"I am no one. I am nothing but an endless abyss."
- The Phantom, Turnabout for Tomorrow

Dual Destinies is poorly written and creatively bankrupt. I'm honestly impressed by how the game simultaneously derailed the existing continuity and character arcs established in previous games, while also delivering a half baked and childish new storyline that leaves the series nowhere to go in the future.

The “dark age of the law” was a comically awful overarching theme and having villains like Aristotle Means, a guy who genuinely believes lawyers are supposed to lie and forge evidence, is proof of how allergic the writers are from creating actual interesting or thought provoking character drama and moral arguments.

Do we not see the hypocrisy of this story when Phoenix Wright himself used underhanded means (forging evidence, rigging a jury) to justify the end goal of beating Kristoph Gavin and absolving himself in AA4? Like we literally had an interesting “does the end justify the means” moral argument set up for us in the previous game and we throw it all away for this 4Kids ass good vs evil plot line that is resolved by exposing a nameless, faceless villain whose goals were never explained?

Speaking of, the actions of the "phantom" in Dual Destinies was motivated by his desire to cover up his previous crimes from 7 years prior. You might be asking, "what motivated him to commit the crimes of 7 years ago, like disrupting the first rocket launch?" Too bad! There's no explanation! But don't worry, catching him ended the dark age of the law anyways!

There are so many “gags” that just fall back on moments from past games like Trucy only showing up with the panties, turning Apollo’s “I’m fine” into an actual character trait (wtf bro😭), and Phoenix being regressed to a compulsive bluffer. Apollo as a whole is literally a completely different character who shares none of the same motivations and thoughts he did in the previous game. You know how he was consistently at odds with the way Phoenix carried himself and raised Trucy? And how he trusts his clients less? Now, Apollo sees him as a mentor and gets complimented on how similar he is to him. Phoenix also has no reason to exist in this game, he appears to be way less capable, completely undoing the ultimatum he dealt with at the end of Bridge to the Turnabout.

Athena and Blackquill's story is by far the most competent part of this game but it still feels underwhelming given the shared screentime with the other protags, filler cases, and terrible phantom story. Why couldn’t we have had a story about the immorality of Blackquill’s death penalty?

Like the gags, the music is super derivative of past games. So many tracks are uninspired remixes (or straight up ports like guilty love?) although there were a few original bangers like the cross examination themes.

The DLC was mid filler. The fact that they decided to make DLC filler cases at all, in what's supposed to be a narrative-driven mystery series, should tell you how depraved this game truly is.

The mood matrix doubles down on the childish dialogue with conversations like "My sources are telling me you were thinking happy thoughts when you should be thinking sad thoughts." Actual elementary school dialogue, and it pervades through the entire game's writing too, drenched in incredibly cringy anime tropes.

It really feels like the devs wrote themselves into a corner here. They wanted to tell their own story with Athena and Blackquill, but they wanted to bring Phoenix back too. So they had to bring Trucy back. Which meant they also had to bring Apollo back. Oh, and why not give Pearl and Edgeworth a couple seconds of screentime too? Since Athena and Blackquill's story resolved at the end of this game, there is literally no way any of these characters can grow. Dual Destinies toppled the reputation of Ace Attorney in one fell swoop.

Please, by all means, explain to me why having a villain with no name, no face, no backstory, and no clear motivations somehow isn't enough to instantly classify this game as garbage.