How the fuck did they do this. Seriously what the fuck. This is some of the best writing I have ever had the pleasure of reading, and all of the techincal aspects of the art, design, development, UI, sound, it just all meshes together so well, it's so unified. Like it's genuinely pissing me off how well of a game was made considering scope and team size. I wasn't even mad if I softlocked because there's just so many entertaining ways to go about things in this game. Pure entertainment through the entire spectrum, fucking love this.

Damn I mean what a solid experience. I had a lot of fun with this cryptic story and the insanely well put together art direction. The combat is so fuckin satisfying, although it does get pretty tiring in the DLCs. Doesn't stop it from being so fuckin fun to just launch shit everywhere. It's not something I can take too seriously and the game knows that, and has a lot of cute funny stuff for players that are willing to pay attention and explore, and it's just a very positive experience all the way through. It wasn't groundbreaking or impactful, but it didn't need to be, it was just fuckin solid.

Maybe this is my fault. I kinda just hailed this as the best game I've never played, so I was pretty excited to get into it! But I have a lot of issues with this game, like a lot more than I was expecting. While this game is at times really beautiful, a lot of the visual effects that are just plastered all over the game make it so that it's really hard to tell what's going on, a lot of the visual information gets lost to me unless I squint. The combat leaves so much to be desired, it's literally just button mashing in a way that's not even really controllable by you. Also it faults in the same way many platformers do where they add precision platforming with floaty ass controls!!! I just don't understand why that's necessary at all, so inconsistent with stuff. The story is.... boring. So cut and dry and basic ass shit. Cute looking characters, devastation across the world, and you save it, wow, round of applause. I have no attachment to these characters and I just simply don't care about them. I played through this whole thing thinking that at some point when all the mechanics came around that I would finally have it click, and that the poorly implemented music and generic feel to it all was just a lapse of judgement. But then the credits appeared.

While the QOL is a vast improvement over the first game, and the art is noticeably more appetizing, I just have absolutely no interest in making my own restaurant whatsoever because of how hard it is to make money for it. You gotta put in a LOT of time for that, and working at the same restaurants with similar foods can get pretty tiring.

That being said, I STILL LOVE THIS GAMEPLAY LOOP TO DEATH and the way it's designed is just so nice. Holding Stations are able to make the game a lot more stressful while still manageable, so it's a great time if you like Cooking Sims that have a bit more of an action pacing.

I feel like Ace Attorney games all have the same positives in that it's just an addictive and very engaging formula. It's really just the perfect VN recipe, and that doesn't change here. But, with the new setting and new mechanics, it takes so long to actually ramp up to something and go places, and even when it does go places, it usually spends way too much time there anyways. This sets up good groundwork for the sequel though, which I've heard is miles better, so I'm fairly hopeful, but this is definitely the hardest I've tried to complete one of these before. Sherlock is perfect though, I need there to be more of him.

I recently beat all the Rebirth endings (finally lmao), and with having all of the DLC, this is one of the most replayable games I've ever had the pleasure of coming back to every day. There's just something so fun about how chaotic the RNG can be, and how everything ties in to the narrative, and the vibes are simply immaculate. I know this games been out for eight years just about but I swear with the Repentance DLC this has just breathed a new life into it. What a treat it is to play this game for way too long.

See I told y'all it would lead up to something great. This one really pulled out all of the stops narratively, I seriously could not predict what was going to happen, especially on that last case. Which honestly I felt like was it's downfall sometimes, but whatever I'm getting picky this kicks ASS! I love the new music additions, the new characters and settings, the cases are superb, and it's just such a blast. It has it's flaws that somewhat carry over from the first game but it doesn't take away from the experience nearly as much, and this is finally another amazing AA game that fans can (and have been) drooling over. Fuuuck I wish there was more, this Meiji period universe is so sick for this series and I want more so bad

The vibes are immaculate, I have to give it that. The narrative and aesthetic are pretty enjoyable despite the rushed ending. But the main problem I have with this is just the meander feeling that this game has. While I love how expressive the character's dialogue can be, it tends to mask a lot of hints or just takes its place entirely, making me just be completely lost super easily and a lot of puzzles involving a lot of running around get confusing really quick because of this. A lot of the puzzles make sense on paper, which is rare for an adventure game like this, but the way it's executed just kinda leaves a lot of matches really hazy. This game needed a bit more for me, but I'm sure it's clear by now that I'm a dumbass and most people have a lot more fun with this game, so definitely take it on if you're up for it, you'll at least enjoy the visuals and the fun story, guaranteed.