Really enjoyed revisiting this trilogy especially since it included the DLC cases for DD and SoJ that I had never played before~ ^w^ And since I basically marathoned the three games one after another, I picked up on strengths and weakness of them that I didn't notice on my first plays that happened years apart from one another .w.
The first game, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, is a compact little adventure especially in comparison to Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice, but I greatly appreciated how all the cases were interwoven and led to big reveals by the end. Phoenix's characterization was very interesting and Klavier is definitely one of my favorite prosecutors in the series~ the "big bad" of the game is also one of its strong suits (heh...). I don't fully love the "meta" elements that were brought into the last case, however, though the Jurist System idea was neat (and more fully realized in the Great Ace Attorney games).
Dual Destinies was a fun ride~ ...though I think it still stands as the weakest Ace Attorney game by my personal rankings. It gives too much away within its first two cases and doesn't really hit its stride until the third... before being kiiiiinda bogged down again by the last two cases. And, while I adore Athena as a character, I think her introduction here, along with a desire by the writers to make Apollo more "interesting", reaaaally convolutes Apollo's backstory to the point that it's hard to suspend disbelief (Spirit of Justice is also quite guilty of this though I think the story is stronger there). There's just too many conveniences that don't feel natural in the storytelling .w. Unrelated to the story, it was an odd choice to not allow you to examine things freely (except in certain spots) during the case investigation segments - that's something that allowed for a whole bunch of quirky, fun dialogues in past (and future) AA games so it gave an impression of something being missing in comparison to the others .w. As for some positives... I do like case 3 a lot as I mentioned before and Simon is a cool prosecutor. I especially like his and Taka's antics in the courtroom segments x3 The animated cutscenes were also very nice and the 3D presentation was appealing~
Turnabout Reclaimed was a great addition to Dual Destinies. The animal lover in me really enjoyed the unique setting for the case as well as the important nonhuman characters that were introduced :3 The twists were decently unexpected and the conclusion satisfying, I feel~
Now onto Spirit of Justice which I feel was the better follow up to the original Apollo Justice game than Dual Destinies. It has a stronger story and feels more impactful and memorable than its predecessor~ it holds up very well from the first time that I played it. I will say that it's kinda a shame that they brought back Maya to pretty much serve exactly the same role as she did in the original trilogy though (as both an accused and kidnapee)... with little to no development from when we saw her last ^^"" Athena also got majorly shafted by only being the leading character in one short case which was disappointing. I think I enjoyed pretty much everything else this game had to offer though and I was satisfied with how things concluded... minus that massive tease where they still never revealed one of the big twists from Apollo Justice to the characters, mrghhh >w<"" lol
Turnabout Time Traveler had predictable story beats and a blatantly obvious culprit, but I enjoyed its themes of love and "time traveling" in the non-literal sense :3
Overall, I was glad to give these games another play and I really hope that Capcom comes out with another Ace Attorney game soon. It's been too looooooong :'C
The first game, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, is a compact little adventure especially in comparison to Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice, but I greatly appreciated how all the cases were interwoven and led to big reveals by the end. Phoenix's characterization was very interesting and Klavier is definitely one of my favorite prosecutors in the series~ the "big bad" of the game is also one of its strong suits (heh...). I don't fully love the "meta" elements that were brought into the last case, however, though the Jurist System idea was neat (and more fully realized in the Great Ace Attorney games).
Dual Destinies was a fun ride~ ...though I think it still stands as the weakest Ace Attorney game by my personal rankings. It gives too much away within its first two cases and doesn't really hit its stride until the third... before being kiiiiinda bogged down again by the last two cases. And, while I adore Athena as a character, I think her introduction here, along with a desire by the writers to make Apollo more "interesting", reaaaally convolutes Apollo's backstory to the point that it's hard to suspend disbelief (Spirit of Justice is also quite guilty of this though I think the story is stronger there). There's just too many conveniences that don't feel natural in the storytelling .w. Unrelated to the story, it was an odd choice to not allow you to examine things freely (except in certain spots) during the case investigation segments - that's something that allowed for a whole bunch of quirky, fun dialogues in past (and future) AA games so it gave an impression of something being missing in comparison to the others .w. As for some positives... I do like case 3 a lot as I mentioned before and Simon is a cool prosecutor. I especially like his and Taka's antics in the courtroom segments x3 The animated cutscenes were also very nice and the 3D presentation was appealing~
Turnabout Reclaimed was a great addition to Dual Destinies. The animal lover in me really enjoyed the unique setting for the case as well as the important nonhuman characters that were introduced :3 The twists were decently unexpected and the conclusion satisfying, I feel~
Now onto Spirit of Justice which I feel was the better follow up to the original Apollo Justice game than Dual Destinies. It has a stronger story and feels more impactful and memorable than its predecessor~ it holds up very well from the first time that I played it. I will say that it's kinda a shame that they brought back Maya to pretty much serve exactly the same role as she did in the original trilogy though (as both an accused and kidnapee)... with little to no development from when we saw her last ^^"" Athena also got majorly shafted by only being the leading character in one short case which was disappointing. I think I enjoyed pretty much everything else this game had to offer though and I was satisfied with how things concluded... minus that massive tease where they still never revealed one of the big twists from Apollo Justice to the characters, mrghhh >w<"" lol
Turnabout Time Traveler had predictable story beats and a blatantly obvious culprit, but I enjoyed its themes of love and "time traveling" in the non-literal sense :3
Overall, I was glad to give these games another play and I really hope that Capcom comes out with another Ace Attorney game soon. It's been too looooooong :'C