Savvy's Super-Ultra Ace Attorney Thread

[Deleted]

Nov 20, 2009 6:03:51 GMT -5 Fryguy64 said:

Wow, so they haven't even upgraded the graphics to the Apollo Justice background... they still have GBA graphics?!

Lame, Capcom. Super mega lame.

Yet certainly not below the standard they've set for themselves over the years. Most Megaman games run on the same graphics engine and use the same sprites, and lord knows how many times they re-make a single Street Fighter title before moving onto the next numeral.

[Wildcat]

LOL Isn't that the truth. I adore Capcom, but they can be the laziest bastards when it comes to updating their series.

[Savage Adam]

So, the Edgeworth demo's up on the Nintendo Channel.

Go play.

[Wildcat]

AAI: Miles Edgeworth is due out in NA this week. Any takers? I'll have to holding off on it, alas.

[Deleted]

I'm picking it up as soon as this freaking snow clears up. XD I love the stuff, it's beautiful and it leaves me feeling peaceful, but six inches of snow on the road does not a trip to Gamestop make. I did play the demo though and it was really enjoyable.

I know I said earlier in this thread that Capcom is pretty lazy when it comes to its games, but I've noticed that this doesn't apply very well to the Ace Attorney series. Sure, Phoenix and the Judge have the same sprites across all four AA titles, but Edgeworth, Gumshoe, Winston Payne and several other characters get different sprite sets...hell, Klavier even had two different ones in Apollo Justice! Not to mention the person standing next to your character changes pretty frequently. Mia, Maya, Ema, Pearl, what's-his-face (the fat guy that was Mia's mentor), Diego Armando, hobo!Phoenix, Trucy...it's pretty impressive what lengths they go to to keep the visuals of those games fresh. And the fact that every Ace Attorney game has its own music is a nice touch, too. So, add to the fact that all the characters in AAI are getting sprites from a three-quarters angle, including recurring characters from the AA series...damn, son.

[Deleted]

Okay! So far, so good - I've cleared the first...um...I guess it could be called a case, and am currently working on the second. It's enjoyable, but I'd like to pass a more definitive verdict (heh) after playing a little more. The one thing I've noticed that does bother me is the long save/load time; I'm used to Phoenix Wright and Apollo Justice where it's almost instantaneous. I'm the kind of Ace Attorney player who always saves before presenting evidence I'm unsure of, and with the main series it's just, Start, A, A, A, back into the game. Doing it in AAI is significantly longer: it takes approximately twelve seconds to save and then re-load a game, which is agonizing in game-time. It doesn't make the game unplayable, but it's noticeable. >_O

[Deleted]

Okay, I've put some more time into AAI. I'm at the start of the fourth case, and here are my thoughts so far:

AAI isn't a bad game. I enjoy playing as Edgeworth, having Gumshoe at my beck and call is nothing short of awesome, and Franza shows up more than once! (I also dig the Gavinners reference in the third case.) But it still lacks a lot of the things the other Ace Attorney games have. This itself isn't unexpected, given how different AAI plays, but it still works against the game's favor.

Phoenix Wright and Apollo Justice got me into a rhythm: investigate, court, investigate, court, etc. That flow has been upset for AAI, where investigation and rebuttals are interspersed, and it kind of throws me through a loop. Furthermore, the rebuttals don't have any Judge banter to spice them up, leaving them uneventful and, as you get later in the cases, uninteresting. (Not even Gumshoe can fix this issue.)

The sprites meet halfway between Phoenix Wright and Apollo Justice; they're crisp, but they don't animate so smoothly. This is kind of a shock, because I figured AJ would have set a new standard, even though AAI is different. The music, though, is the same quality as AJ's, so I wonder what Capcom had in mind with the dichotomy. (Also, Kay's sprites are really awkward. She has a weird chin and nose.)

Again, AAI isn't a bad game, but I think I would have preferred a traditional Ace Attorney game, only you play as Edgeworth trying to get the guilty verdict. Though this is alleviated somewhat by a cameo of the Judge - with an entirely new sprite set, no less! This makes up for the fact that he didn't have any in Apollo Justice.

[Wildcat]

Eh, I was afraid of that. I think I'll pass and wait for a proper sequel. Glad Franzy is in there for a bit, though. She's awesome. ^_^

[Deleted]

You get to see her as a littl'un, too - thirteen years old, just before taking the bar exam in Germany! She's adorable, even carries around a riding crop ;D

[Wildcat]

LOL That's awesome. Maybe if I find it cheap I'll pick it up, but I wasn't really digging the drastic gameplay change...we'll just have to see.

[Deleted]

Okay, I'm on the last leg of Case 5 in Edgeworth, and I've discovered another thing about it I'm not too thrilled with: the cases tend to drag on, and on, and on. It's mostly due to the developers having spread the holes in Edgeworth's logic, and that of his witnesses, far too thin. In PW and AJ, they address many problems of that nature in one clip, usually in fast-paced back-and-forths between the defense and prosecution between cross-examinations. Here, the game just taunts you; every time you feel like you've won, the game goes HA HA HA NOT YET and pulls victory away like a dollar bill on a string. I'm at a point in Case 5 where I feel like it should have ended, because the point they'd been building up hit its climax.

Agent Lang, the wolf-like character who is one of the "main five" in this game, is the largest offender; while his reasoning is as sound as any of the prosecutor's from the PW and AJ games, he just doesn't fucking give up. Again, this isn't helped by the fact that exchanges between Edgeworth and his opponent tend to lack punch and (during the later testimonies of each case) high-octane awesomeosity.

I still maintain that Edgeworth is a good game, but only pick it up if you can afford it and if you really like the Ace Attorney series.

[Fryguy64]

In every Ace Attorney game I can play the first 3-4 cases easily, and then after that they become so long and convoluted that I tend to game-guide my way through them. The puzzle-solving aspect begins to break down as more and more illogical things are thrown in.

I've just finished the 2nd case on Miles Edgeworth, and I can already see this game doing much the same thing.

What's really weird is that the screenshots makes it look like a radical departure from the main series... but it really isn't. At all.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say this is only as different to the Phoenix Wrights as Apollo Justice was. That is to say, looks a bit different, but it's actually the same. The "Logic" function is pretty much the same as seeing "locks" on people during investigations.

And as much as I love Gumshoe, he's a bit too in love with Edgey for my liking

[superpoppybros]

gonintendo.com/viewstory.php?id=130359

-- Takumi considers the Ace Attorney series finished with Apollo Justice.

- Takumi also recognizes the love that many fans have for the series.

- Now he is debating whether he should make another Phoenix Wright game, or continue onto new things.

- inspiration for the Ace Attorney games comes from mystery novels that Takumi read when he was a young boy.

- “we’ll definitely move onto the 3DS with our ideas. I really liked the 3D camera and gyro sensor possibilities, and I’m already thinking of ways for taking advantage of it”.

- His favorite characters might be Phoenix and Godot.

- Takumi did the original Phoenix voice, since there were only 5 people in the original dev team.

I bold the first one because it made me faint and cry.
I bold the second one because I want him to make another one!>< There were a lot of undisclosed things in AJ, so ending the series in this game would be really lame. But its also alright if Shu decides to make a new original game instead.

[Savage Adam]

Interesting little interview. I'ma wait and see how Ghost Trick turns out before I get all pissy about him wanting to make non-AA games.

[Wildcat]

It's a little sad to hear that, but on the other hand, I'm sort of happy. I don't want to see the series run into the ground, and Apollo was one hell of a way to cap off the Ace Attorney series. Miles was a decent experiment, but it was not as well received (and I haven't played it, and I love this series). Ghost Trick is looking awesome, so I'm not too concerned about Takumi's desire to do other things.