TL;DR: A fairly weak entry in the Ace Attorney franchise that sets itself up for great things, but fails to tell a compelling story. While fun at some points, much of Dual Destinies is often irritating to play through due to how much it forgets the games that came before it.
Next in my journey through all of the Ace Attorney games is Dual Destinies. This game has received tons of criticism from both fans and newcomers alike and after playing through the entire game for a second time, it’s hard not to hop onto the hate train. Much like Apollo Justice, Dual Destinies presents innovative and fresh ideas at the cost of ditching the previous games that came before it. This completely new direction is seen in all facets of the game from the story to the art to the gameplay. While it’s great to see Ace Attorney trying to stay fresh and fun, in this game, it’s often not executed as well as it could be.
To start, let’s talk about the story. Dual Destinies takes place not too long after the events of Apollo Justice and focuses on continuing the plot of the Dark Age of the Law that it set up. In Dual Destinies, Phoenix makes his return to the courtroom after 7 years of being a hobo with the intent of ending this Dark Age of the Law chock full of corruption from the courts. By his side he has Apollo and a new attorney by the name of Athena Cykes who excels in psychology. Already in this description, there are a couple of things wrong with the game.
The first problem is that Phoenix is making a return to the courtroom. I said in my review of Apollo Justice that one of the great ideas they had with Phoenix’s character was to put him on the side and away from the spotlight. While the game didn’t live up to this idea, it was certainly interesting to think of how the game would be if Phoenix stayed as Apollo’s mentor and let him have the great moments of that game. In this game, they do the complete opposite of this good idea and have him take the spotlight again. With his badge back, he is now once again the protagonist of the game when he really has no business being one anymore. Not that I don’t love Phoenix Wright, but if Ace Attorney wants to convince me that their new characters are worth anything, they have to give them moments that give them value. With Phoenix at the helm again, he steals these moments and pushes everyone else to the side.
The second problem is that they’re introducing a new attorney into the mix. While Athena Cykes is a fine character, in my opinion, there is no room for her to actually be an attorney here. They have barely even started exploring Apollo’s character and adding in Athena Cykes means they have to spread time more thinly across all the characters. In the end, the breakdown is that Phoenix gets 2 out of the 3 story related cases, Apollo gets 1 story case and 1 filler case, and Athena gets 1 filler case. Even in the game after this, Spirit of Justice, she again gets 1 filler case and nothing else (and this filler case she gets happens to be the worst case in the game). So overall, even though the story is centered around her, you don’t even get to see her act as an attorney at all. They made this mistake once with Apollo Justice, and they made it yet again here. This is irritating point number 1. Things get worse when you consider how the game ends. More on that later.
After the premise, there is the actual plot of the game. As I mentioned before, the plot of the game focuses on this concept called the Dark Age of the Law. The Dark Age of the Law began when Phoenix presented forged evidence in court 7 years ago and a prosecutor commited murder. People began to lose faith in the courts and defense attorneys and prosecutors alike had been taught that in the end, only verdicts and results matter instead of finding the truth. I think this concept is fantastic for a followup game for Apollo Justice where literally the villain of the game was the embodiment of this concept. They had the perfect continuation for the game,so you would expect it to at least callback to the events of that game, wouldn’t you? Well if you did, you’d be dead wrong; Dual Destinies doesn’t even attempt to do anything like this. They set themselves up with the perfect opportunity to correct the mistakes of Apollo Justice and at the same time tell a plot that fits perfectly into the new story being built up. But instead of taking this opportunity, they just completely abandon Apollo Justice and start from scratch. By scratch, I mean literally start everything from scratch. This is irritating point number 2.
Let’s start with Phoenix. In Apollo Justice, Phoenix’s character was completely different. He made sure to rarely show emotion and act like a mature attorney. In the one case in Apollo Justice where you play as him, there’s a sense of experience and calmness from him. He doesn’t even panic when charges of forging evidence come on him and he always keeps a straight face in the most harsh of situations. It was an absolutely perfect embodiment of the lessons he learned after the events in Trials and Tribulations. In addition, it was perfect for that game since they constantly make mention to even the tiniest of emotions giving away people’s intentions and character. One tiny movement of a finger was enough for Apollo to take advantage of people’s weakness and find the truth and Phoenix made sure to give nothing away.
In Dual Destinies, he completely regresses to how he was in the first game. Every 5 seconds someone needs to bring up the fact that he bluffs and whenever he’s trying to make legitimate points in court, they just bring it down by saying it’s a bluff and he’s just some third rate attorney. Even in situations that are very easy to get out of, Phoenix loses his cool and breaks down into a cold sweat. I think there were almost no points in this game where Phoenix could do anything without hesitating and acting like a complete newbie. I miss that confident Phoenix from Apollo Justice and having him regress so much in this game feels like a disservice to what happened in the trilogy.
Next, let’s talk about Apollo Justice. If you have read my review of Apollo Justice, you will know that I am not a fan of his story in that game. The highlight of his story in that game was his origin. The game spends a fair bit of time explaining how his true parentage makes him special and gives him his powers. They don’t wrap up all loose ends though and leave many things for his origin to be explored. Dual Destinies decides to take that setup and do absolutely nothing with it other than to use it as leverage for yet another backstory for Apollo. I don’t know who put it into the head of the guy writing stories for the new Ace Attorney games, but there are far more interesting ways of making a character relevant to the story than to give them a tragic backstory. Ryunosuke in The Great Ace Attorney doesn’t even have one, yet in every single event in the story, he earns his place. More than being an attorney, his heritage and resolve are what are vastly important in making him feel relevant in every single case you play in. Apollo is only relevant because of the backstory the game gives him and they use this approach every time they want to expand his character. Instead of giving him natural growth, they just make him remember what he learned from some tragic backstory that he has. It’s quite boring in terms of character development and serves to only make his character more complicated than it needs to be. To be clear, I’m not saying that giving a character a tragic backstory is a bad idea, but when it’s the only form of development a character gets (like Apollo) it’s very bad.
Besides characters regressing, you also have a brand new plotline that focuses on Athena’s backstory. While Athena’s backstory is hyped up much at the start of the game, it only becomes relevant in the last two cases. The last two cases focus heavily on a murder that took place at a space station many years ago as well as a second murder that happened at the space station recently. While the cases themselves aren’t bad, their effect on the overall plot is horrendous. To talk about irritating point 3 here, I’ll need to delve into spoilers.
=== BEGIN SPOILER FOR CASES 4 AND 5 ===
In the last two cases, we see both Athena’s and Apollo’s backstories come into full play. Apollo is grief stricken as the murder victim is his childhood friend Clay Terran and Athena has to recall the events that made her lose her mother’s life. This stuff is the good stuff; we learn more about Apollo and Athena as characters and we get to see their beliefs come into play. It’s very reminiscent of AAI2’s conclusion where Edgeworth’s actions help people choose their own paths in life, even if they’re different from the path the people before them have taken. In the end, much of Ace Attorney is about finding the truth, no matter what form it takes. Whether it’s being a lawyer and exposing criminals in court, or being an astronaut and searching space for the cosmic truth, everyone has their own way of finding the “one truth” at the end of the journey.
With that being said, the way the 5th case concludes takes this premise and completely throws it out of the window for shock factor. The villain of that case, The Phantom, is easily one of the worst written villains to ever grace Ace Attorney. He has absolutely nothing to do with what came before in the games and comes completely out of nowhere in the last case. His only personality trait is that he can wildly vary his emotions and the only real connection he has to the main plot of the game is that he’s a villain who committed a crime. This is exactly the kind of character that has no business being in Ace Attorney in any capacity. The game tries to make you think he’s some kind of intimidating presence, but he comes off as a pussy because of how little he actually does.
To explain this better, I will compare him with someone who is similar, Shelly de Killer. Shelly de Killer in Justice for All is a force to be reckoned with.
He first off actually does stuff. He kidnaps Maya and makes demands of you. It’s clear if you don’t appeal to his commands, he will not hesitate to kill Maya. The Phantom doesn’t do anything like this and just relies on his name to carry him. This completely removes any sense of fear or intimidation from his character. It’s not enough to just say he’s a dangerous criminal; we need to actually see it in action to be scared of it. The one who does any actual kidnapping in this case is someone who is not at all related to him.
Second are the rules they follow. Shelly de Killer is an honorable assassin meaning he lives by a strict set of rules and expects his clients to do the same. If he is betrayed, then he will not hesitate to seek revenge. This trait is used beautifully in the final case of Justice for All to catch the true killer. The Phantom’s only rule is not to expose his identity. He doesn’t want his identity exposed because he runs the risk of being assassinated himself. This would be a fine rule if it was actually followed. This stupid idiot, as soon as Phoenix starts grilling him, pulls out all of his spy gadgets, starts ripping off his masks, and varies his emotions (which by the way was directly stated was something only the phantom can do). He is practically screaming out that he is the Phantom by existing. It’s only when Phoenix points out the obvious conclusion with evidence that a sniper takes him out. How could anyone have conceived a villain so horrible at following their own rules?????
Lastly, we have their relevance to the game. In Justice for All, Shelly de Killer is super important to the message of the game. Finding the truth is not an easy thing to do and sometimes sacrifices must be made in search of it. Justice for All’s finale gave the player serious questions to consider and a choice to make. The game even lets you make this choice and choose for yourself what it means to be a lawyer. Even though it doesn’t affect the story, the choice itself and the implications of the player’s choice could only have been proposed if Shelly de Killer actually posed a serious threat to the player. In Dual Destinies, the goal of the plot is to end The Dark Age of the Law. You would expect someone who is actually involved with the law and the courts would be the big baddie at the end of the road. Instead, you get The Phantom whose only connection with The Dark Age of the Law is that he blamed a crime on Prosecutor Blackquill a bunch of years ago. The game treats it like The Dark Age of the Law is something that could be solved simply by catching this random spy who committed a crime. But that’s not at all true from what the game presented us. The Dark Age of the Law is a mindset; something that is drilled into lawyers even when they’re in school as case 3 showed. Catching one villain who is barely connected to the courts doesn’t seem like it does anything to change the mindset of people. This would be a good middle chapter to a longer running story on The Dark Age of the Law, but the plotline just kind of sizzles out here.
=== END SPOILER FOR CASES 4 AND 5 ===
So overall, I’m not a huge fan of this plot. It has great moments in it for sure, but the main plot is pretty terrible. It reminds me a lot of Apollo Justice; instead of just being a fairly simple game that introduces new characters, it feels the need to just up the trilogy in weird ways and it tries too hard to achieve it. It tries to be different than the trilogy, but new isn’t necessarily better when it comes to plot. Forgetting everything that happened before and starting over is the worst thing a sequel to anything can do. It’s a shame to see that Dual Destinies is taking this route.
The plot is my biggest gripe with the game, so the next few points should hopefully be shorter. Next up we have the gameplay. The main difference in the gameplay here is the introduction of the new Mood Matrix mechanic. During a trial, when a witness does not want to testify, you get the opportunity to conduct a therapy session with them and observe their emotions during the crime. As they show you their emotions, you find ones that seem out of place and continue this until there is no more discord left in their emotions. I think on paper, this is actually a very great and creative mechanic. It’s fairly simple and intuitive to understand. You just look at a testimony and find a contradiction using the 4 emotions. Nothing too out of the ordinary with normal gameplay. In addition, there’s a wide amount of variety possible with it. The game itself takes great advantage of the variability and has segments where emotions can run out of control and also points where you can use evidence to point out contradictions with the witness’s memory.
The big problem with the mood matrix is how it’s applied practically. The mechanic in practice is far too easy. If you get an emotion wrong, there is absolutely no penalty. Also, to avoid any ambiguities, the game makes it painfully obvious what the wrong emotion is most of the time. If there’s a point where the witness says “I saw the dead body with blood pouring out of their eye sockets in an incredibly gruesome way,” the game will put Happy over it. There were almost no points where I got stuck on the mood matrix, but for the rare occasion where I did get stuck, I could just guess literally everything with no penalty. It’s practically begging to be skipped. In Apollo Justice there was some penalty for getting perceive wrong so you had incentive to at least try and think.
Other than that, the gameplay is pretty similar to what we’ve seen before. Trials and investigations are still the main method of gameplay and there are short segments in the investigation where you get to use Apollo’s bracelet and Phoenix’s Magatama. These segments have also been made easier since there’s also no penalty for making mistakes there which is different from the way it was before. Perceive specifically has been made 1000 times easier since the game only uses it during investigations and there’s also a huge glowing icon whenever you’re supposed to use it so you never have to actually think of when to do it. This is a pretty big downgrade. I liked how it was used in trials to make progress whenever you hit a dead end and were stuck. It also took a bit of thinking since the game put it in cross examinations with multiple statements. Now it’s pretty brainless and feels like a chore to get past since you have to slowly wait for the right statement to find the nervous tick on. Taking existing gameplay and making it easier for no reason is irritating point 4.
Next we have the characters. I’ve talked at length about Apollo and Phoenix, so let’s try Athena next. Like I mentioned before, Athena is a fine character, but she isn’t given that many chances to grow as one. We learn about her tragic past near the end of the game, which is great, but a major problem is that they basically gave away all of it and didn’t really leave her with a place to belong once they were finished. In Spirit of Justice, I constantly asked “why is she still here” whenever she did anything. It’s not that I don’t like her, but rather what purpose does she still have in these games? Her story wrapped up quite nicely in this one and there aren’t any more avenues of her character left to explore. I have an itching feeling that if they make another Ace Attorney game with her in it, they will give her another tragic backstory to give her a sense of purpose. It was more than possible to get around this by actually giving her her own set of beliefs that are different from Phoenix and Apollo. What did she learn from her traumatic experience other than that she can mix psychology and lawyering together? The game doesn’t spend any time expanding on this so her character is still unclear.
As for side characters, they’re alright. Blackquill is an absolutely amazing prosecutor and he's incredibly funny. Perfect antagonist for an AA game. While he doesn’t have the emotional impact that someone like Edgeworth or Godot had, he does well enough on his own to warrant a thumbs up from me. The case specific characters are at least what I expect of AA, but they aren’t that great. One of my favorite things about playing The Great Ace Attorney was that almost every character put a huge smile on my face and made me gush out with all sorts of emotion. Everything from their distinct personalities to their designs was something I absolutely loved. Dual Destinies doesn’t really have that kind of impact on me unfortunately. While colorful, many of the characters are lacking charm. It’s hard to describe what “charm” here constitutes, but I think most people who have played this game and The Great Ace Attorney (or even the trilogy) would agree that there is something different about the characters in this game and the characters in that game that just makes them more likeable.
Lastly, we have art and music. After seeing both The Great Ace Attorney and Spirit of Justice, looking back at the 3D models in this game makes it feel like the game is unfinished. There’s a certain level of polish in TGAA and SoJ that this game is missing. It’s hard to describe what that polish is, but it’s easy to see when comparing two pictures of the games. There’s also a distinct lack of 3D animation in this game. Having those animations in The Great Ace Attorney and Spirit of Justice really made the game feel more alive. Most of the heavy animation in this game is done with anime cutscenes, and while many of these are justified, some could have easily been replaced with just 3D animation that would have fit it better. Some examples include Phoenix entering the court for the first time in the game and when they find Apollo knocked out in the destroyed courtroom.
As for the music, it’s alright. It’s up to par with the Ace Attorney standard, but it’s nothing special. It has a nice space theme throughout it, but I’m not really a huge fan of it. Something like Trucy’s theme, which was styled to fit the soundtrack of AJ, doesn’t fit that well in this game since it sounds like you’re eating at some fancy restaurant as opposed to getting ready to explore a complicated plot at the space station. It’s a very mixed bag of really good tracks and tracks that work well on their own but don’t fit the overall theme of the game.
So overall, Dual Destinies is not a terrible game. It gets many things right and it’s often fun to play through. Its main issue is that it doesn’t fit at all into AA continuity and irritatingly just ignores it while it tries to be fun and unique. I love it when it’s just sticking to what was fun about the previous games while twisting the formula slightly. The DLC case is the perfect embodiment of this. It’s not unnatural for Ace Attorney to do weird things like cross examine animals, but the ending of that case is something that is done very rarely if ever in most cases. It’s plain and simple and doesn’t overcomplicate things. Unfortunately, most of the other cases don’t follow its example. I personally wish this game didn’t exist and Spirit of Justice came after it since it fits in better with the story. Unfortunately, this game continues to be in the main Ace Attorney franchise, and despite how much Capcom tries to make us forget about it existing, it’s already too deep to be forgotten.
Next in my journey through all of the Ace Attorney games is Dual Destinies. This game has received tons of criticism from both fans and newcomers alike and after playing through the entire game for a second time, it’s hard not to hop onto the hate train. Much like Apollo Justice, Dual Destinies presents innovative and fresh ideas at the cost of ditching the previous games that came before it. This completely new direction is seen in all facets of the game from the story to the art to the gameplay. While it’s great to see Ace Attorney trying to stay fresh and fun, in this game, it’s often not executed as well as it could be.
To start, let’s talk about the story. Dual Destinies takes place not too long after the events of Apollo Justice and focuses on continuing the plot of the Dark Age of the Law that it set up. In Dual Destinies, Phoenix makes his return to the courtroom after 7 years of being a hobo with the intent of ending this Dark Age of the Law chock full of corruption from the courts. By his side he has Apollo and a new attorney by the name of Athena Cykes who excels in psychology. Already in this description, there are a couple of things wrong with the game.
The first problem is that Phoenix is making a return to the courtroom. I said in my review of Apollo Justice that one of the great ideas they had with Phoenix’s character was to put him on the side and away from the spotlight. While the game didn’t live up to this idea, it was certainly interesting to think of how the game would be if Phoenix stayed as Apollo’s mentor and let him have the great moments of that game. In this game, they do the complete opposite of this good idea and have him take the spotlight again. With his badge back, he is now once again the protagonist of the game when he really has no business being one anymore. Not that I don’t love Phoenix Wright, but if Ace Attorney wants to convince me that their new characters are worth anything, they have to give them moments that give them value. With Phoenix at the helm again, he steals these moments and pushes everyone else to the side.
The second problem is that they’re introducing a new attorney into the mix. While Athena Cykes is a fine character, in my opinion, there is no room for her to actually be an attorney here. They have barely even started exploring Apollo’s character and adding in Athena Cykes means they have to spread time more thinly across all the characters. In the end, the breakdown is that Phoenix gets 2 out of the 3 story related cases, Apollo gets 1 story case and 1 filler case, and Athena gets 1 filler case. Even in the game after this, Spirit of Justice, she again gets 1 filler case and nothing else (and this filler case she gets happens to be the worst case in the game). So overall, even though the story is centered around her, you don’t even get to see her act as an attorney at all. They made this mistake once with Apollo Justice, and they made it yet again here. This is irritating point number 1. Things get worse when you consider how the game ends. More on that later.
After the premise, there is the actual plot of the game. As I mentioned before, the plot of the game focuses on this concept called the Dark Age of the Law. The Dark Age of the Law began when Phoenix presented forged evidence in court 7 years ago and a prosecutor commited murder. People began to lose faith in the courts and defense attorneys and prosecutors alike had been taught that in the end, only verdicts and results matter instead of finding the truth. I think this concept is fantastic for a followup game for Apollo Justice where literally the villain of the game was the embodiment of this concept. They had the perfect continuation for the game,so you would expect it to at least callback to the events of that game, wouldn’t you? Well if you did, you’d be dead wrong; Dual Destinies doesn’t even attempt to do anything like this. They set themselves up with the perfect opportunity to correct the mistakes of Apollo Justice and at the same time tell a plot that fits perfectly into the new story being built up. But instead of taking this opportunity, they just completely abandon Apollo Justice and start from scratch. By scratch, I mean literally start everything from scratch. This is irritating point number 2.
Let’s start with Phoenix. In Apollo Justice, Phoenix’s character was completely different. He made sure to rarely show emotion and act like a mature attorney. In the one case in Apollo Justice where you play as him, there’s a sense of experience and calmness from him. He doesn’t even panic when charges of forging evidence come on him and he always keeps a straight face in the most harsh of situations. It was an absolutely perfect embodiment of the lessons he learned after the events in Trials and Tribulations. In addition, it was perfect for that game since they constantly make mention to even the tiniest of emotions giving away people’s intentions and character. One tiny movement of a finger was enough for Apollo to take advantage of people’s weakness and find the truth and Phoenix made sure to give nothing away.
In Dual Destinies, he completely regresses to how he was in the first game. Every 5 seconds someone needs to bring up the fact that he bluffs and whenever he’s trying to make legitimate points in court, they just bring it down by saying it’s a bluff and he’s just some third rate attorney. Even in situations that are very easy to get out of, Phoenix loses his cool and breaks down into a cold sweat. I think there were almost no points in this game where Phoenix could do anything without hesitating and acting like a complete newbie. I miss that confident Phoenix from Apollo Justice and having him regress so much in this game feels like a disservice to what happened in the trilogy.
Next, let’s talk about Apollo Justice. If you have read my review of Apollo Justice, you will know that I am not a fan of his story in that game. The highlight of his story in that game was his origin. The game spends a fair bit of time explaining how his true parentage makes him special and gives him his powers. They don’t wrap up all loose ends though and leave many things for his origin to be explored. Dual Destinies decides to take that setup and do absolutely nothing with it other than to use it as leverage for yet another backstory for Apollo. I don’t know who put it into the head of the guy writing stories for the new Ace Attorney games, but there are far more interesting ways of making a character relevant to the story than to give them a tragic backstory. Ryunosuke in The Great Ace Attorney doesn’t even have one, yet in every single event in the story, he earns his place. More than being an attorney, his heritage and resolve are what are vastly important in making him feel relevant in every single case you play in. Apollo is only relevant because of the backstory the game gives him and they use this approach every time they want to expand his character. Instead of giving him natural growth, they just make him remember what he learned from some tragic backstory that he has. It’s quite boring in terms of character development and serves to only make his character more complicated than it needs to be. To be clear, I’m not saying that giving a character a tragic backstory is a bad idea, but when it’s the only form of development a character gets (like Apollo) it’s very bad.
Besides characters regressing, you also have a brand new plotline that focuses on Athena’s backstory. While Athena’s backstory is hyped up much at the start of the game, it only becomes relevant in the last two cases. The last two cases focus heavily on a murder that took place at a space station many years ago as well as a second murder that happened at the space station recently. While the cases themselves aren’t bad, their effect on the overall plot is horrendous. To talk about irritating point 3 here, I’ll need to delve into spoilers.
=== BEGIN SPOILER FOR CASES 4 AND 5 ===
In the last two cases, we see both Athena’s and Apollo’s backstories come into full play. Apollo is grief stricken as the murder victim is his childhood friend Clay Terran and Athena has to recall the events that made her lose her mother’s life. This stuff is the good stuff; we learn more about Apollo and Athena as characters and we get to see their beliefs come into play. It’s very reminiscent of AAI2’s conclusion where Edgeworth’s actions help people choose their own paths in life, even if they’re different from the path the people before them have taken. In the end, much of Ace Attorney is about finding the truth, no matter what form it takes. Whether it’s being a lawyer and exposing criminals in court, or being an astronaut and searching space for the cosmic truth, everyone has their own way of finding the “one truth” at the end of the journey.
With that being said, the way the 5th case concludes takes this premise and completely throws it out of the window for shock factor. The villain of that case, The Phantom, is easily one of the worst written villains to ever grace Ace Attorney. He has absolutely nothing to do with what came before in the games and comes completely out of nowhere in the last case. His only personality trait is that he can wildly vary his emotions and the only real connection he has to the main plot of the game is that he’s a villain who committed a crime. This is exactly the kind of character that has no business being in Ace Attorney in any capacity. The game tries to make you think he’s some kind of intimidating presence, but he comes off as a pussy because of how little he actually does.
To explain this better, I will compare him with someone who is similar, Shelly de Killer. Shelly de Killer in Justice for All is a force to be reckoned with.
He first off actually does stuff. He kidnaps Maya and makes demands of you. It’s clear if you don’t appeal to his commands, he will not hesitate to kill Maya. The Phantom doesn’t do anything like this and just relies on his name to carry him. This completely removes any sense of fear or intimidation from his character. It’s not enough to just say he’s a dangerous criminal; we need to actually see it in action to be scared of it. The one who does any actual kidnapping in this case is someone who is not at all related to him.
Second are the rules they follow. Shelly de Killer is an honorable assassin meaning he lives by a strict set of rules and expects his clients to do the same. If he is betrayed, then he will not hesitate to seek revenge. This trait is used beautifully in the final case of Justice for All to catch the true killer. The Phantom’s only rule is not to expose his identity. He doesn’t want his identity exposed because he runs the risk of being assassinated himself. This would be a fine rule if it was actually followed. This stupid idiot, as soon as Phoenix starts grilling him, pulls out all of his spy gadgets, starts ripping off his masks, and varies his emotions (which by the way was directly stated was something only the phantom can do). He is practically screaming out that he is the Phantom by existing. It’s only when Phoenix points out the obvious conclusion with evidence that a sniper takes him out. How could anyone have conceived a villain so horrible at following their own rules?????
Lastly, we have their relevance to the game. In Justice for All, Shelly de Killer is super important to the message of the game. Finding the truth is not an easy thing to do and sometimes sacrifices must be made in search of it. Justice for All’s finale gave the player serious questions to consider and a choice to make. The game even lets you make this choice and choose for yourself what it means to be a lawyer. Even though it doesn’t affect the story, the choice itself and the implications of the player’s choice could only have been proposed if Shelly de Killer actually posed a serious threat to the player. In Dual Destinies, the goal of the plot is to end The Dark Age of the Law. You would expect someone who is actually involved with the law and the courts would be the big baddie at the end of the road. Instead, you get The Phantom whose only connection with The Dark Age of the Law is that he blamed a crime on Prosecutor Blackquill a bunch of years ago. The game treats it like The Dark Age of the Law is something that could be solved simply by catching this random spy who committed a crime. But that’s not at all true from what the game presented us. The Dark Age of the Law is a mindset; something that is drilled into lawyers even when they’re in school as case 3 showed. Catching one villain who is barely connected to the courts doesn’t seem like it does anything to change the mindset of people. This would be a good middle chapter to a longer running story on The Dark Age of the Law, but the plotline just kind of sizzles out here.
=== END SPOILER FOR CASES 4 AND 5 ===
So overall, I’m not a huge fan of this plot. It has great moments in it for sure, but the main plot is pretty terrible. It reminds me a lot of Apollo Justice; instead of just being a fairly simple game that introduces new characters, it feels the need to just up the trilogy in weird ways and it tries too hard to achieve it. It tries to be different than the trilogy, but new isn’t necessarily better when it comes to plot. Forgetting everything that happened before and starting over is the worst thing a sequel to anything can do. It’s a shame to see that Dual Destinies is taking this route.
The plot is my biggest gripe with the game, so the next few points should hopefully be shorter. Next up we have the gameplay. The main difference in the gameplay here is the introduction of the new Mood Matrix mechanic. During a trial, when a witness does not want to testify, you get the opportunity to conduct a therapy session with them and observe their emotions during the crime. As they show you their emotions, you find ones that seem out of place and continue this until there is no more discord left in their emotions. I think on paper, this is actually a very great and creative mechanic. It’s fairly simple and intuitive to understand. You just look at a testimony and find a contradiction using the 4 emotions. Nothing too out of the ordinary with normal gameplay. In addition, there’s a wide amount of variety possible with it. The game itself takes great advantage of the variability and has segments where emotions can run out of control and also points where you can use evidence to point out contradictions with the witness’s memory.
The big problem with the mood matrix is how it’s applied practically. The mechanic in practice is far too easy. If you get an emotion wrong, there is absolutely no penalty. Also, to avoid any ambiguities, the game makes it painfully obvious what the wrong emotion is most of the time. If there’s a point where the witness says “I saw the dead body with blood pouring out of their eye sockets in an incredibly gruesome way,” the game will put Happy over it. There were almost no points where I got stuck on the mood matrix, but for the rare occasion where I did get stuck, I could just guess literally everything with no penalty. It’s practically begging to be skipped. In Apollo Justice there was some penalty for getting perceive wrong so you had incentive to at least try and think.
Other than that, the gameplay is pretty similar to what we’ve seen before. Trials and investigations are still the main method of gameplay and there are short segments in the investigation where you get to use Apollo’s bracelet and Phoenix’s Magatama. These segments have also been made easier since there’s also no penalty for making mistakes there which is different from the way it was before. Perceive specifically has been made 1000 times easier since the game only uses it during investigations and there’s also a huge glowing icon whenever you’re supposed to use it so you never have to actually think of when to do it. This is a pretty big downgrade. I liked how it was used in trials to make progress whenever you hit a dead end and were stuck. It also took a bit of thinking since the game put it in cross examinations with multiple statements. Now it’s pretty brainless and feels like a chore to get past since you have to slowly wait for the right statement to find the nervous tick on. Taking existing gameplay and making it easier for no reason is irritating point 4.
Next we have the characters. I’ve talked at length about Apollo and Phoenix, so let’s try Athena next. Like I mentioned before, Athena is a fine character, but she isn’t given that many chances to grow as one. We learn about her tragic past near the end of the game, which is great, but a major problem is that they basically gave away all of it and didn’t really leave her with a place to belong once they were finished. In Spirit of Justice, I constantly asked “why is she still here” whenever she did anything. It’s not that I don’t like her, but rather what purpose does she still have in these games? Her story wrapped up quite nicely in this one and there aren’t any more avenues of her character left to explore. I have an itching feeling that if they make another Ace Attorney game with her in it, they will give her another tragic backstory to give her a sense of purpose. It was more than possible to get around this by actually giving her her own set of beliefs that are different from Phoenix and Apollo. What did she learn from her traumatic experience other than that she can mix psychology and lawyering together? The game doesn’t spend any time expanding on this so her character is still unclear.
As for side characters, they’re alright. Blackquill is an absolutely amazing prosecutor and he's incredibly funny. Perfect antagonist for an AA game. While he doesn’t have the emotional impact that someone like Edgeworth or Godot had, he does well enough on his own to warrant a thumbs up from me. The case specific characters are at least what I expect of AA, but they aren’t that great. One of my favorite things about playing The Great Ace Attorney was that almost every character put a huge smile on my face and made me gush out with all sorts of emotion. Everything from their distinct personalities to their designs was something I absolutely loved. Dual Destinies doesn’t really have that kind of impact on me unfortunately. While colorful, many of the characters are lacking charm. It’s hard to describe what “charm” here constitutes, but I think most people who have played this game and The Great Ace Attorney (or even the trilogy) would agree that there is something different about the characters in this game and the characters in that game that just makes them more likeable.
Lastly, we have art and music. After seeing both The Great Ace Attorney and Spirit of Justice, looking back at the 3D models in this game makes it feel like the game is unfinished. There’s a certain level of polish in TGAA and SoJ that this game is missing. It’s hard to describe what that polish is, but it’s easy to see when comparing two pictures of the games. There’s also a distinct lack of 3D animation in this game. Having those animations in The Great Ace Attorney and Spirit of Justice really made the game feel more alive. Most of the heavy animation in this game is done with anime cutscenes, and while many of these are justified, some could have easily been replaced with just 3D animation that would have fit it better. Some examples include Phoenix entering the court for the first time in the game and when they find Apollo knocked out in the destroyed courtroom.
As for the music, it’s alright. It’s up to par with the Ace Attorney standard, but it’s nothing special. It has a nice space theme throughout it, but I’m not really a huge fan of it. Something like Trucy’s theme, which was styled to fit the soundtrack of AJ, doesn’t fit that well in this game since it sounds like you’re eating at some fancy restaurant as opposed to getting ready to explore a complicated plot at the space station. It’s a very mixed bag of really good tracks and tracks that work well on their own but don’t fit the overall theme of the game.
So overall, Dual Destinies is not a terrible game. It gets many things right and it’s often fun to play through. Its main issue is that it doesn’t fit at all into AA continuity and irritatingly just ignores it while it tries to be fun and unique. I love it when it’s just sticking to what was fun about the previous games while twisting the formula slightly. The DLC case is the perfect embodiment of this. It’s not unnatural for Ace Attorney to do weird things like cross examine animals, but the ending of that case is something that is done very rarely if ever in most cases. It’s plain and simple and doesn’t overcomplicate things. Unfortunately, most of the other cases don’t follow its example. I personally wish this game didn’t exist and Spirit of Justice came after it since it fits in better with the story. Unfortunately, this game continues to be in the main Ace Attorney franchise, and despite how much Capcom tries to make us forget about it existing, it’s already too deep to be forgotten.