridiculous mish-mash, but somehow it worked. I really enjoyed it a lot, and felt since nobody bought I would heap some credit on it. That game was Valkyria Chronicles. 

Apparently there must have been some demand for it, because after the release of the PS4 Sega decided to give it a purdy HD sheen and re-release it with all the DLC on PS4. And I bought it again, because I'm a sucker. There was also apparently demand for the two following sequels released previously on the PSP. So someone at Sega figured why the hell not, lets toss out a new Valkyria game and see how it does? I couldn't wait, and bought it without hesitation.

VALKYRIA: REVOLUTION(PS4)

The story of Valkyria: Revolution takes well into the future of the first game. It begins with a man and his teach discussing a private grave honoring the 5 traitors of the nation of Jutland, and why history doesn't explain why they were honored so. Richelle is teacher to the Jutland royalty and knows the true story, and sits to tell him the true story of the Jutland Liberation.

The continent of Europa is still a country of nations, and ragnite is still the resource that rules the world now not only for its potential as a power source, but now for the alchemic properties that allowed so many nations to enter an advanced industrial age. The Ruzi empire has the biggest slice of the pie, and has advanced and expanded its influence to maintain its military power and ragnite control over Europa. During its expansion, the emperor Klaudiazs and his five generals set flame to a stand alone orphanage and took hostage to its caretaker, a woman named Maria.

She basically put up zero defiance, so I don't know why Ruz had the raze the orphanage.

Five of the orphans that survived formed a tight knit circle and after their adoption advanced themselves with skills to take revenge with the nation of Jutland. Amleth, rose as a soldier to captain an elite squad. Violette uses her femme fatale charms as a spy, Basil uses his economic influence and power to equip the military, Fritte uses his skills as a columnist to stir the will of the populous, and Solomon uses legislature to advance political action of the nation. The five of them decide to use the nation of Jutland to push to war with the Ruzi empire to kill the Emperor and his 5 generals and learn of Miss Maria's fate under the guise of Jutland liberating the empires captured nations.

But all is not so easy as the Princess of Jutland herself, Opheila, joins the military to fight along side her people on the front lines, stationed in the unit under Amelth's command. The 5 now have to advance carefully to pursue their revenge and manipulate the war, without their intentions being discovered by Opheila, who wants truly nothing more than the liberation of Jutland and the surrounding nations.

Violette, Basil, Amleth, Solomon, and Fritte: the Traitors of Jutland.

Did that seem wordy? Because it was. I know Valkyria games really heavily lean on cutscenes to get their stories across since the levels aren't really long enough to effectively weave the narrative into the gameplay, but this one is in a severe, SEVERE need of an editor. First off it's trying to tell this complicated tale of two nations militaries at war, then it's trying to explain the subterfuge of the 6 major characters trying to control it from the shadows, (only one of which is playable).

But then it also deals with the interpersonal relationships with the squad, and the princess. The squad has like close to 15 playable characters, and it's like they all try to cram a line or two of dialog into every cutscene like a bad impov session. When this happens scenes that should have been over like 20 minutes ago will drag on and on because every character has to drop some trite one line platitude that does nothing to contribute to the story or develop their character. The squad is literally a pick and mix of anime tropes and most of them aren't even good. Some of them are literally the same as the character they share the scene with.

It's made especially bad by some phenomenally bad voice acting. This to me is the more amazing thing because since I play a lot of games, I recognize a lot of voices. Some of these actors are incredibly talented. I've heard them in better works. Hell eff'n Matt Mercer who does amazing voice work is in it and while he's one of the better acted characters in this game, overall the voice acting makes cutscenes that drag on far to long feel even longer. I've had some story segments run over 40 minutes before I actually got to a level (and when you are streaming this does not keep people watching, let me tell you).

Toooooo many eff'n characters.

They changed the battle system for Valkyria: Revolution and I honestly have no idea why. Valkyria as I know is more or less a tactical RPG. Think kind of like in Phantom Brave terms: You bring out your set peices to the battle. They have their own moves and ranges and abilities. You move your pieces for attacks (while getting shot at as you) and then once you've made you moves, the enemies get their crack with you shooting at them. It was a weird amalgamation of game elements but they actually managed to work well together.

Valkyria: Revolution has completely done away with the tactical element of the game, and when the fans rebelled in the first trailer videos they tried to adjust the abilities to give it a more tactical feel. Essentially how the missions work is you select 4 troops from your Vanargand squad between your Shocktrooper heavies, fast and nimble Scouts, your Sapper mages, and your Shield-bearer tanks. Typically you will take Amleth and Princess Ophelia for your shock and scout, since 90% of the time they are required for the story anyways. You basically round out the party with whatever characters or roles you want left.

Once the mission starts you usually have a relatively simple objective: Hold this point, take this base, beat this boss. As soon as the missions starts you basically have free reign to wander the map and take out enemies. You have an attack button, guard, dash, menu and lock on. It's not turn based anymore but the action does freeze when you go into the menu if you want to fire a shot with one of your guns, use a grenade, or abilities. This is part of the concession to try to make it a little more tactics based (because upon first seeing the game play fans complained) but it doesn't really hold up that well.

The point of giving use of the guns or terrain is what allowed the tactical combat system to work. You could run to cover, take your shot, then have protection when it wasn't your turn. Now I find that there is little reason to use it as I can just vault the cover and swing my sword around since there is no turn order anymore. The only time you really want to use a grenade or ability is when you have a bunch of enemies grouped or have a particularly stubborn foe like one of the mech tanks.

When you complete missions you get spoils of money and abilities to equip to your characters. These abilities have affinity levels so on top of leveling your character, you basically have to bank in your unused abilities to move around a skill grid to allow you to use greater abilities, as well as build up characters individual abilities on top of their base stats. The problem is you have squad of like 15 people, the grids expand, and you don't get a lot of spoils from fights as you play through the game. So you for sure can expect to be doing a bit of grinding to try to get your mainstays up to level. I think even just focusing on 2 characters, I never seemed to have enough.

In between story missions you can also take on a number of free missions as well. There is no story tied to any of these so they are basically a free sortie to get spoils and levels. But what this also does is affect the map during the course of the war, so there will be hot-zones where you are pushing or getting pushed back. The more area you take during the free battles, the more the trade embargo will be lifted and more items you can purchase during when you are back at your home base.

Skill upgrading in this game is the fucking bane of my existence.

Much like the previous game, in the home base you can go to your R&D department to improve your guns, grenades, and launchers as well as boost your characters grids. There are also a number of shops where you can buy supplies and you can take them to a main outfitter where you can rework your gear for the team as a whole with bonus effects. I will be 100% honest I did this maybe once or twice at best because the upgrades seemed marginal at best and you have to wait a battle to pick up the item you crafted AND you can only do them one at a time. Sorry Valkyria: Revolution but I got shit to do. For the most part this didn't seem to impede my progress.

So usually when I review a game I go into the basic mechanics then go into what and I liked and what I didn't but as you can already tell from this one, there is a lot of shit that I didn't like. So let's keep that ball rolling. Now I've mentioned that that every single cutscene is much too long and relatively poorly acted, filled with trite and pointless lines.

But it also suffers from the problem of the first game of forcing you to go back to the main menu of the two characters in the future discussing the events at the end of every single chapter. There is no reason to do this. I can't go back and play old missions until the beat the game, and I honestly don't want to see the extra cutscenes. All you are doing is adding a step in getting me through the trudging story and makes it that much harder for me to get the action.

There is no reason to keep bringing me back here. Let me jump to the main menu
from the pause menu when I want to go. Keep the story going.

What the hell happened to graphics in this game? Both of them are anime looking yes, but the original had this beautiful watercolor washed out style that made it a joy to look at with bright colors that looked rustic, and classic anime design with soft fluid animations that made it look like I was actually watching old footage. Valkyria Revolution swapped that out for this almost generic video-gamey looking anime archetype. While all the characters are well designed that they all manage to stand apart from each other, something about the eyes just makes them all look too similar to one another.

The animation in combat is fine, but it does the old Resident Evil animation of hand conversations during talky portions of the game, which are silly in their own right. But when a single character has like a 10 minute monologue, that never cuts to a different camera angle, you have a single jackass waving his left arm at about should height in the same circular animation for the entirety of it. It's impossible not to notice and looks even dumber when you do.

The music isn't all that spectacular though either. The majority of it is tolerable, well fitting for the menus or scenes you are in. But two songs are played almost ad nauseam throughout the whole game. One is the song that plays when the villains are talking, which sounds so relentlessly sinister they could be talking about giving away puppies to new forever homes and you'd think it's the most evil thing of the world. The title track of the game is the other one, which plays almost every battle and in many cutscenes. It does have a good melody and does give the battle a feeling of epic so in that regard it is well placed, but it's a pretty paltry offering overall.

The grind is insufferable in this game. Things started off hot with me getting a quick level advantage over the enemy that carried me through the meat of the game, but in the later stages where you have boss fights with one of the Valkyria they become these painful battles of attrition because of these bullshit defense stacking abilities that bring your party's damage to next to zero. Even your shock troopers who usually can mow through everything will barely dent through, making these fights take forever.

And as stated above the rewards for doing this are negligible at best. After a few missions I only would get enough reward to move Amelth a few spaces on his grid, because if you want good experience you have to burnt he better skills you get. But those are the ones I want to equip! Thankfully the game continued to dump a number of abilities I never ever bothered to use which helped a little, but again the tedium of the process would just kill any motivation I had to grind.

There is no way to sugar coat it. This combat system is fucking boring. It's not fast paced enough to truly feel like an action game. The animation has no weight behind it so all the strikes glide through as if there was no impact. It's too free form to have any sense of RPG structure too it. Like I said using the skills and guns feel like a token attempt to go "hey see? this is still kind of a tactics game right?"  On top of that a significant portion of the missions just take too long, even when they don't. There have been times where I have playing missions that feel like I have been going for well over an hour only learn I played about 12 minutes.

The game also feels just too easy. Like I said its got a pretty convoluted skill and upgrade system, and it can't be that effectual if I was able to basically not use the shops in any capacity, only grinding up a few characters and was pretty much able to cruise through a significant portion of the game. It has about 10 episodes and a finale,  and aside from a few trip ups on a few boss fights I sailed to chapter 10 with relative ease.

No connection Slyvia Bles, who actually was a deep, conflicted, and interesting character.
By having it jump so far down the timeline this is really the only connection to Valkyria Chronicles.

But this game makes one fucking cardinal sin that made me put the game down. Near the end of the game in one of the final missions, it pulls the bullshit "we need to split up" deal and forces you to control two teams. I think this happens only one other time in the game, and the problem is if you played the game like I had done, you would get the mission with two stud main characters, two acceptable supports, and a whole load of fucking trash because I don't have the 90 hours I would need to level up these stupid characters to equip stronger abilities.

So now I'm stuck. Either I break up my good team and struggle to get through it, or I go in with a team of scrubs and hope for the best. Either way it killed the pace of the game and motivated me to move to something else. Sorry Valkyria Revolution, but I'm a working adult with shit to do.

And the real tragedy of it is, despite some incredibly dumb parts and even dumber dialog, the story was starting to get me a little bit. While the most of it is just useless fluff that I didn't care about, I was interested to see how the situation with the traitors and the princess were going to play out. Looks like I won't be doing that myself, because this game shot its one saving grace in the foot. Its single shred of interesting narrative.

I did end up growing to like Ophelia in her naivete. She's for her country first,
but she is surprisingly receptive and understanding to all sides of the conflict.

Honestly I don't know why this surprises me. Sega has a long track record of not knowing what the fuck they are doing. The only reason they are sort of succeeding is because they purchased Atlus and them left them alone. They haven't messed up my beloved Yakuza or Persona franchises yet, but other than that if they're not pimping out Sanik's used asshole, it's ruining a franchise people used to love. Valkyria is no exception.

I stomached as much of this game as I could. Hoping it would get better. I really wanted it to. Sometimes you can push through bad voice acting and find a hidden gem of a good game (Star Ocean: Last Hope and Infinite Undiscovery are great examples). But there are just too many horrible errors to overlook on this one. The game was universally panned by other reviews, and I have no other choice but to pile on: Valkyria Revolution sucks. Buyer beware.

Ugh, I didn't even get into the English singing in this game.
Dreadful.

The Witch and the Hundred Knight (PS4): A very Disgaea take on Zelda.

Since I no longer work at Gamestop (thank god), I don't have the luxury of getting to try things before I buy them anymore. I sometimes check redbox to see what they have on hand, but some of the things I spy on aren't available. As luck would have it, some of my my neighboring libraries have much better video game budget than the one I work at and have a pretty new and put to date selection of gamery to pick from.

This one I had seen for a while, but I never jumped on because Nippon Ichi software can be a real hit or miss for any game that isn't Disgaea. Sometimes I've gotten burned on them, sometimes I've found a gem that ended up being underrated. But I'm a sucker for anything kinda anime RPGish so since I had the ability to play this for weeks for free, I took a stab at....

THE WITCH AND THE HUNDRED KNIGHT:(PS4)

(Played in 2016)

In this adventure we are set in the world of Medea, your prototypical fantasy realm that is just on the verge of some technological advancement. In this realm exists a large, but incredibly toxic swampland that is surrounded by forested area. Within this swamp resides Metallia, and arrogant, cocky, and downright mean woman with her robotic servant Arlecchino. 

Metallia is a self proclaimed Swamp Witch and although she is not recognized in any official capacity by the realm's other witches, she is fiercely powerful and practically bursting with magical potential. She has been at war with the forest witch at her borders, but Metallia has one major weakness in that she physically cannot leave her swamp without becoming severely weakened. So to combat this, she summons a small familiar she believes to be the Legendary Hundred Knight (you) to swing the battle in her favor. Despite being smaller and weaker than she believed, she sets him out upon the world to find a series a pillars that will allow her to spread her swamp, and thus her ability extend her reach and power upon the world.

So I'm not gonna lie. Despite being a protagonist? Holy shit Metallia might be one of the villainous characters in a game. Now I know that Nippon Ichi does a pretty good job of weaving a tale despite managing to be pretty tongue and cheek with its story, but it was incredibly hard to get into the role of working for Metallia because she quite literally has zero emotional compass. She lashes out with vulgarity, violence, and unfiltered fury, (a girl after my own heart really.).

But you don't actually ever really play as Metallia. You control the Hundred Knight, You are given the option to give your character a name in the onset of the game, but Metallia promptly ignores it. Throughout the story you get the choice to make a couple of decisions to either agree, disagree, ignore or question something you've been told, but from what I understand there are only a few crucial decisions that can really effect the ending of the game. So in my playthrough of the game, I found myself questioning everything I was told because despite being on Metallia's side, I found her reasoning for things questionable.

The visual novel story elements are in place, as is standard for most NIS titles.
From what I know, we never get this question answered.

So I expected this game to be a JRPG or some kind of tactical RPG because that tends to be Nippon Ichi's entire wheelhouse, but surprisingly it ended up being a top down action adventure game. As cheekily described by article title, The gameplay of this game feels reminiscent of the classic of the traditional Legend of Zelda series or the original Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. Top down, hero center, slash baddies. Generally the objectives are a simple get to the other end of the level. You don't have to do it in one go but the end mission rewards tend to be better if you do. But as you travel you will continually bust open pillars that allow you to return to base and cash in on the XP you've earned to that point.

Now it wouldn't be very Nippon Ichi if they didn't take a relatively simple system and over-complicate it. So generally your weapons follow a kind of rock paper scissors system to them. They vary between slashing weapons, smashing weapons, and magic weapons. Typically these fall swords, hammers, and staves, but the thing to really make a note of while you play is what type of damage the weapons do. For example you might find axes instead of hammers which are still super slow and damaging, but do slashing damage instead of smashing. So if an enemy is completely immune to slashing damage, your shiny new axe amounts to jack shit.

You can equip up to three different weapon sets so you basically get a 5 combo attack based on your varied weapons so you can focus one type of damage, or mix and match if you like. But from my experience most of the baddies of an area usually all have similar damage resistances per area so I found it most effective to set each set to a specific damage type. In addition to this, most items are marked with a 1-5, so as long as you have your weapons placed in numerical order, you will get an increasing damage buff per swing. You are going to be flooded with gear often, so make sure you go through and makes sure you have the best stuff equipped at all times.

But because of the nature of the Hundred Knight's summon, you only get so much time away from Metallia, so every level is timed more or less by this Giga calorie system. How it works is you have a counter on the top of the screen counting down from 100. It decreases faster as you recharge your stamina, use specials, run, or take excessive damage. It constantly depletes to heal you so you have to pay attention to it because if it drops to zero you have significantly reduced stats. There are multiple ways to restore it such as using your bonuses received from smashing baddies to restore it at pillars along the map you uncover, eating food items, or eating baddies on the screen (yes, you can eat enemies).

There is a limited amount of space for the rewards you get, since Hundred Knight isn't the smartest thing in the world, he eats them to keep them safe till he gets back to Metallia. So the loot you collect is stored in his stomach. You only get so much space in your stomach and you lose it even faster if you eat enemies, so when your stomach gets full you have to use a Bowel Dump to get the garbage out of your stomach. (I am not making this up, god I wish I was. -_-)

NIS's knack for hilarious flavor text is prevalent in this game as well.

You also as you play along the game start to gather various familiar summons for you to use in the levels. These vary in use to helping you in battle, destroying obstacles to allow you to continue, triggering far away switches, or utterly decimating bosses. Most of these I found myself not using unless the level required me to use one to proceed. The main exception was the trapper which sometimes net some interesting items of upgrade or sale. It wasn't till the end where I got this massive Tower summon that I could drop two off that fired off homing magic shots. Since magic is the hardest attack attribute to deal damage with, these were game breaking.

There is also a job class system sort of. Hundred knight will unlock about 8 different attack styles or classes that will affect your base stats and also provide different effects. Honestly the one your start off with is your most basic and balanced so I found little reason to switch off of it at any point. You can also set two sub categories for additional boosts at reduced experience, so its always good to have multiple set. I tended to prefer the Ninja class because it basically let me continue to run at incredibly reduced stamina and Gcal depletion. Cap it off with another attack or defense for your 3rd and you have a pretty solid build for most of the game. If it stops working switch them up or go to an older level land grind some of the others.

Ninja and Wonder Knight were staples, The third can fluctuate as needed.

These might have been more effective than I gave credit for, but I rarely used them.

Following its Disgaea lineage, TW&THK also features its own Item world of sorts in some kind of alternate reality rouge-like tower. It features a story of the characters you've met so far but in some form of alternate timeline/reality version of them. It's the only place where you actually get to play as Metallia as some kind of last ditch summon for big damage, but given the item I sacrificed to get in there all of the baddies in there for like 50 floors were completely piss weak. The main reason to go in here is this is the location where you can get materials to upgrade your items and weapons at the shops outside the tower. I literally didn't figure out this out until near the end of the game, and it doesn't really do a whole lot to explain it to you. It would have really come in handy for some of the later stages.

There is also a karma mechanic in the game as well that primarily comes from trying to take over NPCs homes for bonus items. If the karma meter gets too high NPCs will get hostile and try to kill you. They never do much damage, but you can't harm them so you'll need to go back to base to reduce your karma. It's not really a difficult thing to manage so there is little real effect to it that I found.

At the level of difficulty the tower I was in, I never really needed to summon Lia.

That is more or less of the core mechanics of the game. Despite all the additional mechanics this game tends to throw at you, its play tends to be pretty straight forward for the most part and the mild confusion at new controls are worked through relatively quickly. There is one level where you can smash baddies in groups of 6, so grinding for levels never really ended up being a problem, and the game as a meaty play to time to it. For most of its primary functions it has solid mechanics.

Graphically, and this comes as somewhat of a surprise to me, TW&THK is rendered with 3d models which I've found Nippon Ichi to rarely do. They aren't really fantastically rendered models and this was PS3 game so I'm willing to give somewhat of a pass on it, but they still don't look too great. usually though the camera is so far away from the models that you really don't get a sense of the level of detail for them anyways.  Story segments are done in the traditional visual novel style of gameplay this producer has stuck to for most of their games.

Sad this is, this isn't even as close to as bad as this game can get.

Speaking of, MAN some of the story segments of this game can get fucking wordy. Because of the very tongue and cheek nature of the writing, some of it can be pretty hilarious but some of the exposition seems to drag on for what feels like forever. This is exceptionally bad at the onset of new chapters. I have had live streams where if I let the dialogue run until it was completely spoken no joke some of these segments can go up to 30 minutes.

Another ridiculous thing TW&THK does is for some stupid reason, the game rolls the credits after you complete each individual chapter of the game. Thankfully its skippable, but for the life of me I cannot understand whey the developers felt that I needed to see it between each chapter. Perhaps they felt that this game was going to bomb so they wanted to make sure the credits got seen at least once before the player eventually quit. Or perhaps they felt they did such a great job with that text roll they thought it was the most enjoyable experience of the game. It's completely stupid and I have no idea why they did it this way.

The cast of characters for the most part generally likable. Although admittedly it might take a little warming up to some of them, I don't think there was a character I liked from the moment they were introduced in the game but as I played through a chapter or two I needed up liking them a little more as I understood them. The only character who I really struggled to like through a good portion of the game was Metallia herself because she's such a rotten bitch. For an early spoiler, in the 2nd chapter f the game she does defeat the forest witch, but as she's weakened the forest witch exclaims not to kill her because she is actually Metallia's mother.

Metallia's response to this basically equivalates to a "So fucking what? Who cares?" and places a hex on her. Not just a normal hex though, she felt the best way to curse her mother was to turn her into a mouse, jack up her pheromone production to 11 and the summon 3 large horny rats so her mother can give her "lots of brothers and sisters." God fucking damn, Metallia, jeeze... To be fair, the game does have that moment where it boomerangs and I suddenly wanted Metallia to get her way and fucking kill everyone, and I felt it does an adequate job of explaining her selfish nature. I give Nippon Ichi this, they are always good at weaving a tale.

Remember kids, this is the story's "heroine". Not the villain... maybe.

The hands down biggest complaint I have with this game is that the camera and its controls suck an entire bushel of weewees. The camera spin is incredibly slow, and you can only raise and lower the angle of it so much, so it always feels like the camera is too close to the action and is never really positioned in a way that you can easily see what is coming. On top of that, the fucking environments are always in the fucking way. So if you are going to be exploring a set of forest or a town with really tight alleyways? You get to eat shit. Enjoy looking at the tops of trees or buildings as enemies you can't see wail on you. Its retarded. There should be no reason I can't pan the camera higher up to get a better lay of the land in this style of play.

One last niggling complaint that I have is this game is very unclear about the process of getting the proper endings. There are 3 possible ones. One of them is Meh and its made by a very simple decision near the end of the game, where you basically have deny a mission 3 times to which you get a pretty shitty monologue. I youtube'd that one. The next ending is the "true ending" which might have been one of the shittest unfulfilling things I've ever seen. I was legitimately pissed because while it is an ending epilogue, its a real "Ha ha, fuck you". To get the best experience, you have to get the "bad ending" which is done by finding and defeating 3 optional bosses in levels you have previously gone through. The game does little to indicate this so I ended up missing them completely. There is a surprisingly little amount of online guide for this game.

That being said, after I was done with initial checkout of this game, I looked around to see that it was dropped to 20 bucks new at some stores. This is because its out of print so I had a agent further out into the state get me a copy of the game because I prefer the physical. I enjoyed it that much that I felt I needed to own it so I can finish it at my leisure. I still haven't completed the bad ending yet but I do intend to. I could absolutely sit down with this game for another 20 hours or so, but it is possible to get all 3 endings if you saved in the right places on a single run. It's not a very difficult game.

Every so often, one of these prolific companies that pump out games will release an underrated nugget that is worth playing. I definitely feel that The Witch and the Hundred Knight falls under that category. It's certainly not a game without its flaws and I wouldn't blame anyone who put this game down because of the tone of the narrative or wonkiness of some of the mechanics. It doesn't do anything to break the mold but it was a enjoyable game to play and it did enough to make me feel I needed to own it. From what I've heard there is a sequel in the works so perhaps they can polish this up somewhat. This one is hard to find physically but is still available digitally so if you are looking for something that's a little different yet familiar with a story that doesn't take itself too seriously, I would say its worth a play.

Seriously, Metallia should have killed everyone at Walpurgis. 

Guest Review: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies(3DS): A return to all that is Wright

Hey everyone. I'm taking a back seat this time because this is game I really wanted to play and review, but sadly I do not own a 3DS. Thankfully a friend of Rage Quitter, the lovely and talented GoatMaiden, was more than willing to step up for this one. -- CannonMan

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The phrase “Familiar yet Fantastic” was used on this very blog by Rage Quitter’s own CannonMan to describe the 13th entry in the “Tales” game series (Tales of Xillia.) I can think of no better way to describe the most recent Ace Attorney game (which would be #5 if you don’t count Investigations.)

Here we are once again, settling in with old friends and ready to experience the predictable-yet-twisted world of Phoenix Wright: art student-turned lawyer turned-bum-turned-adopted father-turned lawyer again. Get ready for more spunky sidekicks, more accusations scrawled in blood, more torturous childhood memories and questionable law tactics… I say, bring it on!

ACE ATTORNEY: DUAL DESTINIES(3DS) 

This is the box art you won’t see here *

“HOLD IT!” - FOR THOSE NEW TO THE SERIES

This long-running saga debuted back in 2001 in Japan with the Game Boy Advance game Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (released for the DS in North American in 2005) and followed through Ace Attorney: Justice for All, Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations and Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. The first three games were eventually ported to the 3DS, phones, WiiWare etc. (everything except for Android devices it seems.) 

In the first game, spiky-haired rookie attorney Phoenix Wright (age 25), mentored by the buxom Mia Fey, heads into the courtroom to defend his first client. Phoenix takes on Mia’s little sister Maya, a spirit medium in training, as his assistant while battling the “demon prosecutor” and his ultimate Great Rival, Miles Edgeworth. Set in a parallel, slightly futuristic, vaguely Japanese universe, the games follow their own rules about 80% of the time (i.e. statutes of limitations are all over the place.)

Original "8-bit excuse for an attorney" Phoenix in Trials and Tribulations

(screen shot from http://www.gamesradar.com/ )

In all but Apollo Justice, where budding lawyer Apollo takes over as Wright’s protegee, Phoenix must investigate crime scenes, collect and examine evidence, interrogate witnesses, and gather character information from those around him to present his case before the unbiased if scatterbrained Judge. It’s Lawyer Sim meets point-and-click adventuring with a distinctly quirky twist. You’re not driving a car (Phoenix doesn’t even have a drivers license), shooting targets, jumping from floating platforms or finding your way through mazes in Ace Attorney games. You’re battling your inner doubts, talking to characters with names like Will Powers and Wendy Oldbag, stylus tapping your way to the ultimate truth, and eventually using various other-worldly tools such as the Magatama--a necklace Phoenix receives from Maya-- to determine if characters are hiding information.

This is a talky game, bordering on a visual novel amount of text. A goofy game to be sure, even when dealing with gruesome murders and the people who work to cover up their crimes (the dialog is hilarious for any number of reasons, from puns to odd translations to reflexive narrative), but one that relies on a player to pay attention to and care about the characters involved.

Phoenix, who you control most of the time, is, like many 20-somethings, sarcastic but unsure of himself. When you screw something up, it is he who takes the punishment, and to make this an effective deterrent, you gotta kinda side with the guy and want him to succeed. Also, so many characters reoccur in following games that it would be a wasted effort if you didn’t have some sort of emotional connection to them. 

There are two other games included in the series: Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth released in 2010 and a second Investigations game released only in Japan in 2011. These two games differ from the previous in that 1.) Miles Edgeworth is the main character and 2.) the character sprites are at times shown from a third person full-length perspective, as when you are investigating a crime scene. Investigations 1 was much shorter and did not sell as well as the former four games, and thus the second Investigation game was never released in North America.

“NOT SO FAST!” – THE LEAD UP TO GAME 5

I have been an aficionado of all the Ace Attorney crew for years. I have hung on every rumor of new games coming to the US. I even signed the petition for Investigations 2 to be translated, even though the first one struck me as overly easy (yet still enjoyable since I heart Miles Edgeworth.) I bought the soundtracks. I played all the Professor Layton puzzle games after hearing that a Phoenix Wright crossover, with the original developer of the Ace Attorney games Shu Takumi heavily involved, was in the works.

However, Takumi made clear he was not planning on being involved with any 5th game in the series since he felt the original series had gone to the point he wanted it to, story-wise.

Like hell. Without giving too much away, this is how Phoenix Wright appears in Apollo Justice:

Really Takumi-san, how can you leave us with THIS as our final parting image of

the hitherto venerated Comeback King?!

So when, two years ago, I heard that Ace Attorney 5 was in development for the 3DS, with an actual playable demo at the Tokyo Game Show, shit got real.

That Christmas I got a 3DS.

After that, game news developed fairly quickly (well, relative to the five years between the original notion that a 5th game might be a possibility and the actual announcement.) The first promo art showed Wright back in a suit thank god, and made it clear he would be a central if not the main character. It didn’t show any other characters from past games, but instead a girl in yellow appeared to be a new associate.

Ga. Where’s Maya?

“Another chick sidekick?” I thought. Beyond Maya, there’s been Pearl-Maya’s cousin, Trucy-Phoenix’s adopted daughter, Ema-a burgeoning forensics expert (who appeared at different ages through a number of games) and Kay (who only appears in the Investigations games).

Still, last October, I decided to give her a try and downloaded Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies.

Cute little chibi Apollo and Athena only appear on the start up screen (photo by Sarah B.)

“TAKE THAT!” – PLAY THROUGH

Okay, so what is it actually like to play the freakin’ game?

Even with the addition of 3D, not a lot has changed. Phoenix returns as a playable character, older, a little wiser, and brings on new recruit Athena. Being set only a year time-wise from the last game, Apollo isn’t all that different. He has a quarter-life crisis in this game and gets pretty banged up along the way, which he deals with astonishingly well.

The point of the game is to bring about an end to Dark Age of the Law, a loosy-goosy term implying that false testimony and forged evidence have become commonplace. The public no longer trusts the legal system, and it’s up to you and your merry band of lawyers to change that (whether you do or not is still debatable.)  

The character designs are attractive and the graphics are top notch. This is the first PW game where I don’t think anyone annoyed me so much I couldn’t wait for them to die, and I chalk that up to the graphics on the 3DS. I actually played with the 3D on for a while (a much longer discussion into Nintendo’s technological tactics may be in order, but now is not the time nor place.)

A plus for me has always been the Japanese-style artwork where not everyone is or looks twelve years old. New Prosecutor Blackquill’s hawk Taka is particularly striking. Blackquill’s animations are fantastic too, but I felt he lacked personality for a guy on death row.

While the limited voice acting is pretty “meh” (Phoenix and Apollo sound almost identical) there are a bunch of anime cut scenes that really do fit seamlessly and smoothly into the overall gameplay (although most of them end with someone screaming.)

Athena really endeared herself to me. Despite some childhood traumas that are a bit of a rehash, she’s not just a clone and ends up holding her own as a member of the team. Yes, she’s young and spunky like all of Phoenix’s “girls” (as he refers to them in the game) but she speaks several languages and uses her own Mood Matrix truth-finding device instead of handing it off to Phoenix. Another reviewer noted that she makes some faces that one does not expect a heroine to make.

Are there too many gimmicks? Yeah, I think so. None of them are hard to figure out, especially if you played all the other games. But between the Magatama, Apollo’s bracelet which lets him know a witness is lying, and the Mood Matrix, we are not allowed to play with them long enough to really get to know them.

Can you like this game if you haven’t played any other PW games? You can, but I think you get so much more by knowing the back story (like where did Apollo get his bracelet, who is Pearls, etc.) 

The game is not difficult. The addition of a text backscroll, the ability to save before important moments, and the fact that guessing on the Mood Matrix isn’t punished made getting stuck almost impossible. It’s great for playing 30 minutes here or there, so in that way, it is the epitome of a casual game. To use the visual novel as an illustration again, it’s like reading a book (though I challenge anyone to name an example in literature that is as unique and humorous.) It definitely slaked my thirst for the time being. According to a report, both Takumi and the team from Dual Destinies are working on new releases so we shall see what news comes in 2014.

Phoenix returns (photo from http://cubed3.com )

OBJECTION! (JUST A FEW*, AND THEY’RE MINOR)

Note that the game is only available as a digital download and cost $29.99 (there is a DLC case available for $5.99 which is money well spent.) I would’ve much rather had a physical copy, but beggars can’t be choosers.

I didn’t miss it, but reviewers have pointed out that the Jurist System introduced in Apollo Justice isn’t present in Dual Destinies. Apparently the attempt to bring jury trials back failed.

I was excited that the composer of “Gyakuten Meets Orchestra” and “Turnabout Jazz Soul”, two of my favorite soundtracks inspired by the games, was onboard for Dual Destinies, but none of the songs on initial playthrough were that memorable. The noise the Mood Matrix makes is really annoying.

Odd to me, the game is rated M for mature. I failed to see any more “blood, violence, suggestive themes or language” in this game over the others, which have been rated T. Perhaps because I’ve also been playing Zero Escape: Virtues Last Reward which has more shocking deaths and over the top swearing, the fact that Phoenix isn’t dropping F-bombs everywhere struck me as quaint. There’s a scene of violence involving a child, and another scene has a woman demanding that she wanted more than a professional relationship with another woman she worked with (not by far the first such overtone in the series.) Others lament that Capcom just wants Ace Attorney to fail in the US, and that an M rating is the kiss of death for a game like this. I haven’t been able to find any statistics on North American downloads so I guess the jury is still out on this one (hur hur).  

By Sarah B.

(images from http://aceattorney.wikia.com/ unless otherwise noted)

For more work from GoatMaiden, you can read about her adventures at her two blogs http://bellethecat.blogspot.com/ and http://goatmaiden.blogspot.com/.