case by case: AAI 2-1: a rook-y mistake
Welcome back, friends of eggbug, to Case by Case, my playthrough of the Ace Attorney games that I then subsequently write about here on Cohost! Yesterday we wrapped up the first Ace Attorney Investigations game; tonight we're starting up the second one!
While this will be the last game I write about here on Cohost it will not be the last games I write about; I'll have a link for you all soon. Until then, I hope you will join me in hanging out with our boyfriend Edgeworth, his boyfriend Gumshoe, and their adopted daughter Kay. There will, as ever, be spoilers below.
Before we begin proper, I have to just point out that it is weird playing through an Ace Attorney case about a vaguely orange cowardly strongman president dealing with assassination attempts. I don't have any deep insights or anything here, it's just . . . well, we do live in interesting times, eh?
So, the president of Zheng Fa is visiting classic Ace Attorney location Gourd Lake in order to deliver a speech conveying his gratitude to Edgeworth (and, by extension, the nation of Japanifornia) for solving the metaplot of the previous game and thereby solving a national crisis his nation was enduring. He stages an assassination attempt in order to boost his poll numbers, and the assassination attempt turns into a real murder on one of his bodyguards, and a nice young reporter lady is framed for it.
As is traditional for introductory cases, this one is relatively simple, but while I can't exactly quantify it, it did feel like it had more going on than is usual. (I did immediately suspect our murder man as soon as he was on screen, but that's only because he had more elaborate animation than is usual for a witness.) The twist that the assassination was faked seemed well earned, and did a great job of recontextualizing our understanding of the facts of the case.
This will obviously lead into our main story, but it's not immediately obvious in what respect. Our good pal De Killer from AA 2-4 is back (albeit currently innocent), but he's just a hired assassin; we get some information about the Chief Prosecutor behaving in a way that seems a little strange to me (summoning Edgeworth to deal with the crime and leaving the crime scene, and the fact that our reporter friend keeps calling Edgeworth "chief" made me think they wanted me to think about that), but that doesn't tell us a whole lot. Looking forward to seeing where we're going with this one, for sure!
Oh, and I can't go without mentioning mind chess. First: Edgeworth, you massive dork, you absolute turbonerd, please never change. Second: so far, it seems like a fun little minigame that does a nice job breaking up the pace. Given that this is a game about investigating, it also feels appropriate to have a way to interact with witnesses and glean more information from them that isn't just having them testify and presenting evidence to refute their testimony. Sometimes you just need to convince someone to talk in the first place. We'll see how I feel about it at the end of the game but so far, my reaction is positive.
Overall, I liked this one. Absolutely a standout among tutorial cases, at least: it's memorable, it's got stuff going on, and it still does the job of teaching you the mechanics of the game. Strong start.
As an aside, it feels a lot more appropriate for Edgeworth to be involved in cases involving assassins and crime organizations and international intrigue than Phoenix (though admittedly there is a certain charm to watching Phoenix be extremely in over his head). It's nice to see them giving different kinds of stories to these two very different lead characters.
In any case, that's all I have for you today. Tune in on Monday for the next installment, where it turns out this week's murder man . . . has been murdered? That seems less than ideal. I'll see you then, friends.