This review contains spoilers
Resolve is a pretty significant upgrade to its predecessor. With vastly faster pacing, better character moments, and more interesting murder mysteries, it’s an improvement all across the board from the miserable first game. I wish I could sing it endless praises, but it still stumbles enough to be just another good but flawed entry in the series. In an (admirable) effort to be more fun than GAA1 and skip to the good parts, Resolve suffers from wasted potential from several of its more interesting characters and ideas, rushed developments, annoying telegraphed twists that you could see coming hours ago, and some bizarre character directions which in some ways feel like they are directly betraying the tone and character development the first game set up for so long.
There is a fight between the serious and the goofy in this duology which is painful to watch. For every character that suffers through a long life of misery and betrayal to get out of poverty we get one that turns from a thief with no future to a promising police detective overnight. For every well realized twist and grounded explanation making use of its Victorian setting we get fucking holograms in court. The goofy tone and characters of the series is at complete odds with any of the serious content GAA attempts to tackle. And attempt is a good choice of words, because most concepts and themes here are explored in a surface level that crumble as soon as you give them some thought, or at least, just go absolutely nowhere. Racism, imperialism, classicism, sexism… they are all ideas GAA touches, but never meaningfully explores in a way that makes them more than tiny footnotes to the individual cases, if it doesn’t fumble them completely (looking at you, Van Zikes). I would argue the only concept GAA manages to successfully integrate into the overall story is corruption, something we have seen over and over in this series.
The pretenses of Ace Attorney being a game series instead of a novel are completely gone in Resolve: no new gameplay elements, the same contradictions we have seen time and time again, sudden removal of key mechanics… Little would be lost if this duology was a kinetic VN, and ideally a shorter and more concise one. More disappointing is the reuse of so many assets, most notably the soundtrack, which is even more tonally dissonant this time around. This series always had a strong musical identity in each entry, and it was a massive pity seeing that aspect thrown out the window here. Especially because the soundtrack of Adventures was one of my least favorites. Kitagawa knows how to nail the most bombastic moments in and outside the courtroom, but the music between those moments left me cold. The heavy string usage and serious melodies don’t mesh with the shenanigans of Ace Attorney.
My biggest issue with GAA as a whole is that it tries to reframe this wacky series about wacky murders with wacky characters into this serious and mature legal drama that is hardly as satisfying as the dumb or personal fun cases the series excelled at for the longest time. The long-winded boring setup only hurts the narrative when the payoff is as weak and contrived as it currently is. The story of Resolve ends up focusing on bringing down an important political figure from his seat of power, but the only reason Ryuunosuke is given that chance in the first place is by that same political figure gifting him the opportunity in a silver platter. Kazuma’s “revival”, and especially his admission as a prosecutor by Stronghart borders on the absurdity by the final case. The sheer premise of this story is questionable, why was Stronghart so selective on the people he needed to silence when so many other individuals were in the know about the conspiracy and actively posed a threat to it? Did he realize by hiring assassins he was involving even more people into it? And one of these assassins had extremely personal ties to the conspiracy he was trying to hide in the first place? Come on. I just don’t think even the basic concepts that tie this duology together click well. Games in this series that took themselves far less seriously could push these narratives as cockiness or exaggerated personality traits to great effect, but here it just came across as downright nonsense. These types of writing contrivances pile up by the end of the experience, and make a potentially fascinating story into a confused mess. It is a fun mess, though. At least in Resolve.
The ending was absolutely terrible. I can’t believe I am suggesting a Persona tier sequence for Ace Attorney, but I think it would have been a much better conclusion If Stronghart’s downfall relied on the will of the people rather than on an arbitrarily higher political power settling the score. Let me change the ending a little bit. Without the use of holograms, Sholmes could have easily co-organized many of the people we had helped on this adventure to publicly testify against Stronghart’s crimes. Soseki as a currently renowed author, writing about his negative experiences with the British legal system, Gina and part of the Scotland Yard force talking about the corruption in the police as retaliation for the loss of their most loved member and their treatment as expendable pawns, Scythe and Jigoku confessing their full involvement in the government conspiracy inspired by their close ones (Gorey and Mikotoba) rebelling against the corrupt system... All leading to the inevitable conclusion that Stronghart’s reign of absolute legal power and control was over before it even started. You could even have Ryunosuke convince the people of the judiciary with a Summation Examination. I thought they were going to do something important and grand with this gimmick when the jury was first introduced, but then they completely dropped the mechanic altogether, making me question why it even was there! I think that type of ending would tie the themes and cases of the games a lot better, and deservedly prop up Ryunosuke’s involvement in Stronghart’s downfall. As it currently stands, the spotlight is completely stolen by Sholmes at the last second, while he deus ex machina the hardest I have ever seen in these games. What a waste of one of the best Pursuit themes in the entire series.
Anyway, Resolve is another fun legal adventure attached to a 30-hour game of boring setup for a payoff other AA games managed to do on their own. I can’t stretch enough how much better Resolve is compared to Adventures, but everything I hated about the first one returns in some way or another, dragging the whole experience down. I wasn’t emotionally invested with the story or the the main characters, the railroaded gameplay constantly disappointed me, the payoff was really messy, and above all, the direction it took with the series is one I do not enjoy. I just wish that I had a better opinion of this experience as a whole, because it had the potential to be something amazing, and it never quite got there for me.
Case Ranking
----------------------
Fantastic:
Case 4
Great:
Case 2
Very Good:
Case 3 and Case 5
Good:
Case 1
There is a fight between the serious and the goofy in this duology which is painful to watch. For every character that suffers through a long life of misery and betrayal to get out of poverty we get one that turns from a thief with no future to a promising police detective overnight. For every well realized twist and grounded explanation making use of its Victorian setting we get fucking holograms in court. The goofy tone and characters of the series is at complete odds with any of the serious content GAA attempts to tackle. And attempt is a good choice of words, because most concepts and themes here are explored in a surface level that crumble as soon as you give them some thought, or at least, just go absolutely nowhere. Racism, imperialism, classicism, sexism… they are all ideas GAA touches, but never meaningfully explores in a way that makes them more than tiny footnotes to the individual cases, if it doesn’t fumble them completely (looking at you, Van Zikes). I would argue the only concept GAA manages to successfully integrate into the overall story is corruption, something we have seen over and over in this series.
The pretenses of Ace Attorney being a game series instead of a novel are completely gone in Resolve: no new gameplay elements, the same contradictions we have seen time and time again, sudden removal of key mechanics… Little would be lost if this duology was a kinetic VN, and ideally a shorter and more concise one. More disappointing is the reuse of so many assets, most notably the soundtrack, which is even more tonally dissonant this time around. This series always had a strong musical identity in each entry, and it was a massive pity seeing that aspect thrown out the window here. Especially because the soundtrack of Adventures was one of my least favorites. Kitagawa knows how to nail the most bombastic moments in and outside the courtroom, but the music between those moments left me cold. The heavy string usage and serious melodies don’t mesh with the shenanigans of Ace Attorney.
My biggest issue with GAA as a whole is that it tries to reframe this wacky series about wacky murders with wacky characters into this serious and mature legal drama that is hardly as satisfying as the dumb or personal fun cases the series excelled at for the longest time. The long-winded boring setup only hurts the narrative when the payoff is as weak and contrived as it currently is. The story of Resolve ends up focusing on bringing down an important political figure from his seat of power, but the only reason Ryuunosuke is given that chance in the first place is by that same political figure gifting him the opportunity in a silver platter. Kazuma’s “revival”, and especially his admission as a prosecutor by Stronghart borders on the absurdity by the final case. The sheer premise of this story is questionable, why was Stronghart so selective on the people he needed to silence when so many other individuals were in the know about the conspiracy and actively posed a threat to it? Did he realize by hiring assassins he was involving even more people into it? And one of these assassins had extremely personal ties to the conspiracy he was trying to hide in the first place? Come on. I just don’t think even the basic concepts that tie this duology together click well. Games in this series that took themselves far less seriously could push these narratives as cockiness or exaggerated personality traits to great effect, but here it just came across as downright nonsense. These types of writing contrivances pile up by the end of the experience, and make a potentially fascinating story into a confused mess. It is a fun mess, though. At least in Resolve.
The ending was absolutely terrible. I can’t believe I am suggesting a Persona tier sequence for Ace Attorney, but I think it would have been a much better conclusion If Stronghart’s downfall relied on the will of the people rather than on an arbitrarily higher political power settling the score. Let me change the ending a little bit. Without the use of holograms, Sholmes could have easily co-organized many of the people we had helped on this adventure to publicly testify against Stronghart’s crimes. Soseki as a currently renowed author, writing about his negative experiences with the British legal system, Gina and part of the Scotland Yard force talking about the corruption in the police as retaliation for the loss of their most loved member and their treatment as expendable pawns, Scythe and Jigoku confessing their full involvement in the government conspiracy inspired by their close ones (Gorey and Mikotoba) rebelling against the corrupt system... All leading to the inevitable conclusion that Stronghart’s reign of absolute legal power and control was over before it even started. You could even have Ryunosuke convince the people of the judiciary with a Summation Examination. I thought they were going to do something important and grand with this gimmick when the jury was first introduced, but then they completely dropped the mechanic altogether, making me question why it even was there! I think that type of ending would tie the themes and cases of the games a lot better, and deservedly prop up Ryunosuke’s involvement in Stronghart’s downfall. As it currently stands, the spotlight is completely stolen by Sholmes at the last second, while he deus ex machina the hardest I have ever seen in these games. What a waste of one of the best Pursuit themes in the entire series.
Anyway, Resolve is another fun legal adventure attached to a 30-hour game of boring setup for a payoff other AA games managed to do on their own. I can’t stretch enough how much better Resolve is compared to Adventures, but everything I hated about the first one returns in some way or another, dragging the whole experience down. I wasn’t emotionally invested with the story or the the main characters, the railroaded gameplay constantly disappointed me, the payoff was really messy, and above all, the direction it took with the series is one I do not enjoy. I just wish that I had a better opinion of this experience as a whole, because it had the potential to be something amazing, and it never quite got there for me.
Case Ranking
----------------------
Fantastic:
Case 4
Great:
Case 2
Very Good:
Case 3 and Case 5
Good:
Case 1
augusttime
9 months ago