case by case: AAI 2-5: a lang time coming
Welcome back once more to Case by Case, where today we are concluding our investigation into Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor's Gambit by playing through its final case! Last week we dealt with a cool and good bureaucracy; this week, it's another presidential assassination! Spoilers below.
Another long one, but this time I was prepared, and didn't try to do this on a day where I also had to get home and decompress from work. It's a shame that I didn't figure out to just play finale cases on weekends until this late in the series, but hey, I figured it out in the end, and that's what matters, right?
But despite its length--breaks included I was at it for about eight hours--this one didn't feel as long as AAI1's finale. Part of that may be that I was prepared for a long one, but I think the pacing was managed better, so it never felt like we were being trapped for too long doing any one thing, and there was always a sense of progressing towards the truth. Even the final confrontation felt like we were learning new things throughout.
This case did a lot of tidying up of the lingering questions from previous cases, and involved investigating a case that had been alluded to a few times before--a murder from twelve years ago--as well as this new assassination, while also trying to find the person who has been pulling the strings behind all of the murders of this game so far. In what feels like a novel twist, the murderer from the case from the past is not also the murderer from the current case; our present-day murderer only witnessed the past murder, and then the past murderers ruined his life over it.
I was impressed at how well everything felt like it slotted into place with this one. This game's cases have felt fairly self-contained, and this one did a great job making them all feel like they were tied together. It's a clever bit of storytelling. It's always interesting to see how these games approach the overarching story; the previous game made it very obvious that we were seeing pieces of a puzzle, for instance, whereas this one felt at first like it would be several unrelated cases tied together by the Committee for Prosecutorial Excellence's whole "doing a corruption" thing. This one even ties together with that.
This case also solidifies some of the thematic work this game is doing regarding the legacies of one's parents: Edgeworth, of course, is asking himself whether he should walk in his father's footsteps and become a defense attorney; Eustace Winner is dealing with a corrupt father whom he has always looked up to; Kay is wondering whether she should continue to be a Great Thief like her father was, or if she should find a different path. Our murder man for this case is, among other things, trying to leave his father (also a murder man) behind, but ends up walking inadvertently in his footsteps.
(Franziska is also here, and she is definitely thematically relevant here, but I feel like we never really see her as a character wrestling with her father's legacy. Which makes sense: she really only prosecutes two cases in AA2, and in many ways she existed there mainly to focus the story on Edgeworth. I would love to see her get a game of her own at some point, instead of always playing support. But that's neither here nor there.)
Overall a solid case. A lot of moving pieces, the pacing felt pretty good, we got a lot of great character moments . . . what more can you ask for in a finale? Often these cases with a very big cast end up feeling a little crowded, but this one felt like it managed to give everyone the appropriate amount of screentime.
And that does it for Ace Attorney Investigations! These games are great. I am given to understand some people didn't really vibe with the first game, at least, but I really enjoyed both of these--I definitely would not have tried to blitz through both games in a month if I wasn't having a good time. And I'm glad I was able to wrap this up here on Cohost.
But we're not done here yet! Before I sign off from the only good social media site for good, I have one more Case by Case post for you, which it is my intention to get up tomorrow: since we have now reached the end of the present-day timeline in the games, I have some thoughts on the series to share before transitioning over to my new site to tackle the Great Ace Attorney games. So, my friends, I will see you tomorrow, and as ever, thank you so much for being here.