Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

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The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures

Platforms: Nintendo 3DS (Jp only), iOS (Jp only), PS4, Nintendo Switch (reviewed), PC

Capcom's cult classic Ace Attorney series had been out of commission for years. After releasing the sixth mainline entry, Spirit of Justice, in the West in 2016 on the 3DS (digital only, like all of their Ace Attorney releases since the NDS days), Capcom went radio silent for years on the series. What made this especially frustrating was that, in 2015, the first of a duology of spinoff games, Dai Gyakuten Saiban, had released but never made its way to Western shores. This was also true of its direct sequel, also released on the Nintendo 3DS in Japan two years after. Fans had a pretty good idea why they were never localized. Unlike the mainline games, where the setting was changed from modern-day Japan to near-future California (albeit a version of California with a curious number of temples and ancient Japanese clans), the setting of these spinoff games couldn't be altered, because they were period pieces and dealt with cultural differences between people living in Meiji-era Japan and Victorian England. Additionally, there were rumored copyright issues thanks to Sherlock Holmes being a major character in these games. Over the years, an unofficial translation patch was released for the first game and fans lost hope that they'd ever see officially translated versions of these games. Like Ace Attorney Investigations 2 before it, these games seemed to be destined to remain unlocalized forever.

Fast forward to 2021, and hope sprung anew with leaks of a possible collection of the games on modern systems. Eventually, Capcom officially acknowledged the project: Dai Gyakuten Saiban 1 & 2, being officially localized as The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures and The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve, were releasing in remastered HD form in The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles collection. This collection featured both games, all DLC included by default, and for the first time since 2010 (not counting the Professor Layton crossover published by Nintendo), an Ace Attorney game was enjoying a full physical release on at least one of the release platforms (the Switch). As you might imagine, this was an... emotional reveal for long-time fans like myself who had patiently waited for Capcom to officially localize these games.

Unsurprisingly, I jumped on it ASAP. The collection released recently, on the 27th of July, and I've already completed the first game in the collection. I thought about waiting until I'd played both and reviewing them together, but they released years apart in Japan and so, I believe, must be considered as separate releases. So this review will only be discussing the first game in the set.

While it retains the basic gameplay associated with the mainline Ace Attorney games, The Great Ace Attorney (or TGAA) is weird many other respects. The most obvious difference from the mainline games is found in the setting and cast: set more than a hundred years before the other games in the series, this functions as a soft reboot of sorts. While this didn't necessarily go over well with Japanese Ace Attorney fans (sales of both games weren't amazing in that region), this makes it an ideal entry for new fans to familiarize themselves with the series, as it casts aside decades of accumulated lore, world-building, in-jokes, etc. that have served to make the mainline games more than a little intimidating and inaccessible to get into as time has gone on. There are a few minor references that long-time fans will get, of course, but, for all intents and purposes, this is a clean slate for the series: featuring a wildly different setting, a totally brand new cast of characters, changes to the formula, new game mechanics, etc.

The historical context of the game is interesting. Helpful to appreciating the themes of this game is knowing that Japanese civilization, under the Tokugawa Shogunate, maintained a severely isolationist policy in the early 1800s, known as sakoku, which had been maintained for hundreds of years until Matthew Perry, a commodore of the United States Navy, forced open the ports of Japan for trade with the United States in 1854. The game doesn't give explicit dates for when events take place, but key references to the Meiji government, which succeeded the fall of the Shogunate and officially established the Empire of Japan in 1868, and allusions to the idea of Japanese defense lawyers being new at the time and the turn of the century drawing near seem to suggest the action of the game takes place in the 1890s or thereabouts.

Of course, when cultures initially meet on the world stage, it's not at all uncommon for the balance of power in their relationship to be wildly unequal. In the case of TGAA, we see Japan, newly opened up to broader world politics after centuries of functional isolation, struggling to impress dominant Western powers like Great Britain. This manifests in an ugly way in the very first case of the game, when our intrepid hero, Ryunosuke Naruhodo (ostensibly an ancestor to the more well-known Phoenix Wright of the mainline Ace Attorney games), is framed for the murder of a visiting British medical professor, and the government seems more interested in quickly finding him guilty in a court of law in order to ease tensions with the British government than respecting the rights of one of their own countrymen.

The truth about the murder is discovered and Ryunosuke is cleared, of course, because the hero of our game isn't going to be sitting behind a prison cell for the rest of his life. His legal student friend Kazuma Asogi, who has been granted permission by the British government to practice law overseas, smuggles him on-board a ship and the two, along with Kazuma's legal assistant Susato Mikotoba, set sail to England. Events transpire, and eventually it is Ryunosuke himself who finds himself practicing law in England alongside Susato, as the two meet a cast of interesting personalities (including Sherlock Holmes!... sort of) and unwittingly become embroiled in a conspiracy that will come to dominate much of the game's plot.

I say this game features Sherlock Holmes, but despite the majority of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories about the Great Detective supposedly being in the public domain now, ten of his stories remain copyrighted in the U.S., and the Doyle estate makes it difficult for the character to freely appear in media in the West, so, in a tradition going back to author Maurice LeBlanc's ingenious evasion of copyright laws when he wanted his gentleman thief Arsene Lupin to face off against the detective, the character appearing in this game is actually called "Herlock Sholmes." Other references have been altered as well: Dr. Watson, for example, is now Dr. Wilson.

The writers for this game appear to possess a deep love for Doyle's creation, as sly references to and send-ups of his stories appear throughout the game (although initially missed by me, my interest in this game has spurred me to look more deeply into the Sherlock Holmes stories). This game features one of the more unusual and memorable portrayals of the detective himself. Eschewing the usual characterizations writers tend to go for, this version of "Herlock" is a sort of loveable buffoon. A genius, for sure, but one who is so impulsive and childish that he is constantly letting his imagination run away from him and consequently makes "deductions" that are entirely off-base. One of the major new game mechanics in this duology actually centers around this. In theatrical "Dance of Deduction" sequences, Herlock will explain his insights, the specifics of which are usually wrong, and the player will need to redirect his attention throughout to course-correct his deductions about a situation.

Otherwise, TGAA generally plays like an Ace Attorney game. Playing as Ryunosuke, the player will click on people and objects in mostly static environments in point-and-click fashion to advance the plot and discover clues during investigations. During trials, the player will press witnesses and present evidence when confronted with contradictions. The only other major change to the gameplay is one that's actually inherited from creator Shu Takumi's previous project, Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. As in that game, European-style (in this case, British) courts make use of a jury system, and there are sequences throughout the latter half of the game where the player will have to convince jurors to not submit their rulings hastily and talk them out of ending the trial early.

With that said, some of the formulaic gameplay of previous Ace Attorney games has been loosened. Of the game's five trials, two feature no investigation sequences at all, and one doesn't feature trial gameplay. TGAA, far more than previous titles in the series, is tightly written and structured, with more of an emphasis placed on building a serialized narrative, and the structure of each case is subservient to the direction of the narrative.

Combine that with the structure of this spin-off as a duology, and one of the more divisive aspects of this game will become clear: in many ways, it feels less like a full-fledged Ace Attorney game and more like a massive, expanded prologue to the second game in the series. TGAA spends so long setting up its story that, by the time you feel like the game has properly started, you're near the end. Case 4 (of 5) is the first one in the game that feels like a full-length Ace Attorney case.

That sounds like a rather scathing criticism, but it's never really to the game's detriment, if I'm being honest. Unlike other duologies I've played, TGAA doesn't feel like it's spinning its narrative wheels building up to the second game. Rather, there's a lot of groundwork to cover, and it's all done fairly well. Character relationships and the setting admittedly receive most of the attention: Ryunosuke and Susato are fish out of water in Victorian England, and the game goes out of its way to explore cultural differences of all varieties. Surprisingly, there's a strong realist element to the way interactions between your ethnically Japanese main characters and the lily white English cast play out, insofar as the game is filled-to-overflowing with almost casually racist comments being tossed your way (even by friends on occasion). It's obnoxiously omnipresent, with even jurors and the prosecutor you face off against in the latter half of the game casting aspersions on your heritage, and it really cements the impression that you're very much an outsider in this society, with your every motive being questioned throughout. One of your clients in this game is also an ethnically Japanese person, who you feel obliged to defend after finding out that nobody else in London wants to defend them in court.

The focus of the game isn't really on condemning the white supremacist mindsets that must have dominated in England during that time period, but it's critical to understanding the nature of the relationship between the British Empire and Japan at the time, and how it goes on to inform inequities in their public relations. It's not all hostility, of course, and a large focus is placed on the characters as they freshly experience a society that's wildly alien to the one they grew up in. Your legal assistant Susato is a massive fan of Herlock Sholmes' serialized stories and has found herself becoming fascinating with English society as a result: there's an almost giddy glee the first time she sees an English bobby on the street, for example.

The cast isn't huge, but, in the style of an epic, it highlights people from all walks of life, from politicians and crooked businessmen to detectives, merchants, renters, and even pickpockets. Like with the approach to its historical setting, there's a distinct groundedness to most of this cast that is unusual for an Ace Attorney game, which helps to sell its more serious tone. Unlike the mainline Ace Attorney games, most of which are deeply farcical and almost comic book-ish in tone, these games attempt to moderate their tone and situate their cast firmly in something approximating the real world.

Because of this more realistic approach to the Ace Attorney universe, the mysteries you encounter are wholly realistic scenarios, and Ryunosuke won't be able to rely on any of the lawyer superpowers or occult nonsense that his descendant has used to solve mysteries before. Consequently, far more than in previous games, there's a preoccupation with court procedure, rules for the admissibility of evidence , etc. that your characters are forced to struggle with when defending their clients. If there is a touch of the fanciful in the main cast, it's likely found in Herlock Sholmes' young partner, Iris Wilson, a ten-year-old child prodigy who shares lodgings with the Great Detective and helps by inventing new gadgets. Also worth mentioning is the prosecutor you face off against in this game: an intimidating, almost vampiric man named Barok van Zieks whose gimmick appears to be centered around wine. He'll frequently pour glasses of wine, shatter bottles and glasses when angry, make references to wine in his arguments, etc. Combine that with the urban legend surrounding the character, which states that anyone prosecuted by him will meet with an untimely end (he's popularly known as the "Reaper of the Bailey"), and it's hard to shake the distinct impression that your greenhorned young lawyer is matching wits with Dracula himself.

The more grounded approach of TGAA extends to the soundtrack as well, as the hyper-dramatic synth tracks of previous games are replaced by more deliberate and powerful orchestral pieces. The soundtrack features compositions that mix European and classical Japanese musical influences together effectively, which also reflects the primary theme of the game: the coming together of radically different cultures, for good and for ill.

Production-wise, the animation work for the game's 3D models are absolutely superb, given their origins on the humble Nintendo 3DS, and, in general, the HD upscaling has resulted in a product that looks like it could have launched on the Switch from the start. With that said, the game's origins are clear when you actually play it, as, in the game's final case, the concept of stereoscopic 3D plays a major role, and there's actually a gameplay mechanic that must have originally made use of the system's 3D capabilities. There's a workaround in the HD remaster, of course, but it feels a bit off until you consider the capabilities of the original host platform.

In terms of control, in addition to the usual support for sticks and buttons, the game is also fully controllable by using the system's pretty wildly underutilized touch screen. Probably an imported feature from the mobile version of the game. It's good fun sliding off the joycons and just playing it like a tablet game, tapping on various areas of the screen, even if I'm happy for the presence of more traditional controls as well.

While the Switch doesn't support a system-wide achievements system, Capcom went the extra mile by incorporating in-game achievements for both games in the collection. As with PS4 trophies, it's a good way to incentivize engaging with the game more fully in certain respects.

I probably won't bother looking too deeply into the DLC and bonus features until I complete the second game, but it does seem quite extensive. Capcom did an amazing job making this feel like a premium release.

While arguably weakened a bit by uneven pacing and the need to fully establish the groundwork needed for the second game's presumably higher-stakes conflicts and storylines, The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures still shines as one of the better games in the series, and an interesting spin-off in its own right. Its more serious storytelling, focus on character development, orchestrated soundtrack, and period setting distinguish it beautifully from the mainline series. I usually wait months or years before playing successive games in a series, but I'm so invested in this narrative that it probably won't be long at all before I return to the sequel and blow through that over a couple of weeks filled with sleepless nights where I curl up under my covers with the Switch held a few inches from my face. More than anything, though, I'm just so happy we're getting more Ace Attorney again after years of nothing from Capcom.

9/10

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Just Cause 3

Now I never write reviews. I just don’t have the time, when I could be actually gaming instead of writing… but working to highlight the virtues of playing Just Cause 3 to the uninitiated is a Worthy Ideal 😉. The reason being that in my opinion it’s a bit of an under appreciated gem that most people should have access to either through PS+ or as it is just so inexpensive (it’s always on sale on the PS Store… it’s little over £2.00 as I write this). So, if you’re looking for a fun diversion from your usual gaming tastes or just have nothing to play right now it could be worth the effort of installing it.

Tongue-in-cheek
So pretty much everything about the game is ‘silly’. The story, the abilities of the protagonist (Rico Rodriguez) and the carnage you wreak in the name of maintaining a fair and ‘just’ capitalist hegemony. This is all intentional though, the developers clearly have their tongue firmly planted in their cheek for this and is all in the interest of providing the player with the ultimate ‘playground of destruction’. I use that term intentionally to harken back to the great PlayStation 2 title Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction. The Just Cause series basically fills the void left by that classic game and dials everything up to eleven as it does so. It also adds a few ‘bells-and-whistles’ to the formula which just refine the overall feel and are distinctly Just Cause.

Gameplay Loop
As the anointed ‘Mr. Gameplay-king’ around here, I feel perfectly qualified to extol the virtues of the glory that is Just Cause 3’s moment-to-moment gameplay. Unlike most games based in and around military conflict, there is little to no tactics here. No patience required, no need to play in any other style than all-out offence. I’m not denigrating games that do the opposite here, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is one of my favourite games of all-time… yet is the total antithesis of Just Cause 3.

So why does it work? Well it’s just plain satisfying on a couple of key levels. First and foremost, the way in which you navigate your way around the huge open-world is in my opinion the best traversal system in all of gaming! The grapple-hook and wingsuit combo is just ‘bottled-lightening’. It is not easy to master… and even once you have you can still end up looking stupid if your concentration breaks for a moment but it is oh so much fun. The control and precision you are able to utilise once you have mastered the use of these two tools in combination is a thing to behold. The gaming fraternity have heaped praise on Insomniac’s Spider-man games due to its ‘feel’ as you swing around New York but it pales into comparison to the grapple hook-wingsuit combo for me. Sure there is more room for error with Spider-man but you don’t get satisfaction from a wide margin for error… you get satisfaction from threading the eye of a needle at breakneck speed.

It’s a great ‘world’ to traverse too. Varied terrain, beautiful vistas and it’s filled to the brim with locations. In addition to the traversal, there is the destruction… and in this regard Just Cause 3 is the gaming equivalent of bubble-wrap. There is a lot of ‘physics’ going on within this game-world. Not everything is destructible but a great deal (anything coloured red and grey typically) is… and there are many methods that can be employed to do so. You will have a menagerie of guns and explosives, armed vehicles (which also provide alternate means of world traversal)… but also your tethers. If you are wanting to preserve ammunition, or just like the extra control afforded by the tethers. You can attach them to anything within range… and then once attached, you can contract them with the use of L2. There is a wide variety of uses for these too. I managed to find a particularly cool looking speed boat in a small land-locked lake but couldn’t really get the most out of it in such a small pool of water. So I went and ‘procured’ a particularly strong helicopter from a local military base, hovered over the speedboat that had caught my eye, strategically attached my six tethers between the topside of the boat and the underside of my chopper and then ever so carefully flew her out to sea. So cool!

Gunplay/combat is mediocre. As I’ve alluded to, there is little tactics involved just reaction based action. It does have a major gripe of mine in this regard, that of using L3 to access fine aim rather than L2. In this case I think it’s down to the sheer amount of actions that Rico has at his disposal… and therefore L2 (& L1) were better utilised for other things but it still doesn’t feel quite right to me. You do get used to it though and you’ll be amazed by quite how creative you can be in how you choose to dispatch enemies during the heat of the action.

Missions are pretty run-of-the-mill in all honesty but the main thrust of the game is that the player should make their own fun. There are loads of military bases, occupied towns and cities and also skills-based challenges to complete as and when you like… and that is where the main game lies.

Variety
I was a big fan of Just Cause 2 back on the PlayStation 3 but I have to admit that although it provided a lot of what I described above in the gameplay loop (minus the wingsuit)… it did get a bit samey after a while. In fairness the same can be said about Just Cause 3 as there is just so many bases, conurbations and challenges to get through… but there is definitely more variety in this instalment. That said, I myself took a break (four years!) from playing it before returning to it due to this very fact. It wasn’t that I wasn’t enjoying the game but after playing it solidly for around 3 weeks I’d had my fill for a while. I hadn’t intended that ‘while’ to last four years but out of sight, out of mind… and it completely fell off my radar. I’m so glad a friend contacted me and asked if I didn’t mind helping him out with one of the online trophies as if he hadn’t, I might never have returned to it.

Having said all of that, there is variety here though. There are around 150 skills based challenges dotted around the map and are split up into eight disciplines. And if you are a completionist like me, getting a five star rating (or five gear rating to be more precise) is a proper challenge. There were moments where the requirements literally seemed impossible… but with patience and a willingness to learn it is all achievable ‘just’. There were moments when attempting some of these challenges where the combination of focus and adrenaline were almost overwhelming. There is just no room for error… and as a result, success is well earned and of huge satisfaction. Getting five stars (or gears) on some of the wingsuit courses rivals the satisfaction that I have felt from anything else in gaming.

Frame-rate, Loading & Servers
The game generated a lot of negative buzz on release due to frame-rate issues and long load times and they are still a thing sadly, though somewhat less so than originally from what I gather. On returning to the game after playing The Last of Us: Remastered at 60 fps was tough. The dropped frames and frame-pacing issues actually gave me a headache during that first session and as a result I actually considered quitting after helping my friend with that trophy. Something ‘stuck’ though and I returned to it the following day for a proper session. Pretty quickly I knew it was the right choice to stick with it as my vision acclimated to the rate and pacing of frames. It was rarely even noticeable after that.

Loading-wise, there is a lengthy initial ‘load’ as the game connects to the Square Enix servers. Said servers are… ‘dodgy’ at best too. Not only was I kicked out of them semi-regularly causing a further lengthy ‘load’ as it reconnected but also I was initially completely unable to access the servers at all. You see, the game tracks your ‘feats’ (your mastery of the games various skills) and measures them against your friends’ scores in the same category. Thing is, if you have too many friends (in this case, over 99), the servers can’t handle it. So as a result, I had to do a little ‘pruning’ of my friends list in order to even get online with it… but I’ve saved all of my ‘snips’ and I’ll be sending out a load of fresh Friend Requests now that I’ve got the Platinum trophy. Hopefully I’ll manage to get a decent percentage of them back in the fold as it were.

Also, if and when you attempt the challenges, there is a decent load time for each one. So, if like me you want to properly conquer them (ie many attempts at each one) be prepared for many loading screens between each effort.

Verdict
There are some drawbacks in terms of the technical limitations but ultimately it just plays so well from moment-to-moment that in the end I had to look past them. I had already bought the game prior to it being added to PS+ but if I hadn’t this would go down as the best PS+ game ever for me. This is a massive game in terms of both map-size and things-to-do… and as I’ve waxed lyrically about, it is always incredibly fun and satisfying to play while doing so. So fun in fact that I have already checked if there is a separate trophy list for the XXL edition (sadly there isn’t) as I would buy it again and schedule it in for next year or the year after. Oh well I guess I’ll just have to make do with Just Cause 4.

As far as sandbox offerings go there is a lot to choose from these days and there are certainly more polished examples out there. GTAV and Red Dead Redemption 2 have a better story, characters and performances (& straight-up performance for that matter) but in my opinion they are nowhere near as much fun. If you enjoy open-world games, you could definitely do a far sight worse than giving this third instalment of Rico Rodriguez’s exploits a go.