case by case: 5-2: TENMA BALLZ
It's time once again for Case by Case, a Mondaily ritual to make Garfields everywhere jealous in which some Ace Attorney is played and then subsequently written about. Last week we blew up a courtroom; this week Athena teaches us that it's always ethical to lie to and assault cops. Spoilers after the cut.
This is the case where we meet this game's prosecutor, Simon Blackquill, convicted murderer and powerful edgelord. He's openly manipulative and occasionally does threats of violence that are taken a little more seriously than Franziska's whip (probably because of the whole convicted murderer thing). Athena also seems to know him, though they are playing that extremely coy right now. (We also meet Fulbright here, who . . . we will deal with later.)
The murder in this case is so elaborate the characters talk about how unnecessarily elaborate it is; our murderer (a queer-coded-as-villainous character named L'Belle) is trying to steal some gold which itself is being protected by some elaborate stories about yokai to discourage villagers from expressing interest in it, and instead of just breaking into the vault he is trying to push a municipal merger in order to gain legitimate access to it and steal it, and he needs to murder the victim and frame our client to manipulate public opinion in such a way that the merger goes through without a hitch? Meanwhile a petty thief manages to just . . . break in, and further complicate things in that fashion. It does make for a lot of "aha" moments, but it does feel like it may be complicated just for the sake of being complicated. Still, some fun is had in our client pretending to be possessed by the demon and just some colorful characters in general.
Investigation segments in this one now much more guided than before; there's even a "notes" page with your current goal if you get lost, but getting lost is quite difficult. Characters will usually outright say where to go next, and when you have finished examining a scene they will say that you're done examining the scene, and sometimes they will actually move you to your next destination. They did add a cool 3D aspect to the actual examining, so you can look at things from different angles; this is a nice touch, though of course the old hand-drawn backgrounds will be missed. But overall I miss the more free form investigations; while it is much easier to get stuck on some random thing you forgot to click on there, you have more agency, which makes you feel more like you are actually doing an investigation rather than just following a series of prompts, which in turn makes you feel more invested in what you're finding and more likely to think about it. This style makes things more frictionless, and that friction is kind of important, in my extremely good opinion.
(But maybe I'm remembering wrong and the rest of the game is better about this? I am not remembering the investigation segments for the future cases, which does suggest that they are probably similarly frictionless, but it could also just mean I've forgotten that I liked them.)
This is also the case which introduces us to our new twist revelation . . . mechanic-type-thing at the climax, where you get a cinematic brain-thinky moment that recontextualizes a piece of evidence so that it becomes the final nail in the coffin of our murder man du jour. It's a much more cinematic way of dealing with that final moment than the old way; and if you get it right the first time you still get to feel clever, but if you have no idea what the twist is you don't get punished for failing and don't have to sit through just spamming evidence until you land on the correct piece. So while this technically removes a penalty for failing, I think it overall ends up feeling better.
I am overall fairly neutral on this case. It's got some good moments, it's got a regrettable murderer . . . it's fine. I can imagine some people really enjoying the multitudinous twists and revelations, but overall I felt like they were laying it on pretty thick. But that's far from a fatal flaw; I still had fun.
Anyway, that's all for this week! Next week we get to delve into the terrifying and sinister world of academia. Join me next week, if you dare.