iKiwed

As a long Ace Attorney fan, I think this is the vote I'd give for this game. A not full 5. Let's start witht he basis: 1) Gameplay: It's overall ok. It's good to see a comeback of some features from the old 4 games like the full examination of an area, the usage of cameras, Ema's forensic abilities, etc. I also liked the divination seance (as gameplay), so there is a somewhat level of challenge. But Except for the cross-examination and the divination seance, the rest of the old/new features don't have any kind of penalities, just like in Dual Destinies. Why doesn't the Mood Matrix have penalties? Why doesn't the magatama have penalties? Why does the bracelet a Magatama 2.0, with no real purpose in terms of challenge at all? Why doesn't the Thought Route have penalties like the Logic in AA Investigation series? Bonus Magatama: between the other "powers", this is probably the most present in the game. And still, its challenging level is zero. In Trials & Tribulations, when you investigate, you find more than 1 person to have red psychelocks, and before to unlock them you're forced to find new clues elsewhere. In Spirit of Justice everything is guided: You see someone with psychelocks, you're just ready to unlock them. This isn't how features like magatama, mood matrix, bracelet, etc... should work in a game where the player's logic is needed. 2) Multimedia: This is probably what saves the game more. Graphically there is a big improvement from Dual Destinies, and the music is overall in the standards of the other Ace Attorney music. My only critic point is how they used the motion capture. Each case has some parts where a character uses them. Unfortunately you notice the quality drops because they look unfitting with the models and the characters. The worst case scenario is during the case 5, in a particular moment a certain character acts like a child because of how unwell they used this feature in the game. Plus, on 3DS the framerate drops to 30fps or less. 3) Story: It's a mess just like Dual Destinies. Again, they used the main characters and tried to connect them somehow, even if the possibilities that that would happen are less than zero. In short, I'm talking about retcons. And unfortunately some characters are victims of this in the game. The presence itself of a country like Khura'In is interesting IF it was placed with other purposes, like, for example, a game where Phoenix is the only character playable, and characters like Apollo, Athena, Trucy, etc weren't connected with the game at all, because they don't have to. But, in this case, Khura'In has just ruin any expectation in a bad way. And I'm not talking about the characterization of the people in Khura'In, but the motive Khura'In is present in the game. Just like the motive Maya is in the game. This motive is weak and not even explained in the game. Capcom released a "prologue" animated trailer of about 10 minutes where shows why Phoenix traveled in Khura'In, which is because Maya dropped the phone during an attack of a "rebel". But in the game, that video isn't canon. So we don't even have a good start of the game. Speaking of rebels, I find all this very annoying. Let me explain why. It's true Ace Attorney isn't meant to be realistic. The law itself in the series is a joke, it's meant to be as simple as possible so that could be understandable for the player. But I noticed in the last Ace Attorney games they tend to exaggerate all their topics. In the previous games, you could somehow see that some topics were close to the real life, for example, the role of each character during the crime. But in this Spirit of Justice, they treat lawyer like gods and demons. Like if they only exist in a fantasy world. "The law system decided to kill all the rebel lawyers" are we serious? How can you compare this to a real life fact? You can't, because it's unrealistic. And so is unrealistic most of this game. It's this game meant to be fun? Yes. But I remember when Ace Attorney was also serious. 4) Storytelling: Short message about how they wrote the cases: three writers devided 6 cases (including the DLC), and you can easily see who wrote what. The first two cases have a large amount of gallery speaking. In the first case, in particular, it's very annoying. The third and fifth case are known for the veeery long pauses with dots. You only read dots everytime they have to say something. It's really annoying in the game. The fourth case is probably the best written case in the game, and personally maybe the best case in the game, even if I didn't like it so much due to some motives. In conclusion... Spirit of Justice is a fun game, somewhat, but with Dual Destinies they just don't work like the previous games.