Great Ace Attorney（大逆転裁判 -成歩堂龍ノ介の冒險-）

For some reason, I have no trouble getting through Ace Attorney games as this must be the only game series on the market that I'm actually mostly caught up on (minus crossover stuff). In fact, the reason why I haven't written about all the AA games is because I finished them long before I started this blog and don't really remember the details too well.

So when Daigyakuten Saiban was announced, I could've bought it and played it right away buuuuut, AA5 was such a disappointment, I was wary of the franchisement of the series ala in the style of "Ass creed" and COD. Anyways, I steered away for a while because reviews suggested the story was half-finished. Sure enough, with the announcement of the sequel aka "ok, hopefully this time they finished the game for real", I thought it was about time to get my objection addiction fix in.

I don't even remember all the countless references to this series

My first impression as I started the game with wary skepticism was got dayum, the music is good. The AA soundtrack really needs to be fully orchestral and finally, we have the technology to make the music come alive.

Thank goodness Nintendo is finally getting modern technology!

Just listen to that sweet Contrabass
Beside the sweet soundtrack, I really liked the fresh 20th century setting. I think the franchising of Naruhodo Ryuichi is really what made AA5 so dull and tired and Capcom really should've ended it with that character (but I'm sure Marketing/Sales had different opinions). Anyways, who cares about all that shit. It's WAIFU TIME!!!

Susato: My AA #1 Waifu

The highlight of this game is definitely Mikotoba Susato. Her grace, her Yamato nadeshiko mannerisms, a delicate and yet strong willpower. Oh man, everything about her makes me want to travel back in time to Japan before the advent of Gyaru-go. Ugh, JK nowadays are so tensage.

Git your "chou yaba yaba gachi" shit out my face, HO!!
As for the meat of the game, the plot, well, there's a lot of filler cases. Except for the god game AAI2, we all know the first case is just your typical tutorial filler but honestly, even though I haven't played the sequel, I'm 99% sure case 2 AND case 4 are pretty much filler as well. So if you consider 60% of the game is filler, yeah, I can see why they "needed" to split it into two games. Only by case 5, does the story START to get interesting and so really, in this first game, you're just left enjoying Susato's mannerisms and the music. Fun times, but not much more than that.

me> Please marry me Susato!
However, the story is not nearly as unfinished as the Japanese reviews suggest. Yeah, it leaves some questions unanswered for the next game but I was expecting the game to end at any moment out of nowhere based on how pissed some of the reviewers were. Given the complete lack of taste of Japanese gamers nowadays, maybe they should've added some gacha cards and suckered people out of several thousands of yen to review more favorably? Anyways, while this game is not as good as the best AA games, it's certainly better than 5 and a bit better than 4. Given that this is a Capcom franchise now, I don't think you can expect much more than that.

I do find it interesting to finally play a AA game with juries instead of the usual bench rulings. Even though AA4 hinted at adding juries, it's funny we had to go back in time to finally experience it.

Score: 3 I dunno I'll have to wait and see how shit plays out so 3 for now out of 5? (35 hours to beat)
Bonus 0.5 point for #1 AA waifu Susato and OST

After the disappointment of AA5, I really don't expect too much from AA games anymore in terms of the story department. The best I can hope for is casual fun times with likeable characters and maybe even some moe. In that regard, Daigyakuten Saiban fully delivers even though the cases themselves are mostly underwhelming. Even for the ladies, I'm mean I'm not gay or anything but Holmes and the prosecutor are pretty damn hot. Just wait till you see Holmes without his hat.

At least I can add this to the shrinking list of Jhipster Japanese exclusive titles. If you're wondering why Capcom is quoted as saying they "can't localize" this title, I think a recent Sherlock Holmes lawsuit settlement might be a very good plausible explanation. To sum it up, we Americans are consumerism slaves to our corporate overlords and lawyer shark jokes, etc. etc.. Ahem, anyways, time for the obligatory Jhipster smug seal of approval on this never to be localized Japanese gem candidate if they don't fuck up the second sequel half of the game.

Jhipster smugness seal of approval

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

Ghost Trick（ゴーストトリック）

I'd like to brag that I bought Ghost Trick totally blind just based on my curiosity with the cover art but that makes me sound like some kind of hipster (NOT Jhipster) now that this game is like the most talked about "hidden gem" on the DS.

Jhipsters don't need no fancy cover of a ghost, just a guy sticking up his butt

Amazingly, despite being an old DS title (at least to these new kids), it's still dirt cheap... at least in America. Oh, you want a Jhipster Japanese copy? Be prepared to pay like $40 for a USED copy. JHIPSTER RANTS!!!

Just do yourself a favor and don't touch the iOS  "Oh it no workie no more? Enjoy the months waiting for a patch" version. In fact, just don't touch iOS at all, IMO. But whatever, that's neither here nor there. On to the game itself.

The first thing you'll notice right out of the gate is the amazing animation and graphics given the DS hardware. I won't pretend I've played every DS game out there (PSP fanboi and proud of it) but this must be one of the best looking games I've seen on the system.

Best part: you don't need overpriced, cheap, flashy marketing Apple hardware for this
The story is as good as you can expect from Takumi Shu. Funny, bright, and yet lots of crazy stuff going on all over the place. I thoroughly enjoyed the characters and the overall plot. Even though the game is definitely on the short side, it was just the right length given the plot and game mechanics.

The puzzle solving while innovative, does get a bit repetitive at times. It mostly consists of you trying to find shit you can tinker with even though almost everything seems tantalizingly out of reach. Of course, varieties to the core gameplay are introduced throughout the game. Though there's a lot of trial and error, the gameplay was still fun at the end of the day.


If you're too lazy to play yourself, you can watch Japanese girl play instead. Isn't that how the kids nowadays "play" games?
Score: 3.5 Shu stop with the fucking bajillion AA games already and make something original like um... Ghost Trick 2? out of 5. (14 hours to beat)

While the highlight of the game is the great story, given the great graphics and fun gameplay, it's a great package overall. You really can't go wrong with this "hidden" gem. Definitely a solid game and a must own for the DS. BUY BUY BUY NOW NOW NOW!!!!!!!!

Bonus 0.5 points for Missle, two of the best dogs in gaming

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

Last Ranker（ラストランカー）

It's been a while since I last played Last Ranker but I still clearly remember how much fun I had with it. This is one of those games that has the classic Imageepoch signature (at least their later games). It has a very unique battle system, fairly simple but fun and addictive mechanics, mediocre story, and impressive PSP graphics.

This was the top result for an in-game screenshot Google search. Go figure.

Back when I first escaped the mainstream hypetrain for the Nintendo DS and got into the PSP like a REAL gamer, Last Ranker was one of the first games I completed because it was just so much darn fun. The basic premise is you go to a city full of fighters all ranked by strength and you start out WAY at the bottom of the heap at rank 95,000.

No, you're not going to fight 95,000 people. If you beat someone of a higher rank, you basically swap rank. I had so much fun climbing up the ranks by fighting various people around the city. I also loved how some NPCs talk to you like you're some common plebian dirt and gradually change their attitude as you climb the ranks, eventually treating you like some sort of celebrity god. Being popular with the ladies is a nice change too.

The order in which you can challenge people to raise your rank is pretty linear and I used a guide a couple times to find the right person to fight. It's not like you can grind hardcore and jump several thousands ranks in one fell swoop. However, there are optional people you may miss that you don't have to fight to progress in the game.

I loved the character models, especially the top 7 ranked fighters. Everybody looked totally badass and I couldn't wait to climb up to their level. There's also a few nice FMV cut-scenes which I'm guessing Capcom had a hand in given the monster hunter-ish style.

If this trailer doesn't make you want to play... I guess we can never be friends.

The real highlight of the game is the battle system. As usual with Imageepoch, all the various mechanics unlock gradually but when it does, it's a really fun system of semi-realtime action with special moves and a stamina meter. It's very similar to Black Rock Shooter but less action and more RPG. You can even switch between different fighting styles such as using a gun or shield but I dunno, the first style was good enough to beat the game and the other styles seemed a bit weak to me. Might be something worth considering in another play-through one day.

The graphics are great, the mechanics are fun, and the music is good. The only thing that was a tad disappointing was the ending but hey, just don't expect a Xenogears or something. There's not much in terms of environments, you have the city, some woods to fight monsters and level up, and a smattering of other areas. Still, Last Ranker is definitely one of the funnest games I've played so far on the PSP and I would recommend it any day to anybody (with taste).

Unfortunately, for non-Jhipsters, you're gonna have to wait for an English patch that will come out... who knows? Or you know, you can join the ranks of the elite Jhipster army... just saying.

Music... pretty DARN good.
Score 3.5 Imageepoch, why did you leave me? WHYYYYYYYYYY!!! out of 5 (34 hours to beat)

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

Breath of Fire II（ブレス オブ ファイアII 使命の子）

In my continuing quest to multitask pretty much everything with games that are easy to multitask with (ie have very boring mechanics), I have finally completed the long and arduous journey that is Breath of Fire 2.

So a year and 8 months after the first game, we have Breath of Fire 2 "The Fatal Child" (supposed to be "fated"), technically an impressive improvement of the first game in every aspect in terms of characters, graphics, and length. And boy oh boy, did this game feel loooooong.

A Japanese company tries to get fancy with English in the 90s... hilarity ensues.

Breath of Fire 1 definitely felt like a first attempt for a company that normally didn't make RPGs so it's good to see that the sequel was able to build up to what you would expect from a decent RPG in that era. For example, they added an option to sort your items, a feature that was sorely missing in the first game. And the menus use *GASP* actual words instead of just single Kanji like 「能」. I have to give kudos to whomever was able to localize a game with menus that only used essentially one letter but anyway, all that is fixed in the sequel. Funny story but I couldn't help reading that 「能」 as "neng" throughout the first game. Ok, not funny at all, sorry.

Not only the menus but feature wise, everything about the sequel is better than the first game. The graphics are improved, you even get a bit of back story on the characters instead of the paper thin story of the first game. (Though Nina was pretty well "fleshed out" in both games. Hardy har har) It even has a couple alternate endings and though both games don't record your game time (BOO!!!), Bof2 felt like about twice as long as the first one.

However, longer isn't always better and the first significant chunk of the game has TONS of backtracking. What's worse is that you need certain party members to go certain places and if you don't happen to have them in the party, back you go, trudging all the way back to your town. Fortunately, this is not an issue once you get the teleport spell but the party system rears its ugly head once again when the game's story makes you go solo with a certain party member. Since people not in your party don't get EXP, prepare to grind unused characters for hours.

Tip for you guys: only including waifus in your party is not a strategy I would recommend but dammit, I can't help myself.

The other major issue with Bof2 is that the battle mechanic remains mostly unchanged from Bof except for the improved menus. The majority of the game was still spend on auto-attacking (thank god they left that feature in), healing, rinse and repeat. Yes, this is pretty much the par for the course of 90s SFC RPGs but the story wasn't compelling enough to make the grind rewarding in my opinion. What's worse is the item/spell to reduce random encounters hardly seemed to make a difference and expires way too quickly. It also didn't help that the SNES emulator on PSP couldn't really handle the graphics and had quite a bit of slowdown. (I later discovered you can fix this by upping the number of frame skips.) In any case, it's usually not a good sign that I got bored enough to load up a visual novel for some multitask grinding.

I DO NOT recommend emulating on PSP but waifus are ALWAYS RECOMMENDED

The story was better than Bof2 but not great. The main villian was as generic as they come and my MAIN complaint is that once you gain the ability to switch party members, they say almost nothing in response to events in the story except at the last dungeon. I'm guessing it was too much work to come up with dialogue for all the possible combinations of party members, which wasn't really a problem in the simpler Bof1. Capcom's solution to this problem was to have your party members make a comment once you go back to your town and they all go back to their rooms. It was WAY too much of a pain to go back to your town after anything happened in the story just to talk to your party members scattered throughout a huge house and hear their dumb comment on what just happened after the fact, so I didn't bother.

The one thing I found really amusing about this game is that even though it didn't have the obligatory bath scene fan service (otherwise known as a POOL for us English speakers), it was kinda pervy in a lot of ways. Monkey hitting on girls, poor Rinpuu getting called flat-chested by said monkey, girl getting kidnapped for her looks, asking a lady with big breasts about her well... breasts, etc. etc. Of course, thank god, Nintendo of America took some liberties with the translation to protect us poor Americans. Flat chest = little girl, etc etc.

The Adventures of Conan and animal pals I hear was not a bad game either.

Score: 2.5/5
Overall, is Bof2 a better game than Bof? Yes but is it a good game by itself? Well, when you improve the story a little bit but add a LOT more grinding, the ratio isn't a good direction for someone who really places importance on story like me. The GBA version might actually be the better way to go for the extra experience but again, I much preferred the SFC version's music.

While Bof2 improved on the sequel, other companies are doing the same and for an RPG that came out 8 months AFTER Final Fantasy VI, this game still falls squarely in the mediocre category. Plus .5 points for perviness and waifus.

Also, screw that stupid rhythm mini-game. Worst rhythm game I ever played.

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

Breath of Fire（ブレス オブ ファイア）

I finally made some headway on catching up on some of the "classic" RPG series in the 90s by beating Breath of Fire recently. The game starts out with premise of a goddess, wars, blah blah, none of which really applies to you and is promptly forgotten. The only thing you need to take away from it all to enjoy the game is that there's some bad guys and they're trying to take over the world. I can't really fault it for being an RPG trope unless there's a good decade or so to become a trope so I'll let the cliche premise slide for the early 90s. It does have a nice, very dramatic beginning with your home village getting attacked, etc., etc.

The rest of the story reveals a diverse set of characters that have interesting premises but are unfortunately barely fleshed out. The most interesting for me was ダンク (Dan-ku) for reasons that have nothing to do with the game but more because he was a grey (purple?) thief with big lips from the town of Bleak. Nintendo of America obviously had to do a bit of "localization" work which I found highly amusing.

ダンク (Dank?): A more innocent (racist) time

The other notable bit of "censorship" was coloring in some pixels purple to make a princess bath in purple clothes(?) unlike those Japanese weirdos who bathe naked... I guess? This is really the only small, tiny bit of fan service in the entire game. Thank goodness Nintendo of America was there to protect impressionable kids from this bit of nudity and morally corrupting collection of pixels.

Oh right, POOL, gotcha! Cause that TOTALLY makes sense!

The story overall is pretty thin as there's very little dialogue overall. There were only a few moments where I was really enjoying the story such as what happened with Nina while the rest were just annoying fetch quests on top of fetch quests to the point that you forgot what you were trying to get in the first place.

The gameplay suffers from a common flaw among games of this type in that battle is reduced to pretty much fight and heal. Thankfully, there's an auto-battle option so that you could do something else for a few minutes (such as play another game) and then come back and heal as necessary. Besides the dragon powers, I didn't even explore any of the spells or items because there really was no need. The only difficult battle was the Gremlin, a VERY over-powered boss for no reason I can think of. There is this annoying feature of where certain bosses have a lot of hidden HP left after you drain the bar. In this case, there was a LOT of hidden HP and you had no clue as to how much was left. It felt more like a balancing issue especially since the final boss was so easy.

Given the primitive gameplay, I was at least thankful for the lack of any real need for grinding save for a bit in the beginning and the Gremlin boss. Having experience apply to characters not in the party is a feature it turns out I'll sorely miss in the sequel especially since you can fuse most of the characters into your party anyway.

The only real difficulty in the game is that it's often not obvious where you were supposed to go next. And exploring the world with frequent random encounters is simply too annoying to make it fun. I tried to use a guide as little as possible resulting in over-powered characters purely from the constant barrage of encounters as I was trying to go places. I was also stuck for a while because you need to put certain characters in front to navigate certain terrain and the NPC character said せんとう which can either mean "combat" or "lead". It would have been obvious which if the game used Kanji. Having no Kanji was pretty annoying in general I have to say.

I can't comment on the English localization since I played in Japanese but based on the American Conan box art, I'm sure it was totally fine.

Is that guy supposed to be NINA?!!! SOMEBODY NEEDS TO BE FIRED FOR THIS!

I checked out the GBA version briefly but stuck with the Super Famicon due to the superior sound. The extra exp/gold and run ability would have made the game easier to beat but in RPG standards, it's not THAT long of a game. Certainly not very hard either.

Score: 2/5
Not a bad game by any means but is definitely the type I would play on the handheld while multitasking. Given the fact that this came out 2 years AFTER FFIV, really kinda puts it firmly in the "meh, it's not bad, I guess?" category.

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