the first thing i need to talk about is brevity, and the cruel, cruel lack of it in many circumstances. the game opens with a strong, meaty first case that dares to blow out any other series starting trial thus far--and succeeds. the great ace attorney then follows this up with a second case that is completely investigation--no trial--and does so with a lack of respect to player's time as it drags things out as far as it can with walls and walls of, frankly, not very funny text. compare and contrast the mountains of dialogue one has to sift through just to examine, say, a clock versus the first investigation of phoenix wright: ace attorney in which objects may give you... one line, two maximum. it's this rampant time wasting that really unfortunately stains the first half of the game--but! it does pick up, at least.

more complaints. the writing gets tipsy and attempts to walk a tightrope between cartoonish goofy and actually sickening cheese. what this means is that much of the dialogue is light hearted but never actually funny, though this much isn't offensive or anything. it's really just bad when you get a bunch of overly sappy lines thrown at you towards the end that land with complete cloying emptiness. it also means sherlock holmes and his goblin assistant fail to really nail much of their attempts at humor. it also also means the eye rolling dramatic moves from your law partner towards the end are aggravating. i could go on.

but this is a four stars review. that's because at great ace attorney's heart lies some incredibly iron tight trials with incredibly delightful twists and turns that always feel natural and logical. especially logical--my favorite aspect of the game is how many lines of reasoning the developers account for, in that you could reasonably assume a theory and piece of evidence for the WRONG testimony, and so they have bonus dialogue to account for it and steer you in the right direction. it's a validating feeling. i'm also memorized by the jury, that which makes the world of ace attorney feel more lively and connected--it's nice to see familiar faces. there's a little jury summation system where you have to pit jurors against each other and i honestly love it. oh, the multi wit dialogue system is cool, too, to a degree--i don't really like having to press every statement JUST in case there's going to be an "outburst", but i simultaneously love how they play with the system in the very last case.

one more massive bit of praise: case 4. case 4 is easily the best "middle" case of ace attorney history, hands down. why? it's desperate. it's shockingly desperate. the case revolves around what should be open and shut, and your attempts to defend the alleged perpetrator come off as even further cementing him as the killer. it's the one time in this series' history where i genuinely felt backed up against a wall, grasping at anything and everything i could think to get my client off.

on one last note, i find it very disappointing that the protagonist is yet another phoenix wright/apollo justice. it seems this series can only think to write one specific type of main character, and it's seriously getting limp.