~Beh'leeb it!
Alright, I'm back home! Well, technically. My big brother asked me to watch his house for him while he went on his honeymoon, so I'm here at his place for the next week or so. I got my laptop and stuff though so it shouldn't be a big deal, haha. I should try and get some work done while I'm here...
In the meantime, on the plane ride back I finally finished Spirit of Justice! I really enjoyed the first four cases but... I dunno, I wasn't super into the last one?
I think maybe the last case really leaned hard into the Khurain backstory and Nayuta and Dhurke and I just really didn't care much about either of them, and I didn't really buy the relationship Apollo had with either of them, which made it hard to be emotionally affected by a lot of what was going on.
Nayuta was nice to look at, but he didn't really seem to bring anything new to the table... being contemptuous of the lawyer in court is something almost every prosecutor does, and it didn't feel like Nayuta really stepped far enough away from that. When he DID though, I actually did find him charming! In the fourth case, when he talks about how he tried all sorts of western food as he studied other cultures, THAT I liked. I also liked hearing about how he traveled a lot and liked learning about other countries. If they'd leaned more into Nayuta as a stranger in a foreign land with a graceful patience for all the weird behavior he encountered, I think I would've liked him more. As it was, he often just went into condescending or insulting with a bit of a religious flair, but not enough to really distinguish him from other prosecutors. Which is a shame because I think he had potential. I think maybe shuffling him back and forth between the US and Khurain didn't give him many chances to show off the more interesting side of him, I think. I also didn't buy his relationship with Apollo at all, which made the whole ending kind of fall flat.
I think one reason it didn't really work for me is that Nayuta was set up as Apollo's personal rival, like Edgeworth and Phoenix and Athena and Blackquill, complete with the backstory as children and the contentious relationship and the eventual mutual respect. But the thing is Apollo already HAS a prosecutor... it's Klavier. Like, I already went through this prosecutor business with Klavier in AA4, it just feels weird to do it with Nayuta without any mention or appearance at all from Klavier. To be fair, I love Klavier so I'm a bit prejudiced there, but it's like... if you introduced another prosecutor for Athena with a similiar backstory and a similar arc, I'd be like ...but why? There's already Blackquill. Why are we doing this again? Nayuta even bossed Ema around and annoyed her like Klavier did, it was like he was Klavier's replacement. WHERE IS KLAVIER? WHAT IS HE DOING?? Was Klavier just too unique of a prosecutor to set up another case around?
It's weird that I could roll so easily with Clay as part of Apollo's mystery backstory and I found that totally believable, but all the Khurain backstory for Apollo just felt tacked on. I didn't believe in his relationship with Nayuta, and I didn't believe it at all for Dhurke, which was really bad since that relationship was like a key part of the story. But Dhurke just seemed like some rando who came in and Apollo was like yup, that's my dad and I know that realistically from his point of view, that IS how he'd react, but I dunno. I just didn't really find Dhurke super interesting as a character anyway or very charming, and his relationship with Apollo seemed weird and kind of forced. A lot of telling and not showing I guess. I mean normally I can roll with how AA does that (I mean, they are basically VNs) but something about it just didn't click, which is kind of a first for the series for me. I mean, I've rolled with all the games weird stories and characters so far, even everything in AA4 didn't throw me, I enjoyed it! I enjoyed Dual Destinies and Clay! But something about the Khurain backstory in AA6... I dunno guys. It just didn't really work for me. I really wanted Apollo to stay home at the end of the game because I didn't really feel anything for most of the people in Khurain, or like Apollo really knew any of them.
I DID love the filler cases in this, they were GREAT. I loved the first one with Apollo and Trucy, I LOVE their dynamic and I was so happy to see them hanging out again, and case 2 had a ton of fun callbacks and references to the older games that I really liked. It was a really fun case all around! And I liked the villain of it too. I think my one complaint, and I think this goes for all the cases in AA6, is that the suspect pool always feels kind of small. Admittedly they do a good job of setting up one character to take the fall, but if only three characters are suspected... it becomes kind of easy to guess what happened just by process of elimination. I wish they'd expand the suspect pool a bit.
I also LOVED the Athena case, although I really wanted Athena to get it together and it bugged me a bit that she was so insecure at first, but at least she got over it, and presumably in future cases she'd do better. But I LOVED having Blackquill as an assistant, that was hilarious, and his ridiculous weebishness was actually really critical to the case so he could explain everything! That's one case of a character trait being used really well to help with exposition in a way that feels totally natural, haha. Though he did seem VERY british in this one, but it could be that I don't remember his dialogue very well from DD. I love Athena and I wish we got to see more of her or play as her more. She plays the assistant role well but she's also a lawyer! She should take the lead at times too. I also want to see Juniper again and I also want Athena and Juniper to be dating.
The Khurain cases were fine, I really loved the first witness and I wish I wasn't on the plane so I could've heard his music better, haha. I actually thought the husband and wife from the third case were really touching and that story was really sad, and I was glad to see they got brought back later so that plot thread didn't get dropped. The third case threw me for some loops, haha. Datz is a fun Larry type character, I don't mind him so much. I was surprisingly moved when Maya reappeared and Turnabout Sisters played for a few seconds. That theme holds a lot for me! I wish we could've seen Mia at least once...
I liked the first part of the last case in the US, with the politician and the flying drone, those were fun witnesses, haha. And the reveal for sarge really surprised me! There's usually a big :O moment in an AA game for me, usually in the last case, where there's a mystery that I couldn't figure out until a key bit of testimony gets revealed, and in this case it was that Dhurke was already dead when the case was going on and had been channeled, I did not see that coming at all, haha. Garan was a fun villain I guess, and I liked Amara as a witness as sort of a dangerous serene buddha figure, that was also kind of interesting. It was... odd to see Apollo's birth father finally, but like a lot of Apollo's backstory in Khurain it doesn't really feel super real to me? None of it really feels like it meshes with Apollo as I know him.
It also REALLY TICKS ME OFF PHOENIX STILL HASN'T TOLD THEM THAT APOLLO AND TRUCY ARE RELATED, GDIT, PHOENIX, JUST TELL THEM, FOR CHRISTS SAKE
I actually liked Rayfa's arc throughout the game, I thought that was done pretty well, haha. Her and Sebastian come to mind as characters that were definitely annoying when they first appeared but by the end when they become doper people I was fond of them. Just like good for you kiddos. You can do it. Rayfa's charaacter journey felt better done than Apollo's or anyone else's, actually...
The animations for the characters were great, I wish I could have heard more of the music, but oh well. I do feel like the witness pool for each case should've been bigger, but I liked the witnesses we DID get at least. The filler cases in this were great, and really reminded me of how much I love Apollo and Athena as protagonists more than Phoenix. I mean, I like Phoenix and all but I've been with him for ages. I like seeing fresh perspectives and I like Apollo's straightman attitude and Athena's internal monologues, haha. I just want some more fresh blood!
Really, I enjoyed it for the most part, even the last case wasn't BAD exactly, it just... didn't click with me. But on the whole it was fun. I think I may just ignore Apollo's whole Khurain backstory though. It was a lot more fun when it was just a big blank.
I also posted this at dreamwidth with reluctant ambivalence. Comment here or there, don't matter to me!
In the meantime, on the plane ride back I finally finished Spirit of Justice! I really enjoyed the first four cases but... I dunno, I wasn't super into the last one?
I think maybe the last case really leaned hard into the Khurain backstory and Nayuta and Dhurke and I just really didn't care much about either of them, and I didn't really buy the relationship Apollo had with either of them, which made it hard to be emotionally affected by a lot of what was going on.
Nayuta was nice to look at, but he didn't really seem to bring anything new to the table... being contemptuous of the lawyer in court is something almost every prosecutor does, and it didn't feel like Nayuta really stepped far enough away from that. When he DID though, I actually did find him charming! In the fourth case, when he talks about how he tried all sorts of western food as he studied other cultures, THAT I liked. I also liked hearing about how he traveled a lot and liked learning about other countries. If they'd leaned more into Nayuta as a stranger in a foreign land with a graceful patience for all the weird behavior he encountered, I think I would've liked him more. As it was, he often just went into condescending or insulting with a bit of a religious flair, but not enough to really distinguish him from other prosecutors. Which is a shame because I think he had potential. I think maybe shuffling him back and forth between the US and Khurain didn't give him many chances to show off the more interesting side of him, I think. I also didn't buy his relationship with Apollo at all, which made the whole ending kind of fall flat.
I think one reason it didn't really work for me is that Nayuta was set up as Apollo's personal rival, like Edgeworth and Phoenix and Athena and Blackquill, complete with the backstory as children and the contentious relationship and the eventual mutual respect. But the thing is Apollo already HAS a prosecutor... it's Klavier. Like, I already went through this prosecutor business with Klavier in AA4, it just feels weird to do it with Nayuta without any mention or appearance at all from Klavier. To be fair, I love Klavier so I'm a bit prejudiced there, but it's like... if you introduced another prosecutor for Athena with a similiar backstory and a similar arc, I'd be like ...but why? There's already Blackquill. Why are we doing this again? Nayuta even bossed Ema around and annoyed her like Klavier did, it was like he was Klavier's replacement. WHERE IS KLAVIER? WHAT IS HE DOING?? Was Klavier just too unique of a prosecutor to set up another case around?
It's weird that I could roll so easily with Clay as part of Apollo's mystery backstory and I found that totally believable, but all the Khurain backstory for Apollo just felt tacked on. I didn't believe in his relationship with Nayuta, and I didn't believe it at all for Dhurke, which was really bad since that relationship was like a key part of the story. But Dhurke just seemed like some rando who came in and Apollo was like yup, that's my dad and I know that realistically from his point of view, that IS how he'd react, but I dunno. I just didn't really find Dhurke super interesting as a character anyway or very charming, and his relationship with Apollo seemed weird and kind of forced. A lot of telling and not showing I guess. I mean normally I can roll with how AA does that (I mean, they are basically VNs) but something about it just didn't click, which is kind of a first for the series for me. I mean, I've rolled with all the games weird stories and characters so far, even everything in AA4 didn't throw me, I enjoyed it! I enjoyed Dual Destinies and Clay! But something about the Khurain backstory in AA6... I dunno guys. It just didn't really work for me. I really wanted Apollo to stay home at the end of the game because I didn't really feel anything for most of the people in Khurain, or like Apollo really knew any of them.
I DID love the filler cases in this, they were GREAT. I loved the first one with Apollo and Trucy, I LOVE their dynamic and I was so happy to see them hanging out again, and case 2 had a ton of fun callbacks and references to the older games that I really liked. It was a really fun case all around! And I liked the villain of it too. I think my one complaint, and I think this goes for all the cases in AA6, is that the suspect pool always feels kind of small. Admittedly they do a good job of setting up one character to take the fall, but if only three characters are suspected... it becomes kind of easy to guess what happened just by process of elimination. I wish they'd expand the suspect pool a bit.
I also LOVED the Athena case, although I really wanted Athena to get it together and it bugged me a bit that she was so insecure at first, but at least she got over it, and presumably in future cases she'd do better. But I LOVED having Blackquill as an assistant, that was hilarious, and his ridiculous weebishness was actually really critical to the case so he could explain everything! That's one case of a character trait being used really well to help with exposition in a way that feels totally natural, haha. Though he did seem VERY british in this one, but it could be that I don't remember his dialogue very well from DD. I love Athena and I wish we got to see more of her or play as her more. She plays the assistant role well but she's also a lawyer! She should take the lead at times too. I also want to see Juniper again and I also want Athena and Juniper to be dating.
The Khurain cases were fine, I really loved the first witness and I wish I wasn't on the plane so I could've heard his music better, haha. I actually thought the husband and wife from the third case were really touching and that story was really sad, and I was glad to see they got brought back later so that plot thread didn't get dropped. The third case threw me for some loops, haha. Datz is a fun Larry type character, I don't mind him so much. I was surprisingly moved when Maya reappeared and Turnabout Sisters played for a few seconds. That theme holds a lot for me! I wish we could've seen Mia at least once...
I liked the first part of the last case in the US, with the politician and the flying drone, those were fun witnesses, haha. And the reveal for sarge really surprised me! There's usually a big :O moment in an AA game for me, usually in the last case, where there's a mystery that I couldn't figure out until a key bit of testimony gets revealed, and in this case it was that Dhurke was already dead when the case was going on and had been channeled, I did not see that coming at all, haha. Garan was a fun villain I guess, and I liked Amara as a witness as sort of a dangerous serene buddha figure, that was also kind of interesting. It was... odd to see Apollo's birth father finally, but like a lot of Apollo's backstory in Khurain it doesn't really feel super real to me? None of it really feels like it meshes with Apollo as I know him.
It also REALLY TICKS ME OFF PHOENIX STILL HASN'T TOLD THEM THAT APOLLO AND TRUCY ARE RELATED, GDIT, PHOENIX, JUST TELL THEM, FOR CHRISTS SAKE
I actually liked Rayfa's arc throughout the game, I thought that was done pretty well, haha. Her and Sebastian come to mind as characters that were definitely annoying when they first appeared but by the end when they become doper people I was fond of them. Just like good for you kiddos. You can do it. Rayfa's charaacter journey felt better done than Apollo's or anyone else's, actually...
The animations for the characters were great, I wish I could have heard more of the music, but oh well. I do feel like the witness pool for each case should've been bigger, but I liked the witnesses we DID get at least. The filler cases in this were great, and really reminded me of how much I love Apollo and Athena as protagonists more than Phoenix. I mean, I like Phoenix and all but I've been with him for ages. I like seeing fresh perspectives and I like Apollo's straightman attitude and Athena's internal monologues, haha. I just want some more fresh blood!
Really, I enjoyed it for the most part, even the last case wasn't BAD exactly, it just... didn't click with me. But on the whole it was fun. I think I may just ignore Apollo's whole Khurain backstory though. It was a lot more fun when it was just a big blank.
I also posted this at dreamwidth with reluctant ambivalence. Comment here or there, don't matter to me!