I legitimately resent every one of my high school friends who brought me from Team Fortress 2 to play this for 10 years on and off. Went back several times due to being easily pressured but the more I realized the game was nothing more than a bunch of dopamine sticks that counted on loss aversion and predatory microtransactions for you to keep playing instead of any fun gameplay loop, the more courage I built to log off permanently.

I wish I could take back the time I wasted in my youth playing this garbage, not to say that I would have studied for tests or become a gigachad, It's just that I could have played plenty of better games in the meantime.

While the game is mostly a setup for the second one and it does suffer from some padding and an underwhelming final trial for the standard of this series, it is a damn fine setup. Resounding evidence that 3D VNs are a venture worth pursuing that can add intricacies to the ace attorney formula and look stunningly gorgeous in it's visual direction while adding compelling character dynamics that only a good soft reboot could do.

The Fan Translation is marginally better and you'll unfortunately have to take my word for it on this one.

You can tell the Ace Attorney in this game wants to go hard but the Professor Layton in it keeps holding it back. A series based on logic and turnabouts with constant twists in it's storytelling has surprisingly bad synergy when paired with Layton, a guy who is never wrong and is supposed to actually explain everything that's going on at the very end with no possible way for the player to predict that the big dog is actually a hologram projected from an orbital satellite because how dare we live in a fantasy world where dogs are actually that big?

I can see where the interest in both series crossing over came along since they're both mystery oriented but they have very different approaches to their mysteries. Mainline Ace Attorney was in hiatus for a good 5 years at that point and Layton was already nose-diving into the mediocrity valley that is it's 3DS lineup of games. I'm glad that it happened and the character interactions alone make it fun to play, but you can tell they had a preference and that preference bogged the entire thing down for me.

Perhaps Danganronpa or Umineko would be a better fit writing-wise... Well, given the plot synopsis of having to prove that magic is not real, you can argue that crossover already happened in spirit, but you get my point.

Night creatures call and the dead start to walk in their masquerade

When people wonder if MJ really had all that hype back when he was alive, the answer should be a resounding yes. What other popular artist back in the day had a video game based off on their movie, and was also a lover of video games to the point of having a home arcade and composing soundtracks for other games due to seeing the early potential of the medium and wanting to tap on it? Cause it sure wasn't Madonna.

An absolute fever dream of a game based on an even wackier movie. If you feel like you don't understand anything plotwise, don't worry, the movie won't help you on that regard, it's just Michale saving children from the mafiosos. It works.

The atmosphere, music and graphics were on point. It's hard to believe Michael was disappointed with the output of the Genesis soundchip, because his renditions of Smooth Criminal, Bad, Billie Jean and Another Part Of Me are on point.

The gameplay could be a lot better, having to waste half your health on a screen clearer that doesn't really help you past level 3 makes it rarely worth it when added with the windup, and the span of enemies and cryptic hiding of kids can be really annoying, but hey. Seeing Michael Jackson turn into a decepticon when catching a shooting star makes it all worth it.

Celebrity tie ins and games from this generation past tend not to age that well together, but this one is better than it has any right to be