Finished up last night. It was a fun game, but aside from the freshness of the cast and setting I can't say it's all that great of an AA game. It's good and serviceable for sure, but really does nothing to advance the series as a whole and more often than not feels like a continued regression. Granted this is 4 years old and was made after AA5 and slightly before AA6, so it's not exactly recent or indicative of the series' trajectory, but all the same for a game largely unfettered by the baggage of the original series it didn't do a whole lot with it.
My biggest gripe is its even further reduction and simplification of the Investigation/Trial setup, which really saps the tension and development of cases as there's little to no depth them. Investigation periods are mostly perfunctory and most things are left to the Trial period, and a single one at that, often with exceedingly few actual witnesses. Overall the case quality was rather poor with an excessive number of contrivances required to reach their finales, especially Case 5's ending which felt like needless padding that served no purpose but to add additional drama to the trial. Again the lack of real satisfying conclusions to many cases left a bitter taste the game never fully justified in my opinion. It tried for something new, which I appreciate but it did not pan out. Complaints about how the game leaves so many threads open is very valid even knowing there is a second game that will resolve them. It felt like anything of interest was simply a hint or tease for events in the next game. Really one single loose thread was actually tied up in this game and it wasn't really all that satisfying and that in turn still led to another new mystery.
I really liked van Zieks, but he was poorly utilized to say the least. He has zero development outside an end game line hinting at some deeper history left to the next game. Naruhodou's arc is solid, but not amazing. Their intentions with him were interesting but I don't think they did a very good job of actually interrogating and conveying this unlikely/uncertain Attorney and his struggles with knowing what he's fighting for. Susato and Holmes were very good supporting characters, despite not having a great deal of depth or development to them. Iris blows. Many of the other supporting characters were decent and all that, but they failed to really establish a good repertoire between everyone, again something I see as a casualty of the limited Investigation/Trial setup. As well as a product of the overall story they were trying to tell. Original AA trilogy had a lot of interactions between many characters inside and outside the court allowing for a much broader and well rounded development of them and in relation to one another. That just did not exist here very much. There was rarely any breathing room or good setup to the cases. Case 5 is the only with any kind of lead up.
To the game's credit the multi-person Testimonies and Jury system were good additions and did make things somewhat interesting. But overall they were too simple, lacking any real challenge or critical thinking, and never really elevated the experience for me. They failed to justify the increased focus and the extreme limitation of single day trials. I do look forward to the sequel and hope that Scarlet Study are able to quickly turn that around, I think they did a fantastic job all around and really appreciate all the hard work they put into things. It was seriously top notch work. But yeah I'm keeping expectations somewhat low for GAA2 all the same.
