case by case: 6-4: the one with the horny clown
Welcome back, friends and enemies, to Case by Case! We're going through the Ace Attorney games one by one (because playing them all simultaneously sounds difficult); last week we exposed government corruption that probably should have been pretty obvious; this week, it's time for balloons! Yay! Spoilers after the cut.
I don't keep a clock running for these but prior to this game, most of the cases have taken more or less six hours to finish; this one took less than three, including the time it took for me to run some errands at the halfway point. That's pretty short! There was no investigation segment, only two trial segments, and only three witnesses (plus our defendant occasionally popped up to drop some truth bombs or whatever). Not a complaint, just an observation, and a bit of explanation for how they managed to get six cases into this game.
That said, this one is a lot more interesting than your usual tutorial case, despite having a comparable length. We have a witness with dissociative identity disorder, and the game treats them with a surprising amount of respect; we have the horny clown; we have the Athena/Blackquill tag team duo. The latter in particular is great: having Simon as our assistant snarling and haranguing everyone in the courtroom is charming, and his whole deal makes it feel a lot less weird when he notices an inconsistency but refuses to actually point it out to us than it does in every other case. Blackquill is great.
Despite this one's brevity, it manages to pack in some tight moments for our characters (both regular cast and this week's rotation of witnesses, suspects, and murderers), some fun little mysteries to tease through, and a case that was overall pretty satisfying. The pacing feels right for this one; you could probably pad it out to a full case if you wanted, but there is something to be said for allowing something to be the length it wants to be. (Plus, a short case right about here feels good for the game's overall pacing.)
And that's all I got for this week. Next week, it's time for revolution! I know I'm excited. I will see you then, friends.