the last ace attorney game i played was AAI, around the time of its release, so it's been a LONG time since i have played any AA games, and a lot of what i remember from playing the original 5 games on the DS is from my not so clear memories. my expectations for AAI2 were pretty high, based on the impressions i remember reading from people who played the japanese version, and the people who played the game when the fan translation came out, many of whom said this one was one of the best in the series, comparing it to AA3.
i have to say, i'm pretty disappointed. there were definitely things i liked about the game, but i didn't end up loving the game as much as i wanted to.
the good: it's ace attorney. it has a certain charm that i'll always love and there's never anything quite like it. the main characters, the silly humor, the dramatic twists, those i liked in every AA game i've played and this game was not an exception.
i liked how all cases were closely related and it all came together in the end, and the game didn't have any cases where it felt like a huge dive in quality compared to the rest of them. i also liked the first case for feeling like a proper case and not a short tutorial. my favorite was probably the third case, i liked playing as gregory and ray, and solving a case in two time periods in the same place was pretty fun.
the bad: this game was FUCKING EXHAUSTING! i was much younger when i played the previous games, so i was probably a more patient person back then (even tho i still remember the first AAI game being too long and cases going on for way longer than they should). i remember being so hooked on the older games that i started and finished them on my first play through in a few days, but this one took me a few months. i just couldn't play it for long before i felt like it was enough. the cases would just not end, every time i was like nowaynowaynoway this is gonna go on for longer and something meaningless would come up and the case would go on and on.
it also didn't help that so much of the game was just reading text and the actual investigation was pretty minimal. the investigation in front of the orphanage in the last case was pretty awesome, with how it felt like actual detective work in learning how the crime happened. i would have loved it if the game had more of that. but it usually ended up being just a short investigation followed by never ending dialogue where you had minimal input. i don't necessary have a problem with that in AA games or in visual novels, but it bothered me for some reason in this game, probably because i always felt like so much of the dialogue is redundant and it's taking too long to get to a point that i as a player know it's gonna get to. a good example of excruciatingly long sections in the game is the scenes in court with blaise and patricia rolland on the stand.
the new system, logic chess, was alright. it didn't add a whole lot that couldn't have been done in normal dialogue or rebuttals, but i was fine with it and it didn't bother me.
i felt like many of the new characters ended up not being that good. they were either not that good from the start, or ended up having unsatisfactory character arcs. the main villains were pretty lackluster. i posted earlier in this thread regarding how i felt about blaise. he was in the awkward place between stupid and evil, i didn't like his design, and he ended up being pretty forgettable. simon was pretty bleh too. his reveal as the mastermind felt out of place and he ended up being a pretty weird villain, don't know exactly how to say it but his schtick of kind of admitting to things in front of 20 people and then taking it back felt awkward.
speaking of 20 people, it definitely felt like there were way too many people around later in the game. they just kept adding and not removing anyone. lotta hart and nicole swift were definitely not needed to be there all the way to the end.
i loved most of the returning characters and cameos, specially shi-long who ended up being quite good. franziska was good too even tho she could have been more involved.
sebastian was a good new character that i felt like had a satisfying arc, compared to ray shields and justine courtney who i initially liked, but ended up being not that well developed. ray was definitely good in the third case, but he was seriously under utilized in the later cases to the point that i would forgot he's there sometimes and be surprised when he popped up. also i wasn't a fan of him creepily wanting to hug every female character. courtney was a good initial villain, but her transformation felt very sudden and then after that she ended up being just there and very uncharacteristically weak, and just going along with the motions.
overall i'm glad that i played this game. this is a series that i want to play all the games in, and i'm really thankful that the fantastic fan translation exists. maybe i'm being too nit-picky and pointing out things that were wrong with the earlier games and i just have a bad memory of those games, but my 15 or 16 year old self was probably more forgiving.
