Let's get cracking on with the second game in the Ace Attorney series - the dark middle chapter of the trilogy that is Justice For All. Spoilers for every aspect of the game, and possibly other games in the series, will be given freely from this point on. Proceed at your own risk.
I'll be honest here. I don't much like Justice For All as far as Ace Attorney goes. It's got by far the worst individual cases of the game - the first three cases are all pretty weak, and the third case Turnabout Big Top in particular is infamous in the fandom and often considered the weakest case in the entire series. It also features some of my least favorite puzzles in the entire series, and a collection of characters that vary between irritating and forgettable. Its final case Farewell, My Turnabout is often considered one of the best cases in the trilogy - if not the best - but I tend to disagree. Whilst it's very strong, it's my least favorite last case in the trilogy (Not counting Rise from the Ashes as a last case): I simply don't think it's as compelling as the look you get into Edgeworth's mind in Turnabout Goodbyes or the magnificent character piece that is Bridge to the Turnabout.
All that said, Justice For All is still an amazing game. Being the weakest Ace Attorney game is akin to being the least hot star or the least gratuitously violent Tarantino film - it's really not saying much. Justice For All is also one of the most important games in the series. I keep coming back to this idea of it being the dark middle chapter of the trilogy, but in a way it also serves as the end of a two-part story with the original. Justice For All is the last time that the games really feel like they're actually about the Japanese legal system to me - even considering all the talk of disbarment and "the dark age of the law" that future games will indulge in. However, it also begins a transition that we'll see completed in Trials & Tribulations where the series actually becomes about the characters rather than about the justice system.
Justice For All begins with The Lost Turnabout. I'm not a massive fan of this case - it held the dubious honor of being my least favorite first case in the series until Dual Destinies came along with its absolutely terrible first case - due to its contrived excuse for amnesia which is in turn a contrived excuse for a tutorial, as well as some of the absolutely ridiculous gaff that goes on in the cases' mystery (Hurr durr yellow baseball glove is like bananas). That said, it does provide important set-up for next set of cases. You see, what's important here is that the culprit, Wellington, is obviously evil. He kills the victim completely for his own selfish gain and is completely unsympathetic to the audience.
This is the first step in a downward descent through the game, where the people we're getting caught are less and less obviously evil. In the second case we have Mimi Miney, who simply wants to take revenge on the man who ruined her life and indirectly killed her sister and Morgan Fey, whose motive simply seems to be that she is a scorned and betrayed sister to Maya's mother Misty and a doting mother to Pearl. The third case, Turnabout Big Top gets a lot of criticism that goes along the lines of "everyone is an annoying jerk except for the murderer!", which definitely makes playing through the case a pain but serves to give us Acro, a killer who is obviously a good man who's done what he's done only because of the incredible pain that his brother's situation has put him in, and is full of regret and shame for his actions.
All of this serves to leaves us pretty cold to the legal system we're being presented with. It's working as intended, with the true culprit coming to light and being punished and the innocent defendant being set free, but none of this feels good. Once you get over the rush of being able to prove that the guilty party is guilty you find out their motives. They're human too, and their stories are just as tragic as that of the victim, and you're sympathetic to them and feel bad that they have to be punished for their crimes. The law is being served, but it doesn't feel like justice is being done. This makes the title Justice For All my favorite in the series: There's a very cruel irony to it.
This of course leaves us at Farewell, My Turnabout, which takes this to eleven: Not only do we defend someone who is guilty, we spend a long time trying to pin the blame on a woman who's done nothing wrong and is incredibly vulnerable. What's worse is after the halfway point we know this is exactly what we're doing, and yet we're not in a position to stop because Maya is being held hostage. After the first trial day, the trial becomes surprisingly and frustratingly easy: You keep getting ahead, yet you know you should be behind and want to be behind. Nick is obviously torn and hates himself for every point in favor of Engarde he makes. Engarde is as purely evil as Wellington is, yet the court system is about to declare him not guilty and put poor Adrian Andrews behind bars instead.
However, the day is ultimately won, and we get a happy ending. This is because the games have a pure, heartfelt belief that when everyone is working together, justice will be reached. I'd argue that the only trial in the original Phoenix Wright trilogy that's run under what the game considers optimal conditions is the trial in Farewell, My Turnabout. You have Nick and Edgeworth working together, an attorney and prosecutor that trust each other and aren't in this for selfish ends, but simply because they want justice done. Nick trusts that if his client is guilty Edgeworth's attack will be powerful enough to break his strongest defense, and Edgeworth trusts that if the defendant is not guilty Nick's defense will be resilient enough to deflect his most damning claims. We also have Detective Gumshoe working not against the prosecution or defense, but trying equally as hard to help them both out: He's not only fervent in his search for Maya but he allows both Edgeworth and Nick equal access to crime scenes. We also, as always, have the Judge, who throughout the entire series has been one of the most admirable characters, desiring no doubt to be left before he gives his final verdict (unless you loose and he suddenly finds the defendant guilty out of nowhere even if you're at a spot where you've basically 99% proved that the defendant is innocent but that's not cannon blah blah blah).
Ultimately, despite how unfortunate the circumstances of Cases 2 and 3 were, the culprits in those cases did do unforgivable things: Morgan and Mimi murdered a man and planned to blame it on an innocent girl, and Acro tried to kill a 16 year old girl whose biggest fault was being spoiled by her father, accidentally killing the incredibly kind man that the Ringmaster is said to be instead. Whilst one can sympathize with them (and I do, I really do, especially with Acro), they deserve to be punished. Similarly, despite how far ahead Matt Engarde was during most of Farewell, My Turnabout Nick and Edgeworth did manage to stall the trial long enough to where Gumshoe's courage, dedication and undying goodness of heart managed to provide what they needed to get Maya out of danger. Both Nick and the audience are forced to evaluate whether what he's doing is good and just, and we're led to the conclusion that it is; He's saving innocent lives and making sure punishment only falls on those who deserve it. Whilst the original had us find out how the system is supposed to work and what makes it fail, Justice For All allows us to see why the system needs to work.
There's one element that's glaringly missing from my discussion above, and that's the games' prosecutor, Franziska von Karma. This is for two closely connected reasons: Franziska is amazingly unimportant and I actually kind of actively dislike Franziska. Literally all of her character development comes in a minute long section after the credits, and her two gimmicks during trials (The whip and "foolish fool") are incredibly annoying. She's serviceable as someone to butt heads against until Edgeworth comes back for the last trial and that's about it.
Edgeworth, however, is amazing. Whilst I hate the cheap "Edgeworth is dead" tease that the first three cases indulge in, I love his appearance in the fourth case. Just like in Turnabout Sisters, he seems like he's head and shoulders above Nick in terms of confidence and ability, but there's no longer the arrogance and selfishness that he used to carry with him. Instead, there's a quiet confidence and a humble sort of pride. We soon learn that the only reason Edgeworth is currently above Nick is because he's figured out and internalized the next step of the lesson Nick taught him in Turnabout Goodbyes. Nick understood that lawyers and prosecutors need to fight for justice and not for their own selfish wants. Edgeworth now understands that this means they need to trust each other and fight that much harder for it. This is clearly the same Edgeworth from before, but he's grown, and he's patiently waiting for Nick to catch up.
This is one of the steps that this game takes towards the series becoming more character-focused. Not only do Nick and Edgeworth grow and have to deal with their relationship, we also have Maya needing to grow: the concept of the Master of Kurain is introduced, and that Maya will have to step up her game in order to get there. Gumshoe's relationship with Nick also evolves: It becomes obvious the two have started to become friends and that Gumshoe cares deeply for Maya as well. He's a lot more helpful through the entire game, but this reaches a peak at Farewell, My Turnabout that will be maintained throughout Trials & Tribulations. Franziska also gestures in the same direction as Edgeworth does: It's obvious she was meant to start in as dark a place as Edgeworth, but for different reasons, and then grow out of it, but her development is so botched she just kind of stays there until the credits end. This type of character development was absent outside Edgeworth in the first game, and is a prelude to Trials & Tribulations' much more character-driven story.
As I have already said, Justice For All is my least favorite Ace Attorney game. However, it's also one of the most crunchy when looked at on this level, and a really interesting turning point for the series. We explore Nick's relationship with his profession, and, in that sense at least, end up in the same place we started in, but much more confident and assured in our purpose. We start paying more attention to characters rather than concepts, and we put a close to the darkest game in the Ace Attorney series. It turns out, even the worst Ace Attorney game is really damn good! For a while, we'll bid farewell to this "era of the law" of Ace Attorney and say hello to the character focused era that Trials & Tribulations ushers in. That'll be a good one. See you then!
I'll be honest here. I don't much like Justice For All as far as Ace Attorney goes. It's got by far the worst individual cases of the game - the first three cases are all pretty weak, and the third case Turnabout Big Top in particular is infamous in the fandom and often considered the weakest case in the entire series. It also features some of my least favorite puzzles in the entire series, and a collection of characters that vary between irritating and forgettable. Its final case Farewell, My Turnabout is often considered one of the best cases in the trilogy - if not the best - but I tend to disagree. Whilst it's very strong, it's my least favorite last case in the trilogy (Not counting Rise from the Ashes as a last case): I simply don't think it's as compelling as the look you get into Edgeworth's mind in Turnabout Goodbyes or the magnificent character piece that is Bridge to the Turnabout.
All that said, Justice For All is still an amazing game. Being the weakest Ace Attorney game is akin to being the least hot star or the least gratuitously violent Tarantino film - it's really not saying much. Justice For All is also one of the most important games in the series. I keep coming back to this idea of it being the dark middle chapter of the trilogy, but in a way it also serves as the end of a two-part story with the original. Justice For All is the last time that the games really feel like they're actually about the Japanese legal system to me - even considering all the talk of disbarment and "the dark age of the law" that future games will indulge in. However, it also begins a transition that we'll see completed in Trials & Tribulations where the series actually becomes about the characters rather than about the justice system.
Justice For All begins with The Lost Turnabout. I'm not a massive fan of this case - it held the dubious honor of being my least favorite first case in the series until Dual Destinies came along with its absolutely terrible first case - due to its contrived excuse for amnesia which is in turn a contrived excuse for a tutorial, as well as some of the absolutely ridiculous gaff that goes on in the cases' mystery (Hurr durr yellow baseball glove is like bananas). That said, it does provide important set-up for next set of cases. You see, what's important here is that the culprit, Wellington, is obviously evil. He kills the victim completely for his own selfish gain and is completely unsympathetic to the audience.
This is the first step in a downward descent through the game, where the people we're getting caught are less and less obviously evil. In the second case we have Mimi Miney, who simply wants to take revenge on the man who ruined her life and indirectly killed her sister and Morgan Fey, whose motive simply seems to be that she is a scorned and betrayed sister to Maya's mother Misty and a doting mother to Pearl. The third case, Turnabout Big Top gets a lot of criticism that goes along the lines of "everyone is an annoying jerk except for the murderer!", which definitely makes playing through the case a pain but serves to give us Acro, a killer who is obviously a good man who's done what he's done only because of the incredible pain that his brother's situation has put him in, and is full of regret and shame for his actions.
All of this serves to leaves us pretty cold to the legal system we're being presented with. It's working as intended, with the true culprit coming to light and being punished and the innocent defendant being set free, but none of this feels good. Once you get over the rush of being able to prove that the guilty party is guilty you find out their motives. They're human too, and their stories are just as tragic as that of the victim, and you're sympathetic to them and feel bad that they have to be punished for their crimes. The law is being served, but it doesn't feel like justice is being done. This makes the title Justice For All my favorite in the series: There's a very cruel irony to it.
This of course leaves us at Farewell, My Turnabout, which takes this to eleven: Not only do we defend someone who is guilty, we spend a long time trying to pin the blame on a woman who's done nothing wrong and is incredibly vulnerable. What's worse is after the halfway point we know this is exactly what we're doing, and yet we're not in a position to stop because Maya is being held hostage. After the first trial day, the trial becomes surprisingly and frustratingly easy: You keep getting ahead, yet you know you should be behind and want to be behind. Nick is obviously torn and hates himself for every point in favor of Engarde he makes. Engarde is as purely evil as Wellington is, yet the court system is about to declare him not guilty and put poor Adrian Andrews behind bars instead.
However, the day is ultimately won, and we get a happy ending. This is because the games have a pure, heartfelt belief that when everyone is working together, justice will be reached. I'd argue that the only trial in the original Phoenix Wright trilogy that's run under what the game considers optimal conditions is the trial in Farewell, My Turnabout. You have Nick and Edgeworth working together, an attorney and prosecutor that trust each other and aren't in this for selfish ends, but simply because they want justice done. Nick trusts that if his client is guilty Edgeworth's attack will be powerful enough to break his strongest defense, and Edgeworth trusts that if the defendant is not guilty Nick's defense will be resilient enough to deflect his most damning claims. We also have Detective Gumshoe working not against the prosecution or defense, but trying equally as hard to help them both out: He's not only fervent in his search for Maya but he allows both Edgeworth and Nick equal access to crime scenes. We also, as always, have the Judge, who throughout the entire series has been one of the most admirable characters, desiring no doubt to be left before he gives his final verdict (unless you loose and he suddenly finds the defendant guilty out of nowhere even if you're at a spot where you've basically 99% proved that the defendant is innocent but that's not cannon blah blah blah).
Ultimately, despite how unfortunate the circumstances of Cases 2 and 3 were, the culprits in those cases did do unforgivable things: Morgan and Mimi murdered a man and planned to blame it on an innocent girl, and Acro tried to kill a 16 year old girl whose biggest fault was being spoiled by her father, accidentally killing the incredibly kind man that the Ringmaster is said to be instead. Whilst one can sympathize with them (and I do, I really do, especially with Acro), they deserve to be punished. Similarly, despite how far ahead Matt Engarde was during most of Farewell, My Turnabout Nick and Edgeworth did manage to stall the trial long enough to where Gumshoe's courage, dedication and undying goodness of heart managed to provide what they needed to get Maya out of danger. Both Nick and the audience are forced to evaluate whether what he's doing is good and just, and we're led to the conclusion that it is; He's saving innocent lives and making sure punishment only falls on those who deserve it. Whilst the original had us find out how the system is supposed to work and what makes it fail, Justice For All allows us to see why the system needs to work.
There's one element that's glaringly missing from my discussion above, and that's the games' prosecutor, Franziska von Karma. This is for two closely connected reasons: Franziska is amazingly unimportant and I actually kind of actively dislike Franziska. Literally all of her character development comes in a minute long section after the credits, and her two gimmicks during trials (The whip and "foolish fool") are incredibly annoying. She's serviceable as someone to butt heads against until Edgeworth comes back for the last trial and that's about it.
Edgeworth, however, is amazing. Whilst I hate the cheap "Edgeworth is dead" tease that the first three cases indulge in, I love his appearance in the fourth case. Just like in Turnabout Sisters, he seems like he's head and shoulders above Nick in terms of confidence and ability, but there's no longer the arrogance and selfishness that he used to carry with him. Instead, there's a quiet confidence and a humble sort of pride. We soon learn that the only reason Edgeworth is currently above Nick is because he's figured out and internalized the next step of the lesson Nick taught him in Turnabout Goodbyes. Nick understood that lawyers and prosecutors need to fight for justice and not for their own selfish wants. Edgeworth now understands that this means they need to trust each other and fight that much harder for it. This is clearly the same Edgeworth from before, but he's grown, and he's patiently waiting for Nick to catch up.
This is one of the steps that this game takes towards the series becoming more character-focused. Not only do Nick and Edgeworth grow and have to deal with their relationship, we also have Maya needing to grow: the concept of the Master of Kurain is introduced, and that Maya will have to step up her game in order to get there. Gumshoe's relationship with Nick also evolves: It becomes obvious the two have started to become friends and that Gumshoe cares deeply for Maya as well. He's a lot more helpful through the entire game, but this reaches a peak at Farewell, My Turnabout that will be maintained throughout Trials & Tribulations. Franziska also gestures in the same direction as Edgeworth does: It's obvious she was meant to start in as dark a place as Edgeworth, but for different reasons, and then grow out of it, but her development is so botched she just kind of stays there until the credits end. This type of character development was absent outside Edgeworth in the first game, and is a prelude to Trials & Tribulations' much more character-driven story.
As I have already said, Justice For All is my least favorite Ace Attorney game. However, it's also one of the most crunchy when looked at on this level, and a really interesting turning point for the series. We explore Nick's relationship with his profession, and, in that sense at least, end up in the same place we started in, but much more confident and assured in our purpose. We start paying more attention to characters rather than concepts, and we put a close to the darkest game in the Ace Attorney series. It turns out, even the worst Ace Attorney game is really damn good! For a while, we'll bid farewell to this "era of the law" of Ace Attorney and say hello to the character focused era that Trials & Tribulations ushers in. That'll be a good one. See you then!
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario