alright, im incredibly close to finishing this now so i think its time to get my thoughts out. because i have a lot. spoiler warning after the read more, though i'll be focusing on the game itself first.

makes sense that this is the game i'd have the most to say about, it's the one that changed the entire gameplay of the series and the one i wasnt sure if id like actually playing. so here's the majority of my thoughts on the game:

Gameplay stuff

- i think the RPG combat works. it's not as good, just due to personal preference, however i've still loved going through it and most of the fights have been very good

- it's rough though. this feels like a first attempt which i mean. it is, but theres a lot of stuff that just feels wrong sometimes.

- like the fact that i feel like i'm missing some quick easy way to get rich in this game. because everything costs SO MUCH by endgame. and the closest thing you have to being able to afford it is constant management spam.

- also, FUCK the chapter 12 level jump. actively one of the worst difficulty spikes in a game i've seen. adding a battle arena does not fucking fix the issue.

Side Content

- management is fun. it's basically a better version of real estate from 0, and i'm glad it's here. finding out Eri was a party member was also fun, even if she is Just Some Woman compared to every other playable character's designs

- dragon kart.... its fun i suppose. i havent played it much and customisation doesnt seem too good here. why are there 6 substories for this.

- speaking of the substories
they're bad.
i may have started skipping halfway through, but if half of the fucking substories in the game make me want to SKIP then its not a good sign. there's barely any i find that good.

Characters And Story:

- so yeah this has probably sounded like 90% bashing on this game. but genuinely? all the characters and the story (mostly) save this game for me. it's not bad to play, just would be kinda eh if not for how much i love all these dumbfucks

- i already loved Joon Gi Han in 6, one of the only good new characters there, but yeonsu/joon gi's body double beats him out by a lot. he's so fun

- zhao is babygirl

- saeko is like, exactly what this series needed in terms of a good female lead after kiyomi, mayumi if you can even count her, and the one we don't name ever from 4. i love her.

- nanba... i liked him at first but hes just okay. will get into a reason why after the rest of the characters.

- eri is kinda fun, not much to say since she's not really relevant at all

- adachi... dadd-

- ichiban is a better protag than Kiryu. i dont think kiryu can carry a game however ichiban absolutely could, i love this fucking old man dork so much

(also seong hui is amazing and another great girlboss for this series)

- the story in general has a really nice slow feel to it. it's one of the biggest things that makes you realise how far the writing in the series has come since Yakuza 1, because that game imo didn't introduce things well enough, meanwhile this game does it near perfectly, building up to when the tojo clan and kiryu are finally brought back into the picture in ch12

- speaking of kiryu. negatives time. there's 3 main negatives, one minor, one not so minor but not major, and one kiiinda major one.

- i dont like kiryu here. or at least i dont know how to feel about him. im hoping gaiden and 8 do more with him because here he feels so... forced in.

- nanba's arc is messy. while i think it's an okay arc in terms of the writing, the actual execution in game is really bad. losing a party member and having nobody to replace them severely handicaps you, and alongside the fact that no new substories unlock for the entire arc, you end up just rushing through the story with nothing else to really do. i didn't like it much tbh. maybe with the job system, it could've been better, but i dont like the job system either so there's literally no way for me to win here.

- the biggest negative of all though.

i don't really care about ryo aoki. i couldnt tell you why, hes just not that interesting to me.


and yet even with all this i still love this game. it's not my favorite, but i've loved going through it.

EDIT AFTER FINISHING THE GAME:

i didn't finish this game. I watched the end of it online.

to be blunt i'm sick of the bullshit parts of it. tendo's fight was the last straw. spending 15 minutes on a fight, only for the first time he uses his instakill attack to be on Ichiban made me so pissed.

all my problems with this game still stand. i STILL don't care about aoki, im sorry.

i love the characters of this game. i want to love it as a whole. i want to love the ending. but i dont unfortunately

im lowering my score slightly for now. it'll probably change looking back, but i honestly cant think of the game as positively at the moment.

still, it's a good start to the new story of the series. looking forward to gaiden and 8 still.

Even better than the original, every character was handled amazingly here, even if not all my favorites got the most time to shine

This review contains spoilers

This game was WAY better than I expected, holy shit

Also love how Jeanne's Tale managed to bring in Singularity and have it not be absolutely shit. This is how you re-use aspects from a bad story in a good way

the ONLY game from the original trilogy that the fandom has the right opinion about

justice for all, dual destinies and apollo justice fighting to be the most overhated games in the entire aa series when they're all good is hilarious to me. but then again, i'm heavily biased for franziska, so maybe that has a bit of an impact on why i like JFA

this is the worst ace attorney game by like. a long shot. case 1 and 2 are both really bad, 3 is kinda fun, 4 is good but nowhere near as good as other final cases and rise from the ashes simply doesn't exist in my eyes ema just popped into existence in investigations

This review is going to cover Reincarnation (and the Short Stories once I get around to them)

Reincarnation was a great bonus epilogue to the whole series, I may not have enjoyed A Requiem For Innocence, but Reincarnation was exactly what I wanted to see. Love this whole series honestly.

This review contains spoilers

This is one of the worst and also one of the best things I've ever gone through.
So let me discuss each thing in this VN in detail

ARFI Part 1: 10/10, I honestly loved this part of it, Ceren was interesting and I liked what they did with her overall. Was also nice getting to see everything up to the revolt.
ARFI Interlude: 3/10. This is where the problems start. The first 3 tales are literally just "hey, did you know about this girl called Ceren? did you know she couldn't feel emotions? it made me feel soooo unsafe" repeated over and over again until its drilled into your fucking skull. Good idea, horrible execution. Everything with Barnier afterwards isn't much better, but still not too bad.
ARFI Part 2: 3/10. Its bad. It's REALLY bad. I wish I could like this part, but until you get to the festival part, it's just so boring. There's nothing interesting here until then, and at the very least A Requiem For Innocence ends on a better note than the rest of Part 2. I really wish I could have liked this but it's just so unbelievably dull. But again, at least the final parts are amazing. Maria's corpse CG will fucking haunt me.

Happily Ever ~After~: 11/10

Genuinely Happily Ever After is the only reason this isn't a 1 star.


Oh right, and each time the Jacogana shit started I skipped through til it was over. No pedophilia here thanks.

For my own sanity I'm pretending that Maria and Jacopo adopted Morgana at the end of Reincarnation

Banging OST, just alright game.

Idk what to feel about this game, it's a mess. It's also fully voice acted and the acting is... voiced. for sure.

The patterns near the endgame kinda suck sometimes tbh.

Objectively kinda sucks but also I love it.

Never been motivated to finish this game honestly, it's just alright.