the vaudeville ghost house

case by case: 3-5: a terrible fey-t

It seems like just yesterday that I started my universally beloved Case by Case series, a young, bright-eyed vaudeville ghost full of hopes and dreams and a desire to play a lot of Ace Attorney games over the span of approximately a year if my calculations are correct. Now we're already wrapping up the original trilogy with the big finale case. Last week, of course, was the setup; this one is the payoff. Let's dig in! Spoilers after the cut.


I think this might be my favorite case so far. As is appropriate for a finale, it's got a bit of everything: we've got Edgeworth, we've got Franziska, we've got the Feys, we've got mystic nonsense--even Larry showing up can't bring it down. This is wrapping up not just this game's story arc, but the whole story arc with Maya's clan, and it's a nice capstone for Phoenix's overall arc. And it does all of this with some great character moments, a very satisfying mystery, and overall just a great story.

This definitely feels like a finale, and I think it outshines the previous two finale cases; part of that is that there's a lot more emotional payoff and part of it is that this game has spent way more time actually building up to the finale, where neither of the previous ones really did. It's also just a very solid mystery, and while some of the deductions you're expected to make concerning Godot feel like they could be something of a leap if you don't yet know what's going on, I do actually kind of like that the setup for those deductions happened in previous cases.

And the other reason this feels like a finale is it really does feel like this finishes a character arc for Phoenix. As I understand it this was originally intended to be the last game in the series, and, like . . . it makes sense to call it here, you know? This feels complete. A strong finish to a strong trilogy, and this isn't one of those series where it takes a while to get good; it's immediately compelling, and it's easy to see why it has such a devoted following.

I'm looking forward to the less-accurately-named Apollo Justice Trilogy; in particular my initial thoughts on playing Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney were that it suffered for being designed for the DS and that a remake on modern consoles could do it a lot of favors. We'll talk about that when we get to the bits I'm thinking of. For now, we've got a lot to look forward to coming up, so I hope you won't "object" to sticking around with me for that. Until next week, friends.

(do you get it object because shouting "objection" is what you do in these games)
(i do this for you, friends)

#case by case