After 15 years of playing Pokémon games, I can finally say that I've played through the one that started it all (kinda).

My final thoughts are that it feels simultaneously very familiar, very much like the first game in the series, and very fun. It does a lot well despite the fact that many of its successors have exceeded it in basically every way in my opinion, and unlike a certain other pair of remakes of game boy Pokémon games, I don't think that the glow up of this remake detracts from the experience or reveals its age.

I think it's cool to go back to this game after being so familiar with the future of this franchise and see how much it's grown. Going from an average of 300-400 monsters in each game's regional dexes for the past decade to only 150 was a huge jump that hampered team building, but that used to be all there was, which is fascinating to think about. And even within those 150 there's not that much diversity; your pickings from type to type vary drastically, and especially in a pre-physical/special split game you have to consider more carefully what types are worth having both offensively and defensively, and how to have synergy in a team with way fewer options. Even the roughly 150 in Black and White have a lot more diversity and a lot more mons that are viable compared to here.

Kanto is a very interesting region as well, and surprisingly unlike any other region in the series. It's very labyrinthian in design, with multiple different pathways to get to multiple different places (Rock Tunnel, Diglett Cave, Cycling Road, undergrounds paths, etc.). Especially in the middle of the game, I found myself opening up the town map more than I have in all other Pokémon games combined, which was really fun. It felt like I was actually charting my way through a new region, like I was actually on an adventure.

That being said, just because Kanto is fun to traverse doesn't necessarily mean it's a particularly interesting place. Besides the series' conventions of a casino and a cemetery and some other staples, there's hardly anything interesting to see or explore, not to mention there's very little visual diversity. I think it's better in that regard than Johto, but every game gen III and afterwards has more things to see and explore, as well as a more cohesive identity as a region.

But what Kanto lacks in locales it makes up for in things to do. There's always something happening, whether that be boarding the S.S. Anne, infiltrating Team Rocket's gambling operation, taking a trek to visit Bill, discovering the secrets hidden in the Pokémon mansion, and more. I was never bored going through Kanto, and even today, not many regions can match it in that sense. Most other games are carried by other aspects that work well for their respective games, but only give me that sense of excitement of seeing something new sporadically.

This game also stumbles in other regions. This was one of the more challenging games in the series, and I averaged close to 10 levels under my opponents for most of the game; I really liked this, but by the time I got to the elite four, I knew my team of all lv 39s wouldn't stand a chance against some trainers who got up past 60, and I had to grind. A lot. Your mileage on this point will vary undoubtedly, but I think future games balance challenge with a steady level curve better than this one does. But still, I'd take this over Johto in a heartbeat.

Its story and characters are also something that's been exceeded. Oak is a lovable doofus, and Gary is an interesting concept for an antagonist who constantly taunts you and inadvertently pushes you to get better. But those are the only things this has going for it. Other games have more fleshed out and interesting characters and stories that further your journey. Say what you want about the meaning or meaninglessness of stories in Pokémon games, but they play a crucial part in progressing you to the end of the game and establishing the vibe of each entry, which this game is clearly not that interested in.

But with all this being said, I still had a lot of fun with this, and I'm glad that I can recognize these elements. All this comparison to future generations proves to me that the series was a success, that Game Freak had a great formula and improved upon it and made something better. I enjoyed this game a lot, and I may come back to it later down the line.

But I'm definitely not bothering with the Sevii Islands post-game, no thank you.

I made my emblem an amogus

Mario Kart is definitely a weird kind of game for me. These pick up and play types aren't really my thing, even though I have played a lot of Mario Kart in my life, and I feel like it's hard to write about it.

In general, I feel like my preferences in Mario Kart come down to track selection and battle mode, both of which I really enjoyed here. Almost all of the original tracks in this game are killer, especially the flower cup. I love how this game honors the legacy of Mario and has multiple tracks dedicated to specific games in the series. The battle mode is really fun too, especially Shine Runners, and I like the battle courses too; they also fit in with the legacy aspect of Mario Kart DS, and each have some wacky element to them, whether that's teleporting pipes or playing on top of a literal DS. It's pretty sick.

3 stars might seem low considering how much I like it, but there's only so much I can get out of Mario Kart, especially in the single player realm. I like the missions, and I wish that was something that other games continued to do, but I don't like them enough to do them all; I don't find them all that satisfying to play unless I try and perfect them all, at which points its so grindy that it's not fun at all, and the repetitiveness becomes pretty apparent.

I like the courses, but not enough to grind them over and over to unlock everything. Also these CPUs are wack, they can sometimes just accelerate and decelerate out of nowhere, which I find really stupid, even though that's not uncommon for older Mario Karts.

Maybe if I played with friends things would be different, but I liked it enough to enjoy playing it and not much else.

Got an itch to play it again, and I'm glad I did. Just like before, this is a solid action game that I enjoyed every moment of. I've grown to appreciate the walks between fights as a chance to reflect on the story and to take a deep breath before the next boss.

All that being said, it's still not a very complex action game, the story still doesn't work for me, and I still find it really easy. The only time I died was to the true final boss, which is so boring that I still haven't beaten it and don't feel like beating in general.

I like it more than I did before. I think that marathoning the whole thing in a day was a good choice as well. For a game this short and action heavy, playing in one go helps keep the pace feeling smooth.

Also, the soundtrack is bumpin, and now that I've played the game again, I notice that they hide the names of songs in the dialogue before the boss fight they appear in. Clever little trick there, developers.

I was interested in this game for a couple reasons

1. I find that fugly 3D-DS model aesthetic nostalgically charming
2. Good word of mouth
3. Short games aren't really my thing and I wanted to expand my horizons a little bit.

Sure enough, I beat the whole thing in the span of no more than 2 hours, and I did a lot. It's a simple, cute, enjoyable adventure about exploring this island, playing a bunch of minigames, talking to some funny animal crossing-esque characters, and finally making it up to the top and seeing that gorgeous view. My squirrel brain was satisfied by always having something interesting to explore but never being led too far from the main objective that I felt overwhelmed or like I wasn't making progress. It was two hours well spent.

Over the last few months, I have watched my roommate play through Nier: Automata, and playing it vicariously through him has cemented my views on this game as not only one of the best video games ever made, but also as one of the most important games ever made.

There's a lot of reasons for this and I think the first thing to address is this game's thematic identity. I think more so than maybe any other game, the themes carry Nier: Automata over any other element of the story. That isn't to say that the plot, characters, or setting are lacking, just that its themes are not only so vast and complex, but also so well realized and constantly present throughout the game that they take center stage. The human condition, nihilism, the value of life, theodicy, honoring others, hope, fate and defiance, the cycle of hatred, empathy and otherness, consciousness and evolution, and repetition. These themes (and likely many others that I don't remember off the top of my head) are so crucial to who we are as people, and handled in a believable way in the context of the story and in the context of the medium of video games, that I continue to think about them years after playing it myself and even more so on this fresh playthrough. I think that a lot of modern JRPGs can be too big for their britches with the subject matter that they try and tackle, and as a result don't end up landing as much as I think they want to (imo Xenoblade Chronicles is a good example of this, not to mention Persona 5's shitty ending); some also are very implicit and subtle, which can be very rewarding but also can struggle to make a bold first impression (Souls games, for example). Nier: Automata doesn't fall into either of these categories, and I think it's ability to stratal that line is not only commendable, but brilliant.

What I especially appreciate is how it also manages to be ambiguous with its themes and its ending. Every route in this game has a very different tone and very different implications compared to other routes. Most of it is a very depressing game, but at the same time its ultimate ending is inherently hopeful. It balances both of those philosophies, but challenges the player to discern for themselves which side they will pick. We see that in whether you choose route C or D first, we see that in the text options that are given to you at the end of route E, and we see that in the final dialogue between the pods where they acknowledge that it's entirely possible that their choices might lead to the exact same outcome, continuing the theme of repetition that the game has maintained since you hit start. However, the possibility also exists that something else may happen, and that's where the game ends. Such an open-ended, philosophical question feels earned because of how it doesn't preach any philosophy as correct throughout the entire game.

Beyond its themes, Nier: Automata is important for how it challenges conventions of the medium. Narratively, this wouldn't work as anything other than a video game, but beyond that it completely challenges concepts of diegetic elements in games, sound design and dynamic mixing, genre combinations, playing online, UI, meta elements, being a sequel, real-world references, and especially new game+. I don't think I really need to elaborate on this. I feel like the industry has been at a point in the last several years where innovation consists of pushing hardware or reinventing games that have existed for over a decade, but this game at least in part attempts to redefine how games are made, and I think it's much more successful.

Visually, the game is stunning, and I really didn't appreciate it until this playthrough. I love the visual effect with the lighting engine when the game gets darker; light seems to reflect off of every speck of dust in the air while making the player character and enemies into silhouettes. The game definitely struggles to render buildings in the city ruins, but most environments look stunning (abandoned factory, amusement park, copied city, resource recovery units, the bunker). I'm extra impressed by the diversity in attack animations with all the different weapon combinations you can have. The 3D anime style looks super good and doesn't look like its trying hard to replicate a 2D art style in 3D.

And if there's one highlight above everything else, it's this soundtrack.

Holy

Shit

Keiiche Okabe is such a fucking mastermind. I can't do his work justice with words, but if you've played it you know what I'm talking about. My second favorite soundtrack. Ever.

So the obvious question with all this praise is: why only 4.5 stars?

I have two critiques with this game that I think do limit this game to some degree, and both of them have to do with the gameplay. The first is that there is absolutely no concept of difficulty balancing here. The beginning of route C was such a humungous difficulty spike for me on my first playthrough that I almost dropped the game; side quests are basically mandatory for getting enough experience in routes A and B to make it through to the second half, and while the side quests are great, it almost seems like the game forces you to do them to be at a competent level, which I can't stand by. At the same time, you can turn the game to easy mode and have the game GRIND FOR YOU! When I first played the game I did this after getting into route C for real, and left the game running for like an hour while I did other stuff, and came back and was level 99. And that's how I beat the game. Why is this something you can do?! It's funny, and kinda cool, but there is no semblance of challenge whatsoever after route A.

The second critique is that the combat system itself is not great. I know that this is a really common complaint, and I used to not care as much. I really like the hack 'n' slash X bullet hell gameplay enough to not mind the lack of depth, not to mention that, again, the animations in combat is astounding. But in the second half of the game, especially when you become really proficient with hacking enemies as 9S, it really sinks in how most fights play out the same. It's not NEARLY as broken and braindead as Nier: Replicant, but it starts to feel really trivial (ironic, or maybe intentional). It also doesn't help how there are only a handful of different types of hacking games to play as 9S.

I think what suffers most are the boss fights. There aren't a lot of them (especially after route A), a lot of them are against big spherical robots, and as a result of all this a lot of them are very unmemorable. The fight against 21O I legit forgot even happened, and watching my roommate play it, he tore through the whole thing in like 30 seconds and it kinda made sense why I forgot after watching that.

However I will grant the game this: I think the gameplay being kinda lame makes it more approachable to a casual audience, and for a game like this, I would want it to be as accessible as possible. I wish a better balance could be struck, but I think there is merit to that fact.

I think these two things are significant enough to where I can look at them and believe in good conscious that the game could have been a lot better if these issues had been addressed.

But despite these two things, this is still one of my favorite games ever, one of the best games ever, and one of the most important games ever. Reexperiencing this has been incredible, especially watching another person who I care deeply about experiencing it for the first time.

Maybe I'm being a little harsh on this game by only giving it three stars, so I'll start with my positives. First of all, and most importantly, the animation. Even though this is my first game of theirs, I always knew that Klei had impressive animators just from seeing clips of their works like Invisible Inc. and Don't Starve. But THIS is so much more impressive than I was expecting. The character appeal especially is outstanding, as are the cutscenes. If animation of this style and quality were made into an entire animated series, that would be something to behold.

Gameplay wise, it's pretty interesting mechanically. I like its way of incorporating light and sound into stealth, and especially how it very clearly communicates these elements to the player. There was never a single instance where I was confused about how a mechanic worked or frustrated at not having enough information to plan my attack. The only irritating things are 1) sometimes the AI will act funky after you've distracted an enemy, and 2) with levels this big I sometimes wish I could move the camera even more than it allows me to, particularly in cramped areas.

I really like all the upgrades. Ordinarily I hate when platformers give you extra objectives for collectibles as a way of padding out game time (like Yoshi games do), but I actually really liked trying to complete them all here. All the attack items are super cool; it's usually easiest to stealth kill most enemies, so when you're put into a situation where you can't do that efficiently, using items for a more unorthodox attack is always satisfying.

And last, but not least, the ending. No spoilers, but it is by far one of the most interesting, if not THE most interesting, binary choices at the end of a game I've ever seen. It's ruined a little bit by the fact that you can make your choice, watch the credits, and then immediately go right back and choose the other option, but I am genuinely amazed at how the game recontextualized my entire understanding of what was happening in the very last level, leading to a choice that was both interesting and one that I sat and had to think about before making. All the more impressive considering how invested I got into when I absolutely did not care about the story up until this point.

And that's where I begin to talk about my negatives, the story being one of the biggest. Until the end, there's almost nothing to it. I feel like I had no context for anything that was going on, so I both felt disoriented in the plot and was not invested in any moral questions the game asked of me. It doesn't help that there are only really six characters total, and you will kill at least 3 of them (don't worry, that's not really a spoiler).

Gameplay wise, despite how objectively well designed it is and how much fun I had with it, I could never escape the thought that it feels like a flash game, like something I could play on coolmathgames. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that, I had a lot of fun playing coolmathgames as a kid, but that feeling pervades every level.

This is also a stealth game through and through. I say this not as a complaint because I am totally down for that kind of gameplay, but I do bring it up to say that there is one way to play this. If stealth is not your thing, this isn't the game for you. Getting caught is detrimental to your progress, and there is no penalty for immediately restarting from the last checkpoint if you make the slightest mistake.

There also isn't much diversity in your approach to stealth. Almost every enemy in the game can be killed with a stealth kill, so most encounters will consist of you removing any light sources, creating a noise distraction, and when enemies aren't looking at each other, wipe them out one by one. I was fine with this, but there is almost no creativity or puzzle solving or opportunities to take out groups of enemies in different/interesting ways, and I think the game would be much better if that were present.

To make this clear, I don't think there's anything wrong with this game, and nothing that I didn't enjoy (except the story), but there's also nothing about it that's particularly standout either (except the animation). It was fine, but I will probably forget about it within the next few days.

Also, idk what's really "remastered" about it nowadays aside from packaging in all the DLC, which I didn't play anyways.

Bruh

Every bit as good as the original while being completely its own. This is the gold standard for DLC; I am left speechless by how well Echoes of the Eye introduces so much, simultaneously making it stand apart from the base game and feel right at home.

No spoilers here. If you haven't played it yet: fuck you, start playing. If you have played it: you already know it's flipping incredible.

I'm not sure if I've ever been more confused by a video game before. Confused in the sense that I have absolutely no idea what happened, both in terms of understanding the story and understanding the gameplay.

Speaking story-wise, I was actually pretty invested at first. It plays up the mystery a lot by throwing you into the plot mid-way through and leaving a lot of details easily-missable, much like Bastion did, and I think the idea is to intrigue you. At least at the beginning, it worked; reading about all of the character bios was really engaging in the beginning, which I was surprised by. This game managed to make me interested in characters that had literally 0 screen time, and honestly that's an impressive feat.

However after a few sessions that intrigue wore off; I didn't feel like learning about these people exclusively through text, especially at the slow rate that you receive more information. I could've easily gotten into a mystery that gave me puzzle pieces in these character bios that allowed me to get a more complete picture of what happened in Cloudbank, but my main issue is the fact that there's little to no breadcrumbs in the actual story.

I went to places and did things, but I couldn't tell you a single significant event or revelation that happened from when I pressed start until the final boss. I needed more to go off of to really get me hooked, and it wasn't there.

I feel much the same about the gameplay: initially intriguing only to fall flat. The premise is really cool: you get all these abilities and you can only use four at a time in combat, but whatever abilities you don't use can either upgrade abilities you are using, or be passive abilities that buff you as a whole. With this system, there's hundreds if not thousands of different combinations you could make, allowing for a battle system that you couldn't possibly fully grasp on a single play through.

What's more is that the game does a great job encouraging you to constantly switch out your abilities. You don't have many to start with and you slowly get more, so there isn't too much at any given time. If you die, you don't restart a battle, but rather you lose one of your abilities for the next two battles, forcing you to replace them with new ones. On top of that, switching out abilities is the only way to unlock new information about characters, which is great gameplay-story integration.

But eventually it got to the point where I didn't care about the story enough to switch out my abilities for my setup that was most comfortable, and I didn't die enough to be forced to switch them out. I still like almost all of the abilities you do get, and I still love that diversity of combing them all, but I couldn't be bothered to experiment more by a certain point.

One complaint I have in general with the combat is how slow it is. You can get around so much more easily in Hades for example; here it takes a little too long to move anywhere for my liking. Red also has a really stilted running animation where her legs move but her torso stays completely still, which I think makes it feel even slower.

To comment on the structure of the game for a moment, this definitely feels like Bastion 2.0. It has the same isometric camera angles and the same feeling kind of exploration and combat (even though the systems are different). The main difference between the two is that Bastion is broken up into levels and has a hub world whereas Transistor is one continuous, uninterrupted journey. But despite that the structure is pretty much the same: walk to combat encounter -> combat encounter -> walk to next combat encounter -> repeat. It's essentially the exact same as Bastion just without any breaks in between, which I personally don't like. There's rarely a good stopping point because of this, and hardly a moment for me to catch my breath (not to suggest the game is fast-paced, just to say that it feels like a marathon). There is the break room where you can complete the game's sub challenges kinda like Bastion's mission levels, but it's not quite what I would've liked; it more so interrupts the flow of gameplay rather than providing a natural break. I think occasional breaks would also allow for more story moments which I think would help me understand and process the plot better.

What I can say positively is that the visuals are stunning. Literally Red's running animation is my only gripe with the presentation. The color palette reminds me a lot of Arcane, and was probably influenced in some degree by League of Legends. The ending is definitely the best part of the game (although I like Bastion's ending much more), and I like how it's basically the Distortion World; anytime a game plays with our perception of the place we inhabit is almost always a great time. The final boss is also really cool, the best fight in the game for sure. The music hasn't really captured my attention while playing, but I think a listen to the ost might get me hooked on it.

Now that I have both this and Bastion under my belt, it makes me all the more excited to play Hades eventually; both games have really interesting gameplay mechanics that just don't complement their game's structures, but a rougelike with these elements makes perfect sense. But before Hades I will be playing Pyre and seeing how that game shapes and contributes to Supergiant's philosophy on game design. That won't be anytime soon though, but here's hoping I enjoy both when those days eventually come.

Disappointingly mediocre in almost every category. The stories of each character are satisfactory at best; the story overall is non-existent. There is zero canonical character interactions within chapters, with the game even flat-out saying multiple times that characters are alone when that literally isn't true because you have seven other characters with you at all times. It's extremely repetitive in structure across all chapters. The battle system is reliant on type weaknesses to the point of being a cakewalk if you have an enemy's weakness on your team and an eternity if you don't. At the same time it's also very grindy, especially in the beginning.

Pretty much the only thing it has going for it is the visuals, which I would be cracked if I tried to suggest that they were anything less than incredible. This is the only game on the Switch that does the depth of field effect well, and I will stand by that. And the sprite-work, especially on bosses, is amazing. But I'm gonna complain about the visuals anyway. Would it be too much to ask for these sprites to have more than like four frames of animation? This game commits so much to having an aesthetic almost identical to older Final Fantasies to the point that these incredibly detailed sprites will stand there like statues and flash when they attack, and your party members have a handful of vague action sprites and that's it. This is where the effects animation on spells picks up most of the slack, and it was what I found to be the most impressive. But aside from that, there is hardly any movement at all, and I find myself really upset by that.

I will say, this is a fun RPG to play optimally. Once you finally have an ideal party setup and can pretty much do everything with all of the jobs at once, it's really fun to take on the superbosses. But that's also a compliment I can give to basically any other really good RPG, most of which don't require getting close to the end before the battle system becomes engaging.

Oh well. I'm glad I finally played it at least.

This is my first real exposure to Tetris, so this is my review of both Tetris as a whole and Tetris Effect specifically, I guess.

I mean, I don't really know what to say. It's Tetris. You know, "the greatest game of all time." THAT Tetris.

I like it, but I'm already over it after only a couple weeks. I think it strikes a really cool balance of relaxing and stressful, simply based on how fast it's going. It's really intriguing from both a game design perspective and a psychological perspective how such a small, simple thing can drastically change a game. But I mean, it's Tetris, there's not much to it to begin with.

I played it so much at first that I started seeing Tetris even when I wasn't playing Tetris. It got to the point where I played so much that I became too perfectionistic about it to enjoy it. Obviously I'm no Tetris-playing master, but I got good enough at it that I was only ever frustrated at runs that weren't perfect.

I will say, I do like how the "single-player" mode has such a low threshold for beating "levels," essentially breaking it up into smaller chunks. That's a really good way of keeping me engaged.

As for the "Effects" side of it, yea, it's really cool. It's gorgeous. I don't even know how it was made, it just seems like it's entirely effects animation and almost nothing else, but I wouldn't be surprised if the backgrounds weren't running in real time. Either way, the visuals are really pretty for their use of color and dynamic motion. They're also not nearly distracting as you would think at first glance; if anything I think it helps get you into that flow state, where you stop paying attention and the Tetris almost fades into the background as you just play. And when that happens, it's great.

And the music is similarly excellent.

It's just the core gameplay of Tetris at this point that I'm burnt out on. Not bad, just really sick of it.

Also not a fan of all the text in this game. Like, accepting health advisories and going through menus takes way too long, I just wanna get to the Tetris already.

The consensus on this game has been established since forever, so with that consensus this game poses one key question: how do you determine the overall quality of something when it has very high highs and very low lows?

Because the highs are very high, let me tell you. This is a much more mechanically interesting game than the first and arguably a more engaging sequel because of it. I really like how the penalty system is redone, for example. In the first game, every mistake you make in court would cost you 2 pegs on your... weird lawyer health bar. Here, smaller mistakes can cost as little as 1, and decisions that have much more significant implications for your case can cause anywhere from 5-10. It makes the court cases much more dynamic, like the game is actually paying attention to what's really important and cautioning the player to pay more attention too; not to mention it also makes the court segments much more stressful, which I appreciate.

Then there's the psyche locks, which single-handedly make this a worthwhile sequel. I love how these require you to think about the evidence in the context of specific characters, and I especially love how you are capable of attempting to break psyche locks without having all the necessary evidence, meaning you really have to think and be confident that your understanding of the case is as complete as it can be.

All of this isn't even mentioning the final case, which everyone loves because it is absolutely fantastic. I really don't have anything to contribute, it's a 10/10 on its own. I'm not sure if I prefer it over Rise From the Ashes, but they're at least on par with each other, which says a lot.

The story as a whole I appreciate more the more I ruminate on it. Of any game in the trilogy, this one feels the most distinctly like Phoenix's story. It follows up the original with the perfect balance of intrigue, progression, and fan-service, and Phoenix's arc is driven by the other characters that grew so much in the first game. The game as a whole also lives up to it's name, and I love that it actually questions what justice looks like when faced with an impossible choice (which is so bizarre to think about how it tackles this question with an appropriate level of sincerity in the midst of this outlandishly bonkers court system).

However, all of this comes with the caveat that there are also plenty of low lows. The lowest point, for me, is the fact that this is the one game in the trilogy with the least amount of content. I love the changes it made mechanically, but at the end of the day, this is the only one of trilogy with only 4 cases. And of those 4 cases, 2 of them are really bad. Even for intro case standards, The Lost Turnabout is SO boring. And while I enjoyed Turnabout Big Top much more on this playthrough (to my surprise), it's still the worst case in the game, and as with every third case, contributes nothing to the overarching story of this game individually or the trilogy at large.

One reason that I think this is the case is how lacking the characters are this time around. The goofiness and absurdity is toned down substantially, and often it's the returning characters from the first game that pick up the slack there. I really like the approach that this game has to trying to make really complex characters, especially with its antagonists (Adrian Andrews, Morgan Fey, Matt Engarde, Ini Miney, Acro, etc.), but it comes at the cost of not being nearly as funny or memorable. And this game's best attempt at new funny characters are all of the circus folk who are about as entertaining as Moe's attempts at comedy. That is to say, they all fall flat. Like, there's not a single new character that reaches the same levels of funny bonkers-ness as any character from the first game.

Speaking of bad characters: Franziska von Karma. I'm not sure what the consensus on this character is, but I was not a fan of her on my first playthrough and I still am not now. Her stubborn insistence on bragging about her "perfect" record is so shallow, and her whip and her saying the word "fool" 200 times a day in court gets old VERY fast. And on top of that, she isn't even as good of a prosecutor as Edgeworth or her father. She's pathetic and worse at her job, as opposed to both of her predecessors, who were perfect combinations of intimidating, aggravating, and excellent prosecutors.

On another point, and I'm not sure if this is a high or a low, but I feel like this game is WAY harder than the original. I only ever got a guilty verdict once in Rise From the Ashes, but I lost every single case in this game at least once. I think this is in part due to the higher penalties I mentioned earlier, but I think it's also a sign of how rushed this game was. At least once in every case, even the two I really REALLY like, I had to put my controller down and just think about what the game was telling me. There are some pretty extreme jumps in logic, which can be frustrating when you're stuck and then the answer turns out to be really dumb.

So, to the original question, how do you determine something's overall quality, well, I don't know. What this game does well it does very well, and if you liked the original you'll like this at least partially. And also, this is one part of a greater whole, that being the original trilogy. For me, I like it a lot more this time around than my first playthrough, but I also love Ace Attorney in general.

This should not work.

This game absolutely should not work.

The amount of questionable design decisions stuffed into this one game is very worrying on paper. 1. You have a finite amount of ammunition in the game, meaning you can softlock yourself if you don't have enough to take down mandatory bosses.

2. Narrow hallways can have as many as four enemies at a time that can potentially all come back hours after you've killed them off, stronger and faster than before.

3. You have a whopping SIX item slots (yes I played Chris) to carry guns, ammo, healing drugs, keys, and whatever other items you need to progress, and because of that,

4. there is a shit ton of backtracking.

5. You have a finite amount of saves throughout the entire game. If you fuck up and save too often too early you can completely screw yourself (it's this exact thing that's part of the reason I can't stand Ori and the Blind Forrest).

And despite all of this (or perhaps in light of all of this), it is beyond brilliant.

I don't think I've ever experienced anything that so genuinely makes me feel dread. It's a horror game, but aside from a few jump scares it's not even scary. But it is undeniably so fucking stressful, and I love it. All of these things that sound terrible on paper put you so on edge, and the sound design and cinematography doubly so. The gameplay is literally just a point and click game: get things to use on other things, but it works perfectly in this horror theme. I cannot possibly praise this game enough, I had no idea I would love it this much. There's nothing I can even say to do it justice.

I think the most impressive thing about Ace Attorney is its ability to combine character design, limited animation, and writing to instantly establish the personalities of its characters. All it takes is one glance and reading one line of dialogue to instantly know who they are and to create a voice in your head for what these people sound like.

It's doubly impressive considering that this was originally a GBA game from 2001 that wasn't localized for four years! And on top of that, the localization is superb! This is one of the funniest games I have ever played; from the dialects of these absurd characters, to Phoenix's interactions with the main cast, to the subtle references to pop culture, to the not-so-subtle yet hilarious puns in all of their names that make you begrudgingly chuckle, this game is a comedy gold-mine.

The one thing that I think makes this work most of all is Phoenix himself. The aforementioned writing and limited animation do a great job in establishing his sarcastic personality, his sense of justice, the moments when he gets way in over his head during court, and the interactions that make him feel like the only normal person in this wide cast of characters. But above all, we get to hear Phoenix's internal thoughts. He has some remark or inquiry about everything, whether that be the bonkers things that come out of witness' mouths, or the important details in cases that turn the tide in his favor. Getting to hear exactly what he thinks is brilliant; it establishes his personality, makes us feel more intimate with him as the playable character, and prevents him from coming off like a jackass or an idiot by saying everything he thinks out loud like many characters in Japanese media do. Great stuff.

And what you get in the end is a fantastic visual novel with great puzzles, writing, characters, humor, stories, and especially fantastic music. I didn't talk about it at all because my words simply can't do it justice.

I highly recommend 8-bit Music Theory's and New Frame Plus' videos about Ace Attorney, as they do a great job at taking a deep dive into how exactly the music and animation (respectively) in this series works so well.