prosecutor's gambit? more like, prosecutor's... not-it
※ WARNING: i'm going to be really mean about the game "ace attorney investigations 2: prosecutor's gambit" in this post. there will also be spoilers for the entire... game, both games.
to start off, i guess you could say i'm a fan of the ace attorney game series, otherwise known as "gyakuten saiban / 逆転裁判" in japan. the initial localized release for the DS received a very low production run, and after gaining significant popularity online for its gameplay and entertaining script, it took me forever to find a copy locally. i searched high and low until i found one and have been a fish on a hook when it comes to takumi's suspenseful writing ever since.
so. i was hyped to see that they were finally localizing the second game in the miles edgeworth spin-off series, the only one that merely existed to fans in the west as a fan translation. a fan translation i did not play.
and, well. now i see how much i missed. or didn't miss, and i regret it. i have never regretted playing a game in this series so hard before. not even when they were forcefully spoon-feeding me the worst instance of a "childhood friend" backstory ever with clay and apollo in dual destinies. not even in the first investigations game when the last case went on for five hundred years over territorial rights with a guy who coulda just walked away.
anyway. the game.
good stuff—
- "eustace winner" ended up being a relatively decent character. he starts out as a complete bumbling idiot who can't tell his autopsy report from an obituary, and ends as a complete bumbling idiot who still doesn't fully get the ins-and-outs of being a prosecutor, but the way he comes to his own conclusions and doesn't give up after a little encouragement makes his character particularly endearing to me. i also appreciate that the game specifically lets you correct him on his phrasing, where coddling him like so many others have done is specifically not the right choice. he's a prime example of what the game does right for once with its new mechanics. and when he does get coddled, it's by the hot mommy character that seems to be assisting him so he doesn't crack his head open on the concrete. it was a nice change of pace to have an opponent be so... daft, and for that daftness of his to be entertaining. even if he totally just vanished at the end of the game immediately after getting a chance to confront his trauma? goodbye, actually relevant character.
- continuing on that point, positing eustace's daddy issues alongside edgeworth and franziska's was really good and had tons of potential. they scratched the surface of it in a way i was okay with. kind of like scraping at the soft shell of a hard boiled egg with your nail.
- getting to play as edgeworth's dad, gregory, and go toe-to-toe with manfred von karma. it made me think for a minute this might be a good game.
- shi-long lang came back! did he have any entertaining dialogue or make any decent arguments like his appearance in the first game? no. but he did come back, and he has a pretty decent theme song.
- uhm... the cute animals, i guess.
not so great stuff—
- yamazaki takeshi's approach to macro storytelling within ace attorney when it's outside of the courtroom. i had to wrack my brain over and over as to why the value shift of every reveal felt more and more contrived as things went on, and i think for me it's that taking "ace attorney" away from the courtroom setting makes it feel several degrees less urgent. it ironically feels less like an argument of wits and evidence and more a bunch of "gotcha" moments where several of the pivotal turning points of the story are brought to light based on conjecture, even the final case "villain" ends up calling edgeworth out on his he-said-she-said no evidence bullshit. conjecture that has to be substantiated by facts that you don't even discover yourself as evidence gets retroactively added in arguments, where, yes—the original ace attorney trilogy frequently updates evidence mid-court case, but it's generally contained to THAT case in general with just enough backstory obtained from a narrative a couple cases ago. in this game, every single case is relevant to the overall plot, forcing every single character to be present for the endgame reveals even if they have nothing entertaining to say and all it did was end up pissing me off.
- absolutely vapid jokes from kay faraday. i guess the default little girl companion is very much a "your mileage may vary" situation, but this one in particular had little to nothing to add to... any conversation. i couldn't even feel for her entire amnesiac situation, even if i thought the way they utilized her in the first game was pretty interesting. maybe because she straight-up stopped exhibiting her thieving skills and just started bragging for most of the game? she's pursuing the truth her father sought out supposedly, and is "in-training", but she never actually delves into the truth further than making snap judgments here and there. we already had a sidekick to give idiotic commentary here and there with gumshoe. did we really need another? not that she needs to be the brightest, but. whatever. she just felt like wasted potential. i liked her more when she had no memories.
- the way they shoehorned ema into the story???? solely to have a reason to use the luminol fluid? where the instant you didn't need the mechanic, she just fucked off to who knows where?
- no offense to the composer, iwadare, because i
reallylove his work for the first four games and also the great ace attorney duology, but he really phoned in when it came to this soundtrack. which is... an especially big sticking point for me in this series because it helps build immersion and an emotional connection for the mystery. to have fairly mild themes for turning points in the story that are supposed to get you hyped as fuck was so... yeah. the only new themes i can recall off the top of my head that i really enjoyed were the character themes for carmelo gusto and kay faraday when she has amnesia. whenever an old character showed up, i was welcomed by their familiar theme, which helped me relax for a bit and reminded me that the rest of the series isn't so ass. - mfing "mind chess", where the characters you argue with seem to have no reason to just put up with the annoyance. i saw this lauded as an amazing brand-new mechanic everywhere and was excited for it, but it's so hilariously tedious and actually not all that... clever. it's just "select the correct line of dialogue based on their posturing, and if you get it wrong, the game will directly feed you what you need to do". there's only one mind chess argument i can recall that felt really intuitive and creative, and thank god for it, considering the character you're arguing with. "but mandy, court cases and psyche locks in the original ace attorney trilogy were just arguing albeit with evidence to present". yes, i know. but those arguments are preceded with warnings of imminent risk depending on how far you are, and actually have good music. the framing of the game within the courtroom presents a unique sense of urgency and a reason as to why people can't just walk up and leave (with a couple narrative caveats like damon gant).
- they provided an intriguing commentary on verity's emotional impartiality towards the law, but then undermined it immediately by making her overly vulnerable in the last case. like. way too vulnerable. okay.
i guess ultimately, after having finished, i'm not really sure edgeworth needed... to have his own spin-off series. like, did he really need to go through an arc and question his purpose at this point in time after already struggling with his identity in the original trilogy proper? positioning edgeworth as a protagonist also made him lose a lot of his usual stuffiness that is prevalent when he's being written by takumi. in order to make the investigations scenarios work, they essentially have to sanitize him and that doesn't sit right with me. he's not even close to being my favorite character in the series and it irked me. the game constantly complains about edgeworth's "rude expressions" towards the other characters but doesn't actually make him rude enough, and that alone says enough about how stiff the character writing is in this duology.
oh well. after getting all of this off my chest, i traded in my copy. goodbye to the 80+ hours i spent on this. i don't think i'll ever see the need to replay it.