Ni no Kuni: Shiroki Seihai no Joou（二ノ国 白き聖灰の女王）

The whole idea behind Ni no Kuni was like a dream come true when it came out like 10 years ago. An RPG by Level-5 and Studio Ghibli with music from Joe Hisashi? Finally, the technology had advanced to where you can play a game that looks and sounds just like a Ghibli movie!!

In 2011, this was some god damn amazing shit

Yes, of course, I'm skipping the first DS game with the not so high definition graphics far from cinematic quality. At the time, I was just starting my journey as a Jhipster gamer. In fact, one of my first import buys for my collection (aka bad financial spending habits) was for the Japanese Magic Master that came with the limited edition of the DS game. Fortunately, you can still pick this up for a reasonable price unlike the false scarcity shit they pulled with the non-Jhipster Wizard Edition.

Way better than getting a stupid plushie imo

It's hard to believe that almost a decade has gone by since this game was released. Gaming has sure come a long ways since then. There's like WAY more frames per second and look at all dem pixels and shit. Oh and don't forget all that lazer ray tracing shiznits!! You can stare for hours at the reflection in the water as you go from one mission to the next, exactly like very other mind numbingly bland and unoriginal AAA game. Hell yeah!!!

Yet another grumpy old man rant but all I see these days is racist censorship, pay to play online, shit gacha games that last maybe a year at best, and everybody trying to move suckers into some sort of subscription service. And now PS5 is going X for confirm and O for cancel with no option to switch?? Jesus fucking Christ (not the brown one)!

So glad 'Merica is pushing superior moral values onto depraved Japanese gamers

The fact is, Ni no Kuni looks exactly as good as it needs to be for a Ghibli style video game. I mean honestly, it probably would have even worked on a PS2, like Rogue Galaxy (also Level-5). The game looks gorgeous and I really enjoyed the intro and the whole premise for your adventure. I especially loved watching you eat your mom's delicious looking eggs and bacon in fine Ghibli style.

There's nothing that says Ghibli like some eggs and bacon

Unfortunately, perhaps my hype for this game was a little too high as the gameplay definitely has that Level-5 feel to it. Though I've only played a few of Level-5 games so far, there's just something about them that seems super mainstream. While I don't dislike Level-5 games, the gameplay never seems very original and feels super safe. It's almost like marketing research comes up with what's supposed to be fun and you end up with a game that's well... supposed to be fun. You know what I mean? All I'm saying is, I was all into the game until they introduced Imagens and oh hey look, it's a fucking Pokemon clone. Bleh.

I just used the pink punch guy for like 95% of the time

I never played a Pokemon game for more than a couple hours and I don't know if I ever will but I'm not into this collect 'em all shit. I got the All-in-one edition so I used the special DLC or whatever that was included for the bulk of the game. Sure, you can recruit enemies, level up the little buggers, and feed them shit to evolve but yeah, not my thing.

I did spend a good 40 hours to beat the game and then some for trophies and I'm still probably far from getting the platinum. Out of all that time, I feel like most of it was spent doing those side quests primarily getting those heart pieces from here to there. Oh, and playing fetch for that fucker who kept losing his damn notebook everywhere.

Now, it may sound like I didn't like the game but overall, I have to say it's a solid title. While the battle system wasn't my favorite, it was good enough to keep my interest even though I probably spent most of the time just punching the shit out of everybody with the pink guy.

I really, really wanted to love this game. I mean, just look at it!

Score: 3.5 git off my lawn with your Cross Worlds mobile MMO crap!! out of 5 (38 hours to beat)

I was really on the fence on whether to score this as an above-average or a great game. While the graphics, cutscenes, and music were undoubtedly great, I went with a 3.5 above-average. I liked the story but I feel like it didn't quite have the impact of a good Ghibli film. Certainly, the characters development could have been better. I mean, geesh, the 3 characters from Koudelka had better chemistry than Oliver, Jairo, and Maru. As for the gameplay, it was I dunno... polished I suppose. Your party's AI isn't great but good enough. You gotta level up your Pokemon err Imagens and switch them out during battles etc. Plus, you got all them fetch side quests, alchemy, etc., etc. It's a good game but just not quite a great game for me. But I'm sure we can all agree, Joe Hisashi is da bomb yo!

I mean it's a bit heavy for gaming BGM but still.

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

Final Fantasy IV: The After Years（ファイナルファンタジーIV THE AFTER 月の帰還）

Like I said in my FF4 post, I wasn't sure if The After Years was a full game that would be worth its own post. For some reason, I had the impression that "After Years" was just a quick side-story fan service game that could be finished in like 10 hours or something. After all, could one expect a "real" game originally released on Docomo, au, and Soft Bank pre-smartphone days? (Obligatory Jhipster comment: I was a die-hard au customer cause they had the best student package.) Well thank god Square ported this from those dead platforms because this ain't no quickie 10 hour game, it's freaking FF IV-2 in episodic format.

Whoa, how did au take a photo of me here? Creepy!

I played the PSP version including Interlude which took a little under 4 hours to finish just by itself. I was not a big fan of the episodic format because you end up playing through the early events of the story again and again but from different perspectives. Objectively however, I'm not sure of a better way the game could have shown you what all the characters have been up since the events of the first game. Initially, I was afraid this was going to be a game about just the new kids on the block while you watch an old decrepit Cecil milking some imps.

What more you want from me? I defeated Zeromusu for god's sake!

Fortunately, the old cast are not shat on like some other franchises. Well, it was kind of annoying that your bad-ass party is for some reason weak as fuck again but oh well, not every game can be Trails SC. As for the new kids, while Cecil's son was as boring as you could ever imagine, at least we get to see some qipao sprite art. (Gamers, get your box of tissues ready!)

Is she a blonde Chinese? Geesh, I hope she doesn't go to the prom like that cause white people will be PISSED.

Really, the first few episodes are kinda boring and super easy but at least they're fairly short. You can blast through them with auto-battle on pretty much the entire time. However, the free ride abruptly ends with Fusuya's episode. I almost thought it was a scripted boss battle, I died so hard and fast. To make matters worse, there's a level cap to prevent grinding your way through. I mean we're talking DS level difficulty here. I'm not sure how game "journalists" were able to beat this 45 hour game without a handy cheat. Oh right, they didn't.

MY mind is blown that you get paid to rant about a 40+ hour game 20 hours in but I guess I'm "weird" like that

Once you get over the baby intro portion, the plot really does start to get more interesting. It was really satisfying to see all plot points left hanging in the first game get resolved. Kain (I used to think it was pronounced "Cane" in my ignorant pre-Jhipster days) was one of my favorite characters back in the day. Will he ever come down from the mountain? Is Cecil going to resolve his relationship with Golbelza? Is Seodoa ever going to get laid? Play to find out!

The answer to the last question: "fuck no"

Seriously though, while yes the last some 30+ floors of dungeon exploring with boss after boss might scare away those who need to get paid for the next game review, I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge. I found out in the DS version due to the nature of the ATB system, slow and haste are super OP. Casting slow on the bosses that don't spam reflect and having two members that can cast haste is the easy way to win. The moon phase also really matters so make sure you sleep until white magic is strong. (What is this, a Megaten game??)

Yes, grinding under-leveled members you ignored is a pain (Seodoa, I mean you)

I also really liked the fact that I made some choices in the game that resulted in some people getting killed. Unlike the original Hollywood "everybody is ok!" story, these characters stay fucking dead. I probably would have replayed it in my younger days but as a more mature gamer, I played through with the consequences of my choices.

Score: 3.5 How dare Square create a sequel of a beloved classic reusing the same characters and places! #MINDBLOWN out of 5 (49 hours to beat)

If you liked FF4, you really can't go wrong with this sequel in my opinion, it's everything that's good about FF4, just more of it. That is of course unless you're a "pro" journalist who can't handle a game with some real challenge. If you didn't like the original game, well you can just go back to streaming Fortnite or whatever you kids do nowadays. (You'll be famous one day I'm sure, don't forget to keep up that instagram too!)

One of like 3 new songs in the game

Are the dungeons reused? Yeah duh, just like FFX-2, I mean it takes place in the same world. Could they have added some more original music besides the few songs near the end? Sure, I could've have gone for some good FF4 remixes. Was the game balance a bit grindy for under-leveled characters? I mean it's no Trails the 3rd for sure. But overall, The After Years was everything I could've expected from a sequel to an old nostalgia tears classic and really is just as good as the first one.

OH. MY. GOD. IS THAT CANE???

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

Steins;Gate

I just finished Steins;Gate and yes, it is 2018. So yeah I guess I'm a bit late to the party. I would've called this a "missed classic" but I didn't really "miss" it, I just happened to watch the anime before I knew anything about visual novels. So if you're also one of those who already watched the anime and are wondering if it's worth playing the game, well, read on to find out!

Yeah, the original art style is slightly different

Of course by now, everybody already knows about this super mainstream title and you can find reviews from all the major outlets including the typical diarrhea job by our good old, ignorant, and kind of retarded SJW champion white knight: IGN (I'll spare you the link). However, only a Jhipster like yours truly or I guess one of those fan translation filthy pirates can make observations after having finished the previous entry Chaos;Head.

Unfortunately, no imouto underwear this time around...

While you don't need to know anything about Chaos;Head to play this game, there are tons of references to the first game, including for example FES singing on the UDX display. This game takes place around a year after the events of Chaos;Head. You would think there would have been a much bigger societal impact from the crazy events in that game, considering the new gene murders such as the guy with the human baby fetus sewed into his belly. (Yeah ugh. I did say that game was Cero Z.) But hey, that was all the way in Shibuya and Steins;Gate takes place in Akihabara which is like a whole 12 stops away on the Yamanote-sen so no worries, eh?

Everything is FINE

Fortunately, Steins;Gate is not nearly as dark and gory and while the first game had barely any science, this game really does live up to the Science Adventure moniker. The network security part was total bunk so I'm sure if I was a theoretical physicist, I would be rolling my eyes, but it seemed believable enough to my laymen eyes. The only junk science that really annoyed me was the whole vegetables vs meat theory for Ruka's D-mail. You'll know what I'm talking about if you play the game but yeah, genetics, people! Still, at least it was really cool how the series tied the Visual Rebuilding technology of Noah II from Chaos;Head to Chris's research and ultimately the final modification to the denwa-renji (kari).

Now with 200% MORE SCIENCE!!

Obviously, the game isn't just about worm holes and string theory. The real highlight is the emotional and bitter-sweet story brought to life by the top A-list voice acting including the classic tsundere treatment by Mingos, the timeless loli princess Yukarin, and of course the iyashi-kei soothing sweetness of Kana-chan. Oh, and Okabe's voice actor was great too though I didn't bother to look up his name. (Pfft, males.)

Kidding aside, some powerful story telling right here

In addition, the cell phone mechanic (yay flip phones!) was a lot more interesting than the mousou trigger from the first game which only really had a binary choice between negative and positive delusions. It was especially neat in certain spots when a character reacts if you pull out your phone while they're talking to you. However, it was a bit cumbersome to figure out the exact words to reply to in order to reach the true ending. I'm sure it's possible without a guide if you like that trial-and-error kind of thing but I had better things to do. Still, I appreciate the effort and it's always good to have an ADV game that tries something new instead of the vanilla menu like every other ADV title out there.

A clear case of Facebook addiction...

Score: 4 Bill Murray totally raped and killed some people in Groundhog Day. C'mon, you know he did, don't be naive out of 5 (48 hours for platinum)

Whoa, I don't remember THIS in the anime...

Overall, this is truly a classic in every sense of the word. A great story and a fully polished, fun experience from beginning to end. The music, while not mind-blowing, does a great job of enhancing the mood and the OP of course is great.

Never gets too old for another listen

Honestly, I kind of regret watching the anime first as the visual novel is a much fuller experience. I would have enjoyed this game a lot more if I hadn't watched the anime. I also much preferred the highly stylized art style of the game. In fact, I don't really see the appeal of playing the game with the anime style so I'll probably skip on the upcoming Steins;Gate Elite.

Please step on my face too, Kurisu-sama!!

Would I say this game is worth playing even if you already watched the anime? I think so but I would probably wait at least a few years to make the story feel a bit more fresh as a lot of the mystery is lost. The alternative endings are pretty short and only add a bit more to the main story.

Totally nothing of interest happening here!

While the true ending was a bit too Hollywood happy times for some, they did address this with a surprise alternative ending in a niconico stream of the anime. This was, of course, a tease for Steins;Gate 0, a game I'm excited to dig into sometime hopefully in the near future.




Some bonus screenshots totally not for clickbait revenue. May want to avoid if highly spoiler sensitive.

LOL on the Index reference

Based on their English skills, SERN doesn't seem much of threat?

No audit logs for login attempts? Sys Admin FAIL

This completely unnecessary attack on women is the cherry on top of a thinly veiled attempt to degrade anime girls into mere animated drawings whose sole existence is to satisfy the disgusting needs of our male patriarchy. Score: 0/10 Awful - IGN 

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Extend（初音ミク -Project DIVA Extend-）

Since Project DIVA Extend is essentially the same game as DIVA 2nd but with different songs, this is going to be a pretty short post. The only noteworthy improvement in terms of the user interface is the △ button option to play PVs right from the main song list. DIVA 2nd for some reason had this very awkward interface where you had to go to the Diva room to open PV mode. From there, you had to choose your song and modules from a list with no preview. It was a total step backward from the first game and so it's good that they fixed it in extend.

Other than that, as the name suggests, given that this is really an extension of the previous game, the only thing to discuss is the quality of the song list. I have to say in terms of volume, it's a bit of a disappointment especially since they reuse songs from previous games AGAIN. Some songs from the first game didn't have any video and was just a slideshow of images so it's fine that they redid those with a proper video. However, the songs from 2nd are the same so I'm not sure what the point is unless I guess you skipped 2nd? Maybe the extreme difficulty key patterns are more challenging. I'm not sure as I don't have those memorized.

This song AGAIN? Sigh...
The highlight of extend perhaps is the sheer number of modules as you can once again import all the unlocked modules from the previous game. Essentially, you're getting modules from all THREE games. They even created modules just for a specific song. You may think, oh so maybe that's why they included the repeat songs from 2nd but no, you can actually download an extend module pack for 2nd from PSN so it goes both ways. (At least if you're not a filthy pirate, you can download it.)

Free... my favorite price!

However, putting aside my gripes about the lack of content, I still enjoyed this game for what it was. After all, the very first song has Miku acting like a cat in probably one of the cutest videos I've seen.

I normally wouldn't want to own a cat but I can make an exception in this case.

In addition, I have to give props to Sega for deciding to do their version of the song: 結んで開いて羅刹と骸 even going as far to include a module complete with eyes painted on her hands. It's an abridged version but I believe the shorter length is better gameplay wise. If they wanted to censor it, they wouldn't have included the most risque line: 「子作りしようか」(sorry non-jhipsters).

Definitely one of the highlights of the game

Game is not as creepy as this OG ver but still cool nonetheless

Score: 3 HOLY SHIT! WHAT'S UP WITH THE EYE IN THE CLOSET?!!! out of 5.

Overall, while there's no new features from 2nd and the amount of new content is pretty lacking, the movies themselves are more interesting. Quite a few songs tell some kind of story that made me actually want to watch the PVs and read the lyrics. To confess, I don't normally read the lyrics because they usually don't make much sense; NOT because I can't understand the words (Hello? Jhipster here!) but because it's all lyrical... and stuff.

Best song so far in entire series in terms of choreography fo sure
While I wouldn't have been too happy if I paid full retail for this "extend" title, I definitely enjoyed it for the $25 or so it cost to find a used copy. It's a worthy addition to the PSP collection for sure. As this concludes the Project Diva series on the PSP platform, I also want to comment on the charm of the PSP graphics. While the Vita entries are great and I'm pretty sure you can get all these songs on high-def PS4 Future Sound or something, I feel like the latest models look kind of plastic and not as cute as the PSP version. I guess I'll see if the latest and greatest grows on me when I get to it. For now, I'm going to see if I can dig out my 3DS copy of Project Mirai buried somewhere in one of the boxes in my closet of shame.



PS. Is it just me or the camera angles a lot "safer" once they started localized these games to English? SJW WINS AGAIN???

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

Tanteibu The Detective Club - Tantei to Yuurei to Kaitou to（たんていぶ THE DETECTIVE CLUB -探偵と幽霊と怪盗と-）

So the first game I "completed" this year was part 1 of たんていぶ THE DETECTIVE CLUB (again with the caps!). A bit of a disclaimer but this post might evolve over time as I finish the other parts. The first part took maybe 3-4 hours to complete and I doubt I'd have much more to say to warrant 4 separate posts.

All 4 parts were released roughly one month apart so I guess you can call this episodic (ripoff). The first game has only 3 cases and the overall story doesn't do much more than introduce the 3 main characters. The mysteries and investigation gameplay are all pretty much a joke and comparing it to Ace Attorney would be like comparing Comiket and Sakura-Con cosplay.

Guess which Con is near me? GUESS GODDAMMIT!!!!

Really, it's just an incredibly short generic harem adv game that is totally unremarkable. There's not even much ero despite what the LE edition cover would suggest. In fact, I would have cursed myself on buying even just the first part much less all four parts (3+4 are not that cheap either). So why did I go all out on this game? I'm a seiyu fanboy.

Spoiler: Maya never gets arrested in this game

This game is fully voiced (except male protagonist ofc) and the cast includes both Hanazawa Kana AND Chihara Minori. You're talking two of my favorite characters of all time: Tachibana Kanade and Nagato Yuki IN THE SAME GAME.

Wait for me Nagato, VR IS COMING!!!!!

Although the main story contains almost no fan service, you can unlock omake episodes which seems to be strictly for fan service, and I'm not talking about boobies. I'm talking fan service for the seiyu nerds...... and boobies.

This ALWAYS happens when you spill coffee... in Japan... or so I hear

Unfortunately, unlocking all the extra episodes is actually quite a pain in the rear. It's not just a matter of selecting every option, 3 of the episodes require you to spend time with one of the three characters throughout the entire game, necessitating several playthroughs. Fortunately, this game has a skip feature that will automatically stop on new text. So following a guide, I was able to unlock all the extras in a few hours. I probably spent more time doing that than playing through the game, it's so short.

And yes, not only is there one other person on the planet that played this game, somebody actually took the time to figure out all the patterns and wrote a detailed walkthrough (internet, I love you).

The music was not bad. It was jazz and you can't go wrong with jazz.

Totally unrelated to this game. DON'T CARE
Score: 2 cute seiyus out of 5 points.

I really cannot recommend this game to anybody. But for a fan of the voice actresses like me, I enjoyed it. I really like the art style and CGs as well. If they added Taketasu Ayana, I would rate this best game of all time.

I know, this isn't even a game review at this point

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

Black★Rock Shooter THE GAME

You know when you have a really cool idea for a story, character, or setting but not enough to develop it into anything fleshed out? Well, Black Rocker Shooter is kinda like that but the original illustrator just rolled with it cause INTERNET. The rest, as they say is internet viral/social/whatever history.

Looks cool so let's just roll out a whole media franchise on it

I was first exposed to Black Rock Shooter as these viral things go pretty randomly. It was probably an AMV or MAD from a related youtube vid which led me to the OVA, which brings us here to the game.


The famous(?) supercell song
Given the grassroots nature of the whole BRS thing, there really is no canonical anything as it's media developed out of nothing more than a concept and the game is totally unrelated to any other BRS media works. It definitely took an interesting approach as the story begins with the human race almost entirely wiped out.

You thought other post-apocalyptic games were hardcore? This game starts out with literally only 12 humans left alive after 2 die right at the start of the game. My first thought at the beginning of the game was, you're the only girl (weapon thingy?) in the ENTIRE WORLD surrounded by 12 men? UH OH. Turns out my fears were unfounded as the story is not about any sort of fan service and is actually quite serious (the unlockable costumes on the other hand...).

The main story is fairly short and can be completed in about 12 hours or so and it's exactly the type of story that every mainstream gamer would hate. Without going into spoilers, let's just say it's not exactly Hollywood happy endings and was very artsy, indie film-ish. I personally loved it as it definitely breaks the mold.

Try dem graphics on the DS in 2011

The graphics are great as Imageepoch (RIP) is the master of the PSP platform and I was already biased towards the BRS character designs. The gameplay was fun as well, especially the boss battles. In classic Imageepoch fashion, it tries lots of new things and battles are a mix of balancing dodging, blocking, shooting (of course), and special moves along with stamina and recovery time. My only complaint is that the standard enemies are often recycled and VERY generic.

While the main story is fairly short, there's tons of things to unlock in the EX missions including the most powerful, best looking special attacks and some sexy costumes (this is a Japanese game after all). I tried to swipe my credit card on the PSP to buy the costume DLC but it wasn't working for some reason. Amazingly, it appears to be unlock by playing the game??? WEIRD!

The OST definitely has a few gems
Overall, I really enjoyed this game. The music was really good, I loved the character designs (WRS OMG), and the boss battles were a blast. It was also fun unlocking all the cool stuff post end-game. Yes, the regular battles could get a bit repetitive and some of the bike missions were a pain in the ass but I definitely think this is one of those underrated titles that mainstreamers are totally gonna write off.

Score: 3 when costumes could be unlocked without a credit card out of 5 (27 hours played)
+.5 optional bonus point for the EXTREMELY short skirt costume.



The PSN version is only available in English as Imageepoch published games were pulled from the Japanese PSN store. :-(
I LOVE YOU IMAGEEPOCH! PLZ COME BACK!!!!!

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

Corpse Party: Book of Shadows（コープスパーティー Book of Shadows）

Having heard that it was far inferior to the original Corpse Party game, I went into Book of Shadows with low expectations. It certainly didn't have the pedigree and history of the original game, polished and enhanced over the years with every new remake/port. However, the intro was very well done and I had my hopes up for at least a good game. Unfortunately, in the end, it turned out to be just as disappointing as everybody said even WITH the lowered expectations.

The intro was really good at least...
I knew going in that they had for some reason completely scrapped the overhead RPG Tsukūru style exploration (Jhipster name for RPG Maker) and turned it into a straight adventure game. But ah well, there are plenty of wonderful adventure games so it shouldn't be a problem if the story was good and therein lied the NEXT major problem.

Book of Shadows is really barely a sequel. It's more like a spinoff combined with a PREVIEW of a sequel that is unlocked only after you see every ending in the entire game. Fortunately, if you import a save file from the original Corpse Party, you only have to see the true ending of all chapters, and really, you have no reason whatsoever to play this game without having played the original.

Besides the last hidden chapter, the entirety of this game are various side stories that add some more detail about certain events and a bit of history on certain characters. For example, you can learn about characters from other schools that you only met briefly in the first game, which is nice. But then you have total fan service chapters like the one about going to "visit" the sick teacher at her home. Basically this whole game feels like some poor victim of Japanese cross-media franchise marketing tactics from 5pb, very far from its original doujin roots. But then you realize that they were just getting started because the next game dials up the fan service EVEN MORE.

I thought this was supposed to be a horror game...?

Now, I'm a fan of fan service but I still want a good, scary experience if I'm playing a horror game. In the first game, you had to run your ass off, trying to avoid ghosts while ghastly traps were popping up everywhere. In this game, it's like, "QUICK! Pick the right spot in this image!" Not exactly suspenseful and worse, not scary AT ALL. It really is a shame because the menu system of moving from room to room is tedious and slow. And there's this weird pointless penalty for investigating things as your screen slowly becomes more and more obscured until presumably you die (this was never really an issue for me).

The one major improvement is FINALLY the ability to skip through the text but that's not gonna matter much if you don't feel like replaying the game in the first place. Books of Shadows is not a TERRIBLE game. It still has those nice, shocking Corpse Party moments but it just pales in comparison to the first. At least the OST is still good and it was pretty easy to get through since it has full audio (even the narration!) and auto mode. (No reading for Jhipsters required)

Score: 2.5 uncomfortable horror fan service out of 5 (24 hours to complete)

I would say 2 if not for BEST GIRL Seiko. Lesbians are always automatic .5 bonus in my scoring.

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

Ace Attorney Investigations 2（逆転検事２）

I was interested in many things before I discovered the way of the Jhipster and one of my favorite authors growing up was Agatha Christie (MUCH better than Hardy Boys, in fact let's pretend that chapter in my childhood never happened). I still remember the delightful shock and utter disbelief during my impressionable youth when I finished The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. It may not seem so special now but you have to remember that she was one of the FIRST to come up with such brilliant plot devices. Yes, it's all been done before and SHE was the one who did it.

It only took over a decade for me to experience the same kind of sensation: the goosebumps, the chills, and utter jaw-dropping moment. It was with a little DS title from Capcom called Gyakuten Kenji 2, otherwise known to non-Jhipsters as the never localized sequel to Ace Attorney Investigations.

The game itself is not voiced (popopo) and music not orchestral but it totally should be.
To start off, if you haven't played the original Ace Attorney trilogy, what are you waiting for? It's available on the DS, the 3DS (region-locked barf), and on the phone. You pretty much have no excuse... unless you're saving the Japanese version for your eventual evolution to Jhipster-dom. You don't have to play the entire original trilogy but this game builds on the story of at least the first Ace Attorney and (obviously) Ace Attorney Investigations so you'll want to play those first to prepare yourself for the masterpiece that is Gyakuten Kenji 2.

While Ace Attorney 4 and 5 were fun games, they kinda broke Naruhodo's sense of consistency and just overall togetherness as a character. It's kind of obvious that his continued presence was more of a marketing choice over the objections of the original writer Shu Takumi who considered Naruhodo's story complete with the original trilogy. I mean it was kinda cool he came in all bad-ass in AA4 but then... back to normal in AA5??

However, Gyakuten Kenji  2 feels like a perfect expansion of the Ace Attorney universe as it fits perfectly into the story of the first game. So much so, it's hard to believe that it wasn't written by Shu Takumi. You meet so many of the same beloved characters from the original trilogy and amazingly not in any forced way. It's so natural, it's like you're seeing an old friend at the grocery store instead of an awkward school reunion.

Missle is BACK! (just the left one though unfortunately)

Gyakuten Kenji 2 is not just a fun trip down fan service lane, it's also one of the best mystery stories I've ever read and certainly the best on a video game platform. Now, I'm not a mystery expert besides having read pretty much every Hercule Poirot and most of Agatha Christie's other books as well (Marple is meh IMO). However, while I loved the original Ace Attorney trilogy, using supernatural plot devices in a mystery totally counts as cheating in my book. It's not really an issue most of the time as it has no part in the actual crime but merely as a device to help educate the player. However, it gets really bad by the 3rd game and while I like the game itself, the rampant cheating was definitely a let-down.

The first Gyakuten Kenji was also not a bad game but not exactly the best in its class. The villians kinda show up as you progress in the game and there is no "holy shit" moment nor is there a deeply complex overall story like the original trilogy. However, I consider Gyakuten Kenji as more of a setup to the glory of the sequel, as it establishes arguably the cutest and best Watson in the entire series: Ichijou Mikumo (though admittedly it's hard to choose among so many cuties). While Itonokogiri is a fine character and works as a Watson, it's just not an Ace Attorney game unless Watson is a cute and infectiously cheerful girl (with what I imagine to be just a TINY, TINY bit of sexual tension?).

Mikumo taking a selfie in 2011 before it was "cool". So hipster.

So far all I've done is talk about basically every OTHER game in the series because I really don't want to give away too many details on just what makes this game so great. But if you've played Ace Attorney Investigation, the sequel has pretty much the same gameplay elements except they added logic chess where you have to pick the correct dialogue responses on a time limit. The ability to walk around the scene and investigate is just so much better than just picking out spots on an image that I'm kinda shocked that Ace Attorney 5 didn't incorporate any of the superior gameplay elements from the Investigation series. I am not that hopeful for anything like this in the next Ace Attorney title.

I dunno why you can't walk around in later AA games??

The music is as good as you can hope for the DS. There is a wonderful orchestral arrangement of the sound track that was released later that I have listened to for like a million times now. It's 2015, can't we get this kind of music in the game itself??

You know some law shit is gonna go DOWN when you hear this
Score: 5 just fucking play this game NOW!! out of 5

Gyakuten Kenji 2 is one of my favorite games of all time and personally, the best game in the entire Ace Attorney series so far (Great Ace Attorney coming out next month). The gameplay retains all the fun of Ace Attorney Investigation but adds just an incredible story on top of it. Without getting into any spoilers, the character progression is top-notch, the villains brilliantly sinister and complex, the mysteries just mind-blowing, and the climax just one of the best moments in gaming. It really is crazy that this is the ONLY AA game that has yet to be localized to English. Non-Jhipsters can buy the Japanese version and play the fan translated rom on a flashcart or something.

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely