The night of Nintendo's shocking dual Metroid announcements, I was excited to check out the Samus Returns trailer in 3D on my New Nintendo 3DS XL. There was only one problem - I couldn't find my 3DS anywhere. It took me over three hours to locate my trusty portable gaming machine hidden under the passenger seat of my car, but even then I was out of luck, as I was never able to find the charger for it. Instead, I just stared at the dusty device for a few moments and thought about our future together.
It was obvious to me that the primary reason my dependable pocket system had become so neglected was a certain delightful console/handheld hybrid that I had acquired back in March. But as I thought about it, I realized that I had stopped playing my 3DS even prior to the Switch's arrival. In fact, I couldn't recall a single time I had played it all year. With the Switch getting sweet new titles steadily throughout the rest of the year, it seems highly unlikely that anything outside of Metroid is going to keep my 3DS from joining my other old systems in a box somewhere. Once Metroid is complete, I'll probably never seriously play my 3DS again.
This felt wrong. The system has been far too good for far too long for me to just drop it like that. With that in mind, I bought another charger and decided to spend as much of my free gaming time as I could playing through as much of my 3DS backlog as possible before Metroid hits. It was time to give the 3DS the proper send-off it deserves. So I popped the system open, navigated to my "Retail Games" folder on my SD card, and picked the first game I saw that I had purchased but never opened. That game was Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright.
I'm not usually the thread-starting type. I play many games but I never really feel the need to say anything in-depth about them. I might chime in with a short comment every so often, but usually I just lurk and watch people discuss gaming news and argue about stupid things. But for some reason, PLvPW of all things is compelling me to write down my thoughts. I even found myself getting out of bed to grab my phone and write down notes several times, a behavior I have never done before for any game. I don't understand where this compulsion is coming from, but it will tolerate no rebellion on my part, so here we are.
I think before I speak about the game itself, I should just give a little background on my experiences with the two series being mashed together in this bizarre creation. I am in many ways an Ace Attorney stan. There is a litany of issues that I have with the series, from the over-use of certain cameo characters in some games, to the existence of spirit magic in a series about forensics and logic, to those situations that all AA players know and love where you feel two separate pieces of evidence would both work but the game will only accept one and you don't know which. Even with its flaws, however, the Phoenix Wright series fills a hole in my soul that no other games ever have, and I will defend it to the end. Outside of Metroid, I don't think there's a series that I love more as a whole than this. Oh, and since it seems like it's mandatory to argue about it in AA threads, my personal rankings are 1=5>3>AAI>2>4. I haven't played AA6 yet because of how I stopped playing 3DS but that's next.
Layton, on the other hand, has always been something that I would look at and go "eh, whatever". I remember how intrigued I felt when the first game came out. The DS was a revelation for me. It had opened my eyes up to whole other types of games that I had never considered playing, like games where you have to perform surgery, tap the screen to cheer for people who need help, or even act as a defense attorney. So here was this weird brainteaser game coming along with production values through the roof and a plot and interesting characters... I couldn't help but give it a try. One finished game later, I felt rather blasé about the whole affair. It was exactly what it had appeared to be: a bunch of puzzles pulled from puzzle books with some story and animations smushed in between them. With little to do other than just tackle puzzle after puzzle, I burned out rather hard by the end and pretty much completed it just to say I did, rather than because I was still enjoying it. Also, I was sick to death of accordions.
I tried again later with Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask and couldn't even make it past a few hours. It looked better than before, but it felt very much like the same game with extra crap layered on top rather than a new design that addresses the problems I had with the original formula. In both games I couldn't get over the feeling that the world was over-centralized around puzzles. Every single person in those games loves puzzles, to the point where it seems like nobody would ever get anything done because everybody answers questions with puzzles instead of just answering the damned question. Like, imagine if you asked the cashier at McDonald's if there were pickles on their new sandwich and instead of just answering they guy throws a puzzle in your face. I know that the characters in these games basically exist to serve as puzzle-delivery systems, but just once I would love for there to be a character that was like "Man, FUCK puzzles!" This kind of thing is the same reason I can't get through Pokémon games. An entire world where all people do is talk about pokémon and pokémon-related activities just bores me to tears and I stop playing.
I bought Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright at launch because I'll buy pretty much any game with Phoenix Wright in it (I even bought Project X Zone 2 just because it had him and Fiora), but my reluctance to delve into another Layton game meant that it sat unplayed on my 3DS for 3 years. Now that I'm playing it, however, I can't believe that I deprived myself of this game for so long. While it's by no means perfect, this game is giving me the same "horizon of new possibilities" feeling I got when I first tried Korean-Mexican fusion food. The introduction of Layton to the Phoenix Wright formula, combined with Level 5's non-Capcom touch, has both opened my eyes to the potential of what Phoenix Wright could be in the future and given me a new perspective on all the AA games I've played before. As an added bonus, spreading out the puzzle sections has helped me tolerate Layton better than before. It's a win-win!
[Spoilers for PLvPW and probably other AA games from here onwards]
I think I should state at the beginning that I'm only through Chapter 2, the first witch trial where two robbers were burned alive. There's plenty of time for things to spiral downwards from here on in, but the fact that this game has left such an impression on me already is something I find commendable.
PLvPW's distinct nature is made clear from the very beginning. I don't play many crossover games, but the only other game I can think of that tries to mash together such remarkably distinct art styles is Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam (games that are just 100 cameos put together like Smash don't count). While it's certainly striking and unusual to see Phoenix Wright conversing with a man whose head is the size of Maya's torso, I the decision brings about other problems that have bugged me from the start. Do the characters in this game actually appear to each other as shown? There is an offhand remark about Layton's "beady eyes" or something to that effect, but other than that there is little acknowledgement as to anybody's onscreen depiction. If this is just a stylistic choice, the disparity between the styles of the villagers feels like a mistake. Characters like Espella, Darklaw, and Barnham look like they would be at home in a Phoenix Wright game,
*cough* Excuse me.
Other than that, I have nothing but praise for the presentation so far. The music has been fantastic. I especially like the medieval renditions of those classic courtroom themes. The animation has been fantastic and engaging as well. I think my favorite part so far, however, has been the voice acting. I've long been a proponent of the idea that a game is better off not doing something than doing something poorly. I believe this applies in many aspects of video games, but especially stuff like story. I don't need a terrible story in my fighting game, thank you very much. If you can't clear the bar of competency, don't go trying, as you'll only make things worse. That's why I was a little worried about this game on the voice acting front. When I think of Phoenix Wright and voice acting, I think of this. I love Dual Destinies, as my ranking above clearly shows, but I feel that its shoddy voice work really held it back in some ways. When I first watched that scene, I literally had to stop playing for like half an hour just to get the horribleness out of my head. Not so with PLvPW! Level 5 seems like they know how to do proper voice acting, thank god. The voices for Layton and Luke and great, Phoenix, Maya, and Espella are good, and hold up is that Fiora from Xenoblade? Yes, it is! I couldn't believe they even got Carina Reeves in this thing, doing a fantastic job as Kira. Can Capcom kidnap Level 5's VA directors? Now that I've been spoiled with good voice acting, I'm afraid I won't be able to stomach what I find in AA6.
But stellar presentation doesn't mean squat if what you're presenting sucks, and that's what's got me so jazzed right now. Because I never got around to playing the game for so long, I didn't really pay too much attention to what people thought of it at the time of its release. All I really got was an overall sense of disappointment from GAF and elsewhere, which made it all the easier to keep putting PLvPW aside in favor of basically anything else. That's probably why I was not expecting the opening chapters of this game to hit me as hard as they did. It really comes down to a combination of great characters, a well-thought-out world and game system, and a willingness to expand the definition of what an Ace Attorney game can be about.
While Ace Attorney games are centered around several pivotal characters, I feel a lot of what pushes the better ones from good to great are the bit players, the small fry that appear for a day and then never are seen again the Will Powers, Herman Crabs, and Myriam Scuttlebutts of the series. In just a few short hours, I've already found two characters in Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright that have become my two favorite smaller characters of the series, though for incredibly different reasons.
As much as I love that silly drunk dwarf, I wouldn't be typing any of this up without the other character. I had written a few thoughts down already by the start of the first witch trial, but I probably would have just sat on them forever if the game had continued like it seemed to be at the time. Then Kira happened.
I nullified her deflections.
I broke through her last-ditch defenses.
And finally, there was no way out. The end had come.
I reveled in my victory, her breakdown music to my soul. All that remained was to see her defeated visage, the final touch to complete my triumph. The camera panned up, and I saw this.
A cloud of doubt suddenly darkened my formerly-clear conscience.
Then I watched her burn.
For the most part, players are supposed feel great about catching Ace Attorney villains, which is why, at the risk of major over-simplification, I think they tend to belong to a few categories. There's the super-evil ones (Dahlia Hawthorne, Matt Engarde, Manfred von Karma), there's the normal-ish people who want revenge for something (Acro) or who kill somebody because they get in over their heads (Mimi Miney, Frank Sahwit), and there's the rare "tragic" figure that we're all supposed to shed a tear over (Godot). Those people, before they became murderers, lived generally normal and safe lives. Their failures are personal ones, be it poor decision-making or simply an inherently evil nature, and when they are caught it is safe to pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself for a job well done.
Kira was different. Unlike those other characters, she had to wake up every day with the knowledge that that day might be the day that she would be killed simply for what she was. Her existence was one of constant fear, where one simple mistake would be all it took for her to meet a horrible and brutal end, no matter how many good deeds she had done or how well she had lived her life. Then one day she came across what she believed was a way out. It was a way to save not just herself but everybody like her, and she went for it, and then everything fell apart. Yes, she still murdered two people and framed another, but for the first time in an Ace Attorney game I didn't see some irredeemable monster or pathetic murderer. In Kira's dead eyes, I saw the gaze of a broken, terrified girl pushed outside the bounds of morality by pressures nobody could hope to possibly withstand, and now confronted with the one fate that had haunted her dreams her entire life. A fate that would have most likely come for her eventually no matter what she did.
I felt like complete shit. It was the best.
Kira is the first Ace Attorney culprit that I can recall that acknowledges that there can be a cruel world out there for some people. The idea that not every murder is simply the result of panicked desperation, revenge, or a villainous mindset is not something I expected to come across in an Ace Attorney game. Kira and Emeer single-handedly propelled this trial up into the top tier of my personal Ace Attorney trials rankings, right up there with my other favorites, 1-5, 1-4, 2-4, and 5-5. I never expected anything like this from a spinoff crossover featuring a professor in a top hat.
I didn't expect such a dark world at all, to be honest. Ace Attorney games have always had an incredibly light tone for a series so steeped in death. The games tend to do as much as they can to keep you from seeing any gore, and they utilize humor and good writing/pacing to expertly keep you focused on solving the mystery rather than constantly ruminating over the death of some victim in a game's middle case. It feels sometimes like the assistant that follows you around and says silly things exists entirely for the purpose of keeping the game as light-hearted as possible. But make no mistake, there are some very morbid things happening. Not only do you have to deal with all these murders, but there's also the aftermath that rarely even gets mentioned. In the world of Phoenix Wright, the death penalty is canon.
Does Phoenix ever think about the fact that his actions are possibly leading to somebody's death? Does that bother him? Such topics are probably far too dark to ever be addressed in the mainline AA games, but in this game, we get to see him come to grips with the fact that he just literally caused somebody to burn to death as he watched. I love it, and I hope this line of plot isn't just dropped after the first trial.
I don't need the regular AA games to suddenly go super-dark. The push towards the dark and edgy tone found in Dual Destinies was nice, but that was about as far down that road as I think they should take it. A spinoff like this, on the other hand, is perfect. It makes it stand out and give me a whole other reason to keep playing.
There's so much more I want to talk about: the trial system, the incorporation of magic, the "free will vs. predestination" conundrums already present in the game and the questions that they raise concerning the Storyteller... All stuff I want to expound upon, but also all things that would be much better served by getting deeper into the game first. I'll write more about them next time, once I've gotten another case or two into the story.
The one concern I think I need to register at this point is that I fear that this game will turn into "The Professor Layton Show with special guest Phoenix Wright." The biggest problem I have with Layton as a character is that he feels TOO competent. He seems like he's an expert at everything, and always the smartest person in the room. What this does when he's put next to Phoenix is that he makes Phoenix seem unnecessary. Now I understand that the trial was in many ways a tutorial trial, so the game holds your hand more than it would otherwise, but it honestly felt like Layton was just sitting there most of the time with the answer already figured out, just waiting for Phoenix to realize it and say it. Then he started shouting his own "Objection!"'s and standing next to Phoenix and it felt to me like he was basically taking over. From a plot/character perspective, I can totally believe that Professor Hershel Layton would be smart enough to play Phoenix's role as defender and get the same results, so I'm hoping that the developers are able to do enough to justify the inclusion of Phoenix and Maya in the upcoming chapters.
Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright is not the greatest game I have ever played. Far from it, actually. But for some reason no other games have made me stop, put down my device, and just ponder the things I've experienced in the way that this game has. I can't fully explain why just yet, but I'm going to keep writing shit down in the hopes that I can by the end. To think that I would never have played this game if MercurySteam wasn't somehow making a 2D 3DS Metroid game. Ha! Here's to the little surprises that make life worth living.
It was obvious to me that the primary reason my dependable pocket system had become so neglected was a certain delightful console/handheld hybrid that I had acquired back in March. But as I thought about it, I realized that I had stopped playing my 3DS even prior to the Switch's arrival. In fact, I couldn't recall a single time I had played it all year. With the Switch getting sweet new titles steadily throughout the rest of the year, it seems highly unlikely that anything outside of Metroid is going to keep my 3DS from joining my other old systems in a box somewhere. Once Metroid is complete, I'll probably never seriously play my 3DS again.
This felt wrong. The system has been far too good for far too long for me to just drop it like that. With that in mind, I bought another charger and decided to spend as much of my free gaming time as I could playing through as much of my 3DS backlog as possible before Metroid hits. It was time to give the 3DS the proper send-off it deserves. So I popped the system open, navigated to my "Retail Games" folder on my SD card, and picked the first game I saw that I had purchased but never opened. That game was Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright.
I'm not usually the thread-starting type. I play many games but I never really feel the need to say anything in-depth about them. I might chime in with a short comment every so often, but usually I just lurk and watch people discuss gaming news and argue about stupid things. But for some reason, PLvPW of all things is compelling me to write down my thoughts. I even found myself getting out of bed to grab my phone and write down notes several times, a behavior I have never done before for any game. I don't understand where this compulsion is coming from, but it will tolerate no rebellion on my part, so here we are.
I think before I speak about the game itself, I should just give a little background on my experiences with the two series being mashed together in this bizarre creation. I am in many ways an Ace Attorney stan. There is a litany of issues that I have with the series, from the over-use of certain cameo characters in some games, to the existence of spirit magic in a series about forensics and logic, to those situations that all AA players know and love where you feel two separate pieces of evidence would both work but the game will only accept one and you don't know which. Even with its flaws, however, the Phoenix Wright series fills a hole in my soul that no other games ever have, and I will defend it to the end. Outside of Metroid, I don't think there's a series that I love more as a whole than this. Oh, and since it seems like it's mandatory to argue about it in AA threads, my personal rankings are 1=5>3>AAI>2>4. I haven't played AA6 yet because of how I stopped playing 3DS but that's next.
Layton, on the other hand, has always been something that I would look at and go "eh, whatever". I remember how intrigued I felt when the first game came out. The DS was a revelation for me. It had opened my eyes up to whole other types of games that I had never considered playing, like games where you have to perform surgery, tap the screen to cheer for people who need help, or even act as a defense attorney. So here was this weird brainteaser game coming along with production values through the roof and a plot and interesting characters... I couldn't help but give it a try. One finished game later, I felt rather blasé about the whole affair. It was exactly what it had appeared to be: a bunch of puzzles pulled from puzzle books with some story and animations smushed in between them. With little to do other than just tackle puzzle after puzzle, I burned out rather hard by the end and pretty much completed it just to say I did, rather than because I was still enjoying it. Also, I was sick to death of accordions.
I tried again later with Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask and couldn't even make it past a few hours. It looked better than before, but it felt very much like the same game with extra crap layered on top rather than a new design that addresses the problems I had with the original formula. In both games I couldn't get over the feeling that the world was over-centralized around puzzles. Every single person in those games loves puzzles, to the point where it seems like nobody would ever get anything done because everybody answers questions with puzzles instead of just answering the damned question. Like, imagine if you asked the cashier at McDonald's if there were pickles on their new sandwich and instead of just answering they guy throws a puzzle in your face. I know that the characters in these games basically exist to serve as puzzle-delivery systems, but just once I would love for there to be a character that was like "Man, FUCK puzzles!" This kind of thing is the same reason I can't get through Pokémon games. An entire world where all people do is talk about pokémon and pokémon-related activities just bores me to tears and I stop playing.
I bought Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright at launch because I'll buy pretty much any game with Phoenix Wright in it (I even bought Project X Zone 2 just because it had him and Fiora), but my reluctance to delve into another Layton game meant that it sat unplayed on my 3DS for 3 years. Now that I'm playing it, however, I can't believe that I deprived myself of this game for so long. While it's by no means perfect, this game is giving me the same "horizon of new possibilities" feeling I got when I first tried Korean-Mexican fusion food. The introduction of Layton to the Phoenix Wright formula, combined with Level 5's non-Capcom touch, has both opened my eyes to the potential of what Phoenix Wright could be in the future and given me a new perspective on all the AA games I've played before. As an added bonus, spreading out the puzzle sections has helped me tolerate Layton better than before. It's a win-win!
[Spoilers for PLvPW and probably other AA games from here onwards]
I think I should state at the beginning that I'm only through Chapter 2, the first witch trial where two robbers were burned alive. There's plenty of time for things to spiral downwards from here on in, but the fact that this game has left such an impression on me already is something I find commendable.
PLvPW's distinct nature is made clear from the very beginning. I don't play many crossover games, but the only other game I can think of that tries to mash together such remarkably distinct art styles is Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam (games that are just 100 cameos put together like Smash don't count). While it's certainly striking and unusual to see Phoenix Wright conversing with a man whose head is the size of Maya's torso, I the decision brings about other problems that have bugged me from the start. Do the characters in this game actually appear to each other as shown? There is an offhand remark about Layton's "beady eyes" or something to that effect, but other than that there is little acknowledgement as to anybody's onscreen depiction. If this is just a stylistic choice, the disparity between the styles of the villagers feels like a mistake. Characters like Espella, Darklaw, and Barnham look like they would be at home in a Phoenix Wright game,
while the rest of the characters are all on the Layton side of the fence:
This dichotomy causes situations where the game seems to be straight up screaming at me "THESE ONES ARE THE IMPORTANT CHARACTERS!" I know that they are going to be central figures in the story before I have even heard a word from their mouths, and it bugs me that Level 5 would intentionally pull back the curtain in such a fashion. On the other hand, if the art styles are actually how people look to each other, HOLY BALLS WHY AREN'T THE CHARACTERS BOTHERED BY THIS?!?! WHEN YOUR NEIGHBOR LOOKS LIKE A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SPECIES THAN YOU, THAT SHOULD BE A PROBLEM.
*cough* Excuse me.
Other than that, I have nothing but praise for the presentation so far. The music has been fantastic. I especially like the medieval renditions of those classic courtroom themes. The animation has been fantastic and engaging as well. I think my favorite part so far, however, has been the voice acting. I've long been a proponent of the idea that a game is better off not doing something than doing something poorly. I believe this applies in many aspects of video games, but especially stuff like story. I don't need a terrible story in my fighting game, thank you very much. If you can't clear the bar of competency, don't go trying, as you'll only make things worse. That's why I was a little worried about this game on the voice acting front. When I think of Phoenix Wright and voice acting, I think of this. I love Dual Destinies, as my ranking above clearly shows, but I feel that its shoddy voice work really held it back in some ways. When I first watched that scene, I literally had to stop playing for like half an hour just to get the horribleness out of my head. Not so with PLvPW! Level 5 seems like they know how to do proper voice acting, thank god. The voices for Layton and Luke and great, Phoenix, Maya, and Espella are good, and hold up is that Fiora from Xenoblade? Yes, it is! I couldn't believe they even got Carina Reeves in this thing, doing a fantastic job as Kira. Can Capcom kidnap Level 5's VA directors? Now that I've been spoiled with good voice acting, I'm afraid I won't be able to stomach what I find in AA6.
But stellar presentation doesn't mean squat if what you're presenting sucks, and that's what's got me so jazzed right now. Because I never got around to playing the game for so long, I didn't really pay too much attention to what people thought of it at the time of its release. All I really got was an overall sense of disappointment from GAF and elsewhere, which made it all the easier to keep putting PLvPW aside in favor of basically anything else. That's probably why I was not expecting the opening chapters of this game to hit me as hard as they did. It really comes down to a combination of great characters, a well-thought-out world and game system, and a willingness to expand the definition of what an Ace Attorney game can be about.
While Ace Attorney games are centered around several pivotal characters, I feel a lot of what pushes the better ones from good to great are the bit players, the small fry that appear for a day and then never are seen again the Will Powers, Herman Crabs, and Myriam Scuttlebutts of the series. In just a few short hours, I've already found two characters in Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright that have become my two favorite smaller characters of the series, though for incredibly different reasons.
I don't think I've ever been smitten with an Ace Attorney character as quickly as I fell in love with Some Guy, a.k.a. Emeer. This drunken ball of chaos just shows up out of nowhere and nobody even has any idea who he is! I haven't laughed so hard from an Ace Attorney case in a long time. His animations, his voice, his mannerisms... I love everything about this little guy. I love the simplicity of his design, and how it tells you almost everything you need to know about him before he says a word. I love his alcohol-powered confidence, and how he refuses to lose hope even though he's abused by basically everybody present. He seems to walk that tightrope of "not exactly the brightest bulb on the tree but not annoying stupid, either" that is very important for his specific archetype of comedic character. Don't give up, Emeer! The woman of your dreams must exist out there somewhere!
As much as I love that silly drunk dwarf, I wouldn't be typing any of this up without the other character. I had written a few thoughts down already by the start of the first witch trial, but I probably would have just sat on them forever if the game had continued like it seemed to be at the time. Then Kira happened.
If you've ever played and enjoyed a good Ace Attorney game, then you know that rush you get when you have the real culprit on the ropes and you know that it's just a few more "Objection!"'s and "Take That!"'s until justice has been served. It's an almost predatory feeling, the sensation of hunting down something that was once impregnable but is now, through your actions, vulnerable, scared, and completely out of options (the song played is called "Cornered" for a reason). I revel in that feeling. It is perhaps my favorite part of an Ace Attorney game. The look of fear and desperation that each culprit displays as you nudge them ever closer to their doom is truly exquisite, and it culminates with a cathartic transformation as the culprit's will is crushed and only a defeated husk remains. PLvPW Chapter 2 was no different. I was relishing Kira's specific brand of nervous breakdown just like I'd savored all those who had come before.
I nullified her deflections.
I broke through her last-ditch defenses.
And finally, there was no way out. The end had come.
I reveled in my victory, her breakdown music to my soul. All that remained was to see her defeated visage, the final touch to complete my triumph. The camera panned up, and I saw this.
A cloud of doubt suddenly darkened my formerly-clear conscience.
Then I watched her burn.
For the most part, players are supposed feel great about catching Ace Attorney villains, which is why, at the risk of major over-simplification, I think they tend to belong to a few categories. There's the super-evil ones (Dahlia Hawthorne, Matt Engarde, Manfred von Karma), there's the normal-ish people who want revenge for something (Acro) or who kill somebody because they get in over their heads (Mimi Miney, Frank Sahwit), and there's the rare "tragic" figure that we're all supposed to shed a tear over (Godot). Those people, before they became murderers, lived generally normal and safe lives. Their failures are personal ones, be it poor decision-making or simply an inherently evil nature, and when they are caught it is safe to pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself for a job well done.
Kira was different. Unlike those other characters, she had to wake up every day with the knowledge that that day might be the day that she would be killed simply for what she was. Her existence was one of constant fear, where one simple mistake would be all it took for her to meet a horrible and brutal end, no matter how many good deeds she had done or how well she had lived her life. Then one day she came across what she believed was a way out. It was a way to save not just herself but everybody like her, and she went for it, and then everything fell apart. Yes, she still murdered two people and framed another, but for the first time in an Ace Attorney game I didn't see some irredeemable monster or pathetic murderer. In Kira's dead eyes, I saw the gaze of a broken, terrified girl pushed outside the bounds of morality by pressures nobody could hope to possibly withstand, and now confronted with the one fate that had haunted her dreams her entire life. A fate that would have most likely come for her eventually no matter what she did.
I felt like complete shit. It was the best.
Kira is the first Ace Attorney culprit that I can recall that acknowledges that there can be a cruel world out there for some people. The idea that not every murder is simply the result of panicked desperation, revenge, or a villainous mindset is not something I expected to come across in an Ace Attorney game. Kira and Emeer single-handedly propelled this trial up into the top tier of my personal Ace Attorney trials rankings, right up there with my other favorites, 1-5, 1-4, 2-4, and 5-5. I never expected anything like this from a spinoff crossover featuring a professor in a top hat.
I didn't expect such a dark world at all, to be honest. Ace Attorney games have always had an incredibly light tone for a series so steeped in death. The games tend to do as much as they can to keep you from seeing any gore, and they utilize humor and good writing/pacing to expertly keep you focused on solving the mystery rather than constantly ruminating over the death of some victim in a game's middle case. It feels sometimes like the assistant that follows you around and says silly things exists entirely for the purpose of keeping the game as light-hearted as possible. But make no mistake, there are some very morbid things happening. Not only do you have to deal with all these murders, but there's also the aftermath that rarely even gets mentioned. In the world of Phoenix Wright, the death penalty is canon.
Does Phoenix ever think about the fact that his actions are possibly leading to somebody's death? Does that bother him? Such topics are probably far too dark to ever be addressed in the mainline AA games, but in this game, we get to see him come to grips with the fact that he just literally caused somebody to burn to death as he watched. I love it, and I hope this line of plot isn't just dropped after the first trial.
I don't need the regular AA games to suddenly go super-dark. The push towards the dark and edgy tone found in Dual Destinies was nice, but that was about as far down that road as I think they should take it. A spinoff like this, on the other hand, is perfect. It makes it stand out and give me a whole other reason to keep playing.
There's so much more I want to talk about: the trial system, the incorporation of magic, the "free will vs. predestination" conundrums already present in the game and the questions that they raise concerning the Storyteller... All stuff I want to expound upon, but also all things that would be much better served by getting deeper into the game first. I'll write more about them next time, once I've gotten another case or two into the story.
The one concern I think I need to register at this point is that I fear that this game will turn into "The Professor Layton Show with special guest Phoenix Wright." The biggest problem I have with Layton as a character is that he feels TOO competent. He seems like he's an expert at everything, and always the smartest person in the room. What this does when he's put next to Phoenix is that he makes Phoenix seem unnecessary. Now I understand that the trial was in many ways a tutorial trial, so the game holds your hand more than it would otherwise, but it honestly felt like Layton was just sitting there most of the time with the answer already figured out, just waiting for Phoenix to realize it and say it. Then he started shouting his own "Objection!"'s and standing next to Phoenix and it felt to me like he was basically taking over. From a plot/character perspective, I can totally believe that Professor Hershel Layton would be smart enough to play Phoenix's role as defender and get the same results, so I'm hoping that the developers are able to do enough to justify the inclusion of Phoenix and Maya in the upcoming chapters.
Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright is not the greatest game I have ever played. Far from it, actually. But for some reason no other games have made me stop, put down my device, and just ponder the things I've experienced in the way that this game has. I can't fully explain why just yet, but I'm going to keep writing shit down in the hopes that I can by the end. To think that I would never have played this game if MercurySteam wasn't somehow making a 2D 3DS Metroid game. Ha! Here's to the little surprises that make life worth living.
