case by case: AAI 1-5: dead manny walking
Welcome back once again to Case by Case, where tonight we are looking at the fifth and final case of Ace Attorney Investigations (the first one)! Last week we hung out in the past; this week it's an international incident! Spoilers below.
So, this one is about twice as long as the rest of the cases in this game, which . . . makes sense, given the structure. There's two murders, and in the first half we are chasing the evil thief lady from last time, but it turns out she's not actually the murder; then in the second half we bring that information in to track down the actual murderer. But for all that this one is still one long case, albeit one with a lot more moving pieces than usual.
The first half is a great little crime drama about phantom thieves and betrayal and I loved that; the second half, we find out who the real murder man is fairly early on and spend the rest of it trying to get a confession out of him. It seems meant to emulate the classic final battles in the main series, but with so little investigation between the arguments the pacing feels somewhat off.
Really, though, my biggest complaint here is that there isn't a lot of reason to suspect our murder man before the final segments, but also it becomes immediately obvious from a strictly narrative perspective. He shows up and says "well, thanks for catching the thief, I'm ordering you all to stop investigating now." And because there is so little investigation in the latter half of the case, a lot of the new information we receive is just sort of handed to us.
I liked watching Lang slowly come to trust Edgeworth, and I really enjoyed his gambit at the end of "pretending to accuse Franziska of murder to trick the murder man into letting us continue investigations" (at least in part because I totally called it); I'm not sure if having Larry and Oldbag show up at the climax, unintentionally bringing new information that finally gives us the breakthroughs we need to clinch the victory, was a good choice, but it was certainly a bold one. It feels more appropriate for a story about Phoenix, who does self-admittedly rely on bluffing and luck to carry him through; it feels tonally off for the big climax of an Edgeworth story.
Still, this was fun. It tied up the game's story nicely, and all of the character arcs; the first half was a great investigation in its own right, and the second half, even if I have some quibbles, was a strong finish to the game--and I really enjoyed this one. Everything about it lent itself to the feeling of gradually unraveling a big conspiracy, while still giving the individual cases time to breathe and have their own sense of identity. It strikes a good balance, I think.
And with that, that concludes AAI 1! We should be back for the start of AAI 2 tomorrow; as I have said, I intend to try to get through that before the end of the month. I know I'm excited; until then, friends.