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Review of Dai Gyakuten Saiban -Naruhodou Ryuunosuke no Bouken-

SubjectDai Gyakuten Saiban -Naruhodou Ryuunosuke no Bouken-
ByHelpfulness: 6
Vote: 5
miratio on 2021-10-07
ReviewCrippled by bloated, over-indulgent writing and ridiculous levels of handholding (let the players do some reasoning on their own, jesus).
Simple deductions that should be resolved by presenting a piece of evidence to progress the story instead devolve into 20 minutes of pointless back-and-forth. Every development in court is overdramatized, turning what should be meaningful, climactic gestures (Ryunosuke being flung against the court stand by the impact of a reversal, van Zieg throwing his chalice around, etc.) into a farce. There is no natural progression of investigation and trial, non of the slow, methodical progression of case-building and cross-examinations. The prosecution often just presents a few disconnected facts, then scary music plays and the jurors decide they've seen enough.
6 points
#1 by dchsflii
2021-10-07 at 22:26
< report >So basically it's an Ace Attorney game. All the games are melodramatic and not terribly hard to solve case-wise. I think the melodrama is part of the appeal for those who like the series (myself included).
#2 by miratio
2021-10-08 at 08:12
< report >Not at all. Characters reacting with 'n-nani?!?' every time a new fact comes to light in court isn't a usual thing for Ace Attorney writing. There has always been a gradual ramping-up of the drama and tension over the course of a trial, with character's reactions slowly building up from controlled and subdued to more eccentric and erratic.
I'm also pretty sure the handholding and 'limiting player choice as much as possible so that people don't get lost' is a relatively new development. Just compare the number of times you have to double-back to locations you have already been to, notice and examine a clue in the environment, present it to the right person, etc. without having the game spell out what you're supposed to do at least three times and giving you the equivalent of a quest marker, and that'd be all the proof you need that the game design philosophy has changed fundamentally. You can also see this with how older titles would give you a decent amount of information and evidence for the cases from the get-go, where this installment goes out of its way to always give you only the evidence that you need at any given moment to solve the next 'puzzle'.

There's a good game buried in here somewhere, but I found myself not being able to see past the problems I described here, what with them being present everywhere.
#3 by dchsflii
2021-10-08 at 10:46
< report >I do agree the design philosophy of the investigation segments changed, but view it less as "hand holding" and more as "not wasting your time." In earlier games, it's common to know what you need to do (in the big picture sense) but not be able to access the person/place you need because you arbitrarily have to go somewhere else or do something else first, so you end up wandering around trying different things to find the location that changed or some person who now has a new reaction. And in many cases, it's more coincidental (like some person you wanted to talk to is now back from their lunch break or something) than related to the main idea. You have no way to know when they should be back other than that it's "later" and you have to go check every time there's a development. I liked that this game tells you upfront which locations currently have new information. Maybe there could be a middle ground that works even better, but the old AA games included some stuff I think is simply bad adventure game design.

I guess I don't agree that the tone in the courtroom is hugely different. Phoenix was always going on about how he was backed into a corner, or this was his last chance or whatever, often multiple times in a trial, and especially in AA3 which even had variable penalties to back it up. And I thought, compared to absurd characters like Franziska or Godot (who throws coffee at you all the time), van Zieks came across as more grounded. Likewise, I think them not giving you evidence that isn't immediately relevant is only true early in the game, which makes sense as a way of easing new players in. The later cases start you off not with all the evidence, but often with stuff you can't use or fit into the puzzle immediately.Last modified on 2021-10-08 at 10:47