Who the @#%!! is Eggman?

Okay, so every now and then some Sonic Plebe will ask the following:

"In Sonic the Hedgehog, we were fighting the bad guy Doctor Robotnik, right? Then who the heck is Eggman? He looks just like Robotnik, so why did they change his name?"

My response is usually something along the lines of, "Please just accept that he is called Eggman in the games. I promise you don't want to know."

"Oh ho ho, I'm called Eggman because my nose looks like an EGGplant! Get it? HOHOHO--No but seriously, I have no idea."

But you wanted to know, you assholes. You wanted to know. Well, I don't see anyone bugging King Koopa about being turned into Bowser, but you know what? I'll give you the lowdown on Doctor Robotnik. You cool? I'm cool. Let's do this.

First, you need to understand some history, and "history" is a very broad term here because if you just play the video games, you literally do not know any of this. But let's make some stuff clear for you. The guy in the video games, from the first Sonic game all the way to the end... he was not originally named Ivo Robotnik. Okay? That's not his real name. Granted, that was probably the first name he got from the developers of the Sonic comics, but his "real name" as in "birth name" was not Ivo Robotnik, because that's too on the nose for a series whose main character has a best friend who's name is just a joke about speed. Uh... not the drug. I mean, like... speed.

BUT ADORABLE, SO ADORABLE!

Nope. Doctor Ivo Robotnik is actually one Julian Kintobor of the House of Ivo. But you want to know what's confusing about that? His dad is named Ivo Kintobor. Which is weird because I'm not sure I really get why Robotnik didn't stick with the Julian first name. Not evil enough? Anyway, Julian is the son of Ivo and Bertha Kintobor and has an older brother named Colin, who got married twice (once to Miriam Day and once to Angela Hopkins, but they're both dead) and Colin had two kids: Colin Jr. and Hope. Colin Jr. is more often known as Snively. You know... of Sonic SatAM fame?

Okay, so... more questions, right? Robotnik has family, so what happened to them and how come Robotnik is so evil? Was his family all a bunch of evil people? To that I have to sigh and tell you about the name Robotnik.

This was retconned so hard it hurts, but originally Robotnik was just a moniker for Julian because I guess he needed one. But the games don't follow the comic continuity (I actually like the comics, but I'm still going to say thank god for small miracles), so in the games, it seemed like he was always just named Dr. Robotnik. Now, Gerald (when the series started) didn't exist, so they had to retcon (retcon meaning retroactive continuity, just in case we're not clear) Gerald into existence. At first it seems like we aren't actually retconning since Gerald never existed but there was a place for him to exist, but remember that Robotnik was initially just a moniker in the comic series. Now, I've read (most) of the comics and I don't remember Gerald being brought up until Shadow was brought up since their stories are intertwined. Because of that the retcon seems more obvious in the comics since the two names (Kintobor and Robotnik) are reversals of each other and it doesn't seem like Julian put very much thought into his new evil name initially. In the games, there's no sign of retconning at all. Again, Kintobor as a name doesn't exist in the games. So when Gerald from the comic books was introduced, it only went to follow that he would have the name "Robotnik" as well in the games even though the enemy at the time was Dr. Eggman.

So the timeline works like this: In the comics, Gerald doesn't exist until they need him in the Shadow arc. Then he is created and added to Robotnik's history retroactively. But instead of being named Kintobor in the comics (which would have made him Julian's paternal grandfather and kept the story the same as always), he was given the last name Robotnik to match with the character Julian was at the time, Ivo Robotnik. But then someone pointed out that in the past, Ivo Robotnik was Julian Kintobor, so Gerald ended up being Julian's maternal grandfather and when he names himself Robotnik, he takes the name from his grandfather. In the games, Robotnik was never Julian Kintobor (technically), so that making Gerald's last name Robotnik makes total sense. Except for the part where Robotnik no longer exists, and all that remains is Eggman.

Since Julian's maternal grandfather was Gerald Robotnik, his mother Bertha was once Bertha Robotnik, and in order for Maria Robotnik to exist and be his cousin, he had at least one maternal uncle (with the inspired name Geraldo, like he was an Italian version of his father or something) who was married and gave birth to her. And, get this, Gerald Robotnik, Bertha Robotnik, Geraldo Robotnik, and Gerald's wife Jennifer Vasquez? None of these people are evil.

But Gerald was in prison for turning against the government.

Granted, Gerald can be seen as evil when you think a bit about his storyline and why he created Shadow to be the way Shadow is. You see, due to no one wanting to tell this story (or they did and I haven't read this part yet?), Maria doesn't live with her parents and has Neuro-Immuno Deficiency Disorder or NIDS. NIDS is possibly fatal, rare, and of course, incurable. But before you start getting up in arms about it, there is one other character who has this particular ailment, so while yes it is just an up-the-ante-esque way to get Maria aboard ARK, it does show up within the Sonic timeline more than once. And it is a plot device both times it shows up. Also, it only shows up in women right now.

On the inside, they're crying.

Anyway, Gerald Robotnik wanted to create a cure for NIDS, but that funding just wasn't happening. But he got help from the Republic of Station Square and was able to go forth researching a cure for his grand daughter by, I kid you not, working on a way to make immortality a real thing. This is about to get wicked convoluted, but I'm not here to explain Shadow, so I'll make this quick: Gerald gets in contact with the Black Arms race leader Black Doom, who is immortal and has Chaos Control, and gets his help by telling him he will make Project: Shadow into a weapon, but double crosses him. Gerald eventually makes Shadow and the BioLizard or the "ARK Monster". Shadow is to be used to defend the world from Black Doom, but then the Guardian Units of the Nation (GUN) heard about Shadow and want to use him for a weapon themselves. Gerald, not having any of that shit, tells Maria to take Shadow and go to an escape pod but Maria gets shot in the back when she tries to save herself and Shadow (seemingly on purpose, which calls a LOT into question about GUN, but I'm not here to make you aware of the politics of Mobius). Original Shadow, however, escapes. GUN finds Original Shadow after ordering Gerald to make them another Shadow (which of course, they ask after they tell him his granddaughter's dead) and Gerald, correctly assuming that they killed her, reprograms Original Shadow to take revenge on the whole planet. But then, afterwards, he tries to create another Shadow for GUN, and GUN isn't sure if he's dicking around so they kill him. There was never a cure for NIDS. So, an old man who out of love for his "only granddaughter" (considering that Hope is his great granddaughter, you get a pass, Gerald... but a very narrow pass) went to work on a project that should've been impossible succeeds only to watch his granddaughter die before him and then gets killed after that. He seemed like a sweet old guy to me, but other people have other opinions of him. But the only reason I even told you this story is because this is the only person who, in Robotnik's current family, could be considered someone who "turned evil". He consorts with clearly evil people, tries to take revenge on a planet, and reneges on two promises to deliver weaponry into client's hands. But your mileage may vary here. Technically, you could argue Gerald isn't evil because he consorts with Black Arms to complete the weapon for GUN, who were putting him in a tight spot by only giving him the money to cure NIDS if he did an altogether shitty thing in the first place. He does things that evil people would do, but does that make him evil? I don't know, I'm not here to discuss that.

In other news, Bertha and Ivo are both normal (Bertha doesn't seem to be the genius that her father was) and have supposedly normal kids, except for the part where Julian is a super genius.

If you consider his track record, this image is accurate.

Colin is a surprisingly heroic older brother figure who teases Julian, who as you will recall is a genius, and generally is just luckier in life than his younger brother. He gets married twice and has two kids, but if you watched Sonic SatAM you already know that Snively exists. But, what you didn't know (maybe) is that Snively was not named Snively by Julian, but by Colin. Snively was raised by Colin because Miriam (Snively's mother and Colin's first wife) died and Colin had no idea how to parent his son. So Snively starts becoming rascal-like and silly, which makes Colin straight up disown him. I didn't read this comic that detailed this, so I don't actually know what Snively did that was so bad that he was disowned but the whole reason I bring this up is, out of literally everyone in his family, only Snively is someone you can consider "evil"... and it's a purely coincidental thing, because Snively isn't completely evil and does do things that are good. In fact, he does them often enough that you could consider him a double agent or an anti-hero at times. But just so you can be sure that no one in Robotnik's family is evil, Hope is named Hope because she is good and also because she is literally just Maria. Shadow becomes friends with her and everything. Okay to be perfectly honest, I absolutely hate Hope because she's literally just Elise from Sonic 2006 to me. But the point is that she isn't an evil person, she's actually very good.

So, now that we know that pretty much no one in Julian's family was evil, the question remains-- who the @#%!! is Eggman, am I right?

Okay. Now, pay attention, because this is going to get silly quick. No sugar coating, let's get to the meat of things.

Julian was born to Bertha and Ivo Kintobor and thought that they loved Colin more than him and thought Colin was annoying. But Julian was a super genius and trained under Dr. Nate Morgan. Nate was a really nice guy who created the Power Rings. I'm not going to explain those right now, but they're important. Anyway, Julian waited until Nate taught him everything he knew... then he staged an explosion and blamed Nate, banishing him from his labs.

I'm sorry, Nate. D:

Okay, so here's something you probably didn't understand but you need to to move on. There are humans, there are Overlanders, and there are Mobians and all of these races live on Mobius. When you play the games, you usually end up in a place called Station Square or Central City-- these are not on "Earth" per se. It's long and complicated, okay, but humans are like... ancient. They've all been changed into Overlanders via Gene Bombs. Gene Bombs were created by the Xorda (aquatic alien life forms who mastered intergalactic travel-- no seriously) and basically it changed humans from having five fingers to four. It was honestly supposed to be worse. Further it changed Earth to become more like Mesopotamia (again, it was supposed to be worse) and the inhabitants changed the name of Earth to Mobius. But it did one "good" thing: evolved animals to be like humans. The Gene Bombs also created the Chaos Emeralds and caused the first Day of Fury (Days of Fury are global disturbances that-- fuck it, you don't care, it's not really important right now). So, to reiterate, most humans (most because there are references to humans, but the references don't ever really state if the humans are currently living or ancient) are dead, Overlanders are de-evolved humans, Mobians are mutated animals, and Mobius is Mutated Earth . Get it? Got it? Good.

Here, have some reference material.

Now. What you need to understand is that the Mobians in the Kingdom of Acorn were trying to form a single civilization using every species and race in the world. They tried to include all species, but Overlanders were too aggressive and xenophobic, so the ruler at the time (Alexander) decided to leave them out. As such, the Overlanders were a complete mystery to the Mobians. Alexander's son made friends with an Overlander and was accidentally killed by the man with a gun. Alexander happened to see the Overlander leave (and to be honest, there was nothing the Overlander could've done, since they weren't like, besties or anything) and so he decided that there would be a no-gun policy in the Kingdom of Acorn. This ruffled the feathers of the Overlanders, so tensions started to get high.

Remember Nate Morgan? He was banished from his lab and ended up living amongst the Mobians, the first of his kind to do so. Nate was trying to make a clean power source... the Power Rings. The Power Rings plus the Chaos Emeralds allowed the Mobians to get better technology (Mobians are especially conscious of the environment because they're animals, you guys) and they flourished for a while. Until the sorcerer Ixis Naugus vilified Nate because Nate's science made his magic useless. He worked with a Mobian war hero, Kodos Lion, to vilify Nate by using his magic to amplfy the hatred that a nearby group of Overlanders felt towards the Mobians and then told the current King, Maximillion, that Nate told the Overlanders the location of the Kingdom of Acorn. Nate self-exiled himself (such a nice guy, jeez) because he didn't know if what Naugus said was true. What I mean is, he thought maybe that his existence with the Mobians was the problem, so he left. Kodos tried to kill Naugus so that Naugus couldn't, at some point, put any blame on him... but Naugus escaped to the Zone of Silence so that he could gain power and then rule what remained of the kingdoms. Kodos then locked the Zone of Silence to prevent Naugus from escaping. Still with me? Good. What followed was the Great War.

Back to Julian. He was an engineer for the Overlanders and created items for the military including a prototype weaponized satellite called the Ultimate Annihilator. But Julian used living Overlanders to test his weaponry. When he was found out, Colin (who was the Minister of Justice) sentenced him to ten years of imprisonment. Julian escaped imprisonment and made it to the Badlands where he was found by the hedgehog brothers Jules and Charles (also students of Nate Morgan). Jules is Sonic's father and Charles, his brother, is often known as Uncle Chuck. Despite Charles being skeptical of Julian, Jules convinces his brother to save Julian. Julian swears allegiance to the Kingdom of Acorn and gives them the technology to fight the Overlanders, which turns the war in the favor of the Mobians, who then ultimately win.  Also, this is pretty important: Jules worked alongside a hedgehog named Bernadette. She was his partner during the war and they liked each other, so they got married and had Sonic. Not now, but if I don't mention it now I'd have to mention it later.

Bernadette is adorable. And she's hugging Sonic here, by the way

Kodos took Julian under his wing (despite being xenophobic of Overlanders) and decided that he wanted to overthrow the King and rule the world with Julian, who agreed that world domination was awesome but not if he had to share the power, so he banished Kodos to the Zone of Silence. Julian took Kodos' title of Warlord. He was later joined by Snively.

Kodos was also kind of a crappy guy.

Let's take a breather. You're probably wondering what any of this has to do with a name change. Patience. If I just came out and told you "This is what happened," you'd have questions like "how" or "why". No, you need to actually understand what's happening to really get this.

Okay. You good? Let's jump back in.

Julian decided that if he was to take over the world, he wouldn't make the mistake the last two guys did-- i.e., he wouldn't share his plans with someone who would overthrow him by making sure everyone under him was lesser than him (Snively) or were cyborgs. This required testing, but because he didn't want to be caught like he  had been with the Overlanders, he picked people from another settlement to practice his schemes on. Ultimately, only one Mobian survived, Monkey Khan (or Ken Khan). Monkey Khan was roboticized where his people were killed, and used by Julian until he rebelled. Julian locked him away and started thinking about removing free will from cyborgs as a necessary next step.

Simultaneously, Charles had come up with a machine to prolong the lives of the sick and elderly, a Roboticiser. Julian tampered with it to make it remove the subject's free will and make the subject follow his commands. Jules was injured badly and Charles unknowingly made Jules into Julian's first victim. Heartbroken, Charles apologized to Bernadette (who had just had Sonic) and stepped down from his role as Minister of Science and left the Kingdom for a while. However, there was another way to win the war without the Roboticiser, and Julian decided to go for that. He arranged a duel between the two sides and assumed that one side would kill the other. However, Maximillion won but didn't kill the Overlander. Julian was going to fail, but Charles turned over the Roboticiser to him.

I'm so sorrieeeeeeee

Bernadette discovered that Julian tampered with the machine and was using Jules, which made Julian toss her into the machine and Charles came back to discover that she was no longer responding, like his brother. He took Sonic under his wing.

Since Maximillian had won the war (thanks mostly to Julian), he agreed to remove the status of Warlord and get rid of the military completely as Julian wished. He also planned on making Julian into the Minister of Science. This was all going according to plan, until Amadeus Prower figured out Julian's plans-- and on the date of his son's birth, no less! And Julian tossed him into the Roboticiser.

He wasn't amused.

Okay, so if you've seen the opening to Sonic SatAM, you should pretty much know the next part.  Literally from 0:14 to 0:15 is what happened when Julian was given power during the victory presentation. He robotocised almost every Mobian and then exiled Maximillian to the Zone of Silence. And this was where Julian got his first name change: he changed his name from Julian Kintobor to Ivo Robotnik.

Then the Freedom Fighters started threatening his rule. Robotnik was in trouble, because the Original Freedom Fighters were serious business and they took out a lot of his labs. He managed to get one of the members, a snake named Trey Scales, to turn against the group. Then Robotnik turned against him, roboticised all of them, and put them in the Zone of Silence. And, uh... then they all died afterwards.

This guy had nothing to do with it. Oh, wait, I'm sorry, I mean he had everything to do with their deaths.

Robotnik went into the Zone of Silence, determined that he really didn't need to be there (and Naugus pretty much owned the Zone) so he left with Snively's help and determined that he wasn't ever going back. Instead he focused really hard on ruling what he did have.

But that's where Sonic came in. Sonic grew up with Chuck, who abandoned science to run a chili dog stand, and had met Robotnik as Julian when he was a child. He didn't even like him them. Chuck was roboticised and Sonic and Sally decided to form a Freedom Fighter unit themselves. So, you know. They did. Their base was the Knothole, a stump in the Great Forest, and they were known as the Knothole Freedom Fighters.

Robotnik tried really hard to kill Sonic. Really, really hard. He failed with Exceptionally Versatile Evolvanoid (E.V.E.) made from Sonic's cells and Robotnik's brain cells. Programmed to learn and adapt, E.V.E. learned that she could just exceed her programming and straight up shot him into an alternate dimension where he met another version of himself, Robo-Robotnik. (Just FYI, an alternate dimension in the Sonic universe GENERALLY SPEAKING is a world similar to Mobius, but usually with a different history, some extremely similar and some really different.) The Robotnik in the universe he was thrust into had become nothing more than a computer program, but Robotnik persuaded him to kill Sonic, who had forced him to upload his consciousness into a computer, and Robo-Robonik agreed before sending Robotnik back to fight his own version of Sonic again. Robotnik failed a few more times.

But he failed with a smile.

He achieved success when he partnered up with Nack the Weasel, who knocked Sonic out and brought him to Robotnik. Robotnik kicked Nack out of the city for his trouble. Sonic was turned into Mecha Sonic, and Mecha Sonic was a damn terror. Fortunately, Tails recruited Knuckles, who was injured until Sally used a portable roboticiser to make Knuckles into Mecha Knuckles and then gave Knuckles his free will with a Neuro-Overrider. He saves Sonic and they both become organic again (by different means).

The group saves Maximillion from the Zone of Silence and Robotnik gets wicked pissed. But Max's release leaves a neutron reading that allows Robotnik to discover the Knothole. And thus he creates Operation: EndGame.

EndGame was a very complex plan with many steps that sometimes failed and sometimes succeeded. He tried to murder Sally and frame Sonic for the murder, and he tried to infiltrate the Knothole with an automated version of King Acorn. And then he just showed up at their doorstep, apropos of nothing. He doesn't kill them, preferring to use them as test subjects for the Ultimate Annihilator. Remember that? Yeah, well now it can warp reality and erase matter.

Sonic is furious about Sally's murder and the two engage in MORTAL KOMBAT! But Robonik still activated the Ultimate Annihilator. It would've been perfect, but Snively had tampered with the machine, coding it to target only Robotnik's DNA. So by activating the machine... he destroyed himself.

Yeah. Robotnik? Erased. The end. Vamoose.

And that would've been it. The end of a story. The end of a great. But Sonic's story is more convoluted than this. See what you've just learned, what we know now, this is all occurring on Mobius Prime. But there are other Mobius's, other parallel worlds. Now. Robotnik Prime had come into contact with a Robotnik from a parallel world with a similar backstory, Robo-Robotnik, remember? That alternate universe Robotnik actually benefited from Robotnik Prime showing up in his world. He had gone mad after his universe's Sonic forced him to upload his consciousness to a computer. But Robotnik Prime told him to continue his reign, and Robo-Robotnik changed.  He pulled himself together, building himself a robot body (with something it is literally too time consuming to explain) and killing his universe's Sonic (who was a king and had kids with Sally at that time) as well as literally anyone else he could get his hands on (so... you know everyone). But upon hearing that his savior had been killed, he went to Mobius Prime to avenge him and to "fill the void".

"Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere's Robotnik!"

Sonic Prime and the others of Mobius Prime literally had ONE YEAR without Robotnik before Robo-Robonik came, and then the dude came and was even more conniving than Robotnik Prime. He caused an avalanche, brought secret satellites from his home dimension, released the imprisoned Snively (don't ask, that's a whole different story), and tricked Sonic and the others to think Robonik Prime was back from the dead by wearing a skin suit that was subsequently burned off with acid. After a fight (and finding Sonic's parents) the Freedom Fighters escape Robo-Robotnik, seemingly killing him. But Robo-Robotnik just uploaded his consciousness to another body under his capital.

And, my friends, this new body... this is Doctor Eggman. Guys. HE KILLED SONIC. HE DID IT ONCE. THAT WAS A THING THAT HAPPENED, FOR REALS.

So the next time you look at Doctor Eggman and think, "Shouldn't he be dead?" just remember that as long as he continues building bodies, he can just upload his consciousness wherever he wants. And also, he's murdered Sonic before. That's a real thing that happened. A real thing.

So who is Dr. Eggman? Somebody worse than Dr. Robotnik. Somebody way, way worse.

Harvest Moon: A New Beginning and Why We Keep Playing This One Game

Alright, so I talked about Rune Factory a while ago and I mentioned Harvest Moon, so you and I both knew that this would happen. A whole post on Harvest Moon, specifically new, 3DS Harvest Moon before I go back and talk about old, not 3DS Harvest Moon. But yeah, Harvest Moon. Ready? Go!

Despite this game being called "A New Beginning", this game does not in fact have a new beginning. See, Harvest Moon is like... not the most creative in the beginnings department. I mentioned this before, but... I mean it's really, really ridiculous how this always turns out. Your family has land in Insert_Town_Here, and you know, no one was using it or anything. Sometimes it's like, "Your grandmother/father owned this land, but then they died and you came to take it" and sometimes you're just... driving by and decide to stop in and become a farmer. As you do, I guess.

This game comes from the "my family owned this land and didn't think to rent it out to anyone" family. You just show up, right, and the mayor, Crocodile Dundee, is super happy that you're around.  He asks if you'd like to join the community. You can say no, of course, but that's saying no to adventure. So, you know, your character just automatically says yes.

His name's Dunhill, though.

So you join the happy little town of three people, but then you're joined by another guy, Neil, almost right away. So the town, including you, is five people strong. Then Iroha joins you, making it a six person town. Finally, Rebecca and her son Toni move in and you're now eight people in a small enclosed area and honestly... it could stay that way for a really long time.

But here's the kicker... Harvest Moon: A New Beginning isn't as good as previous Harvest Moon games. And I mean like, games prior to A Tale Of Two Towns. I mean games that are generally thought of as bad, like Grand Bazaar. Why? Well...

Harvest Moon: Not The Best Choice For A Game

Around this time in Harvest Moon, I assume people somewhere were complaining about... err, something. Namely, it's hard to get married to people because if you play without a walkthrough, you might accidentally force your sweetheart to marry someone else. So they dropped that completely from literally every following Harvest Moon game. But just so you know, there is literally no other form of tension in a Harvest Moon game in the beginning of the game.

"We're the hardest people to marry~!"

I'm not saying that the now defunct marriage thing is what makes A New Beginning not that great of a Harvest Moon game, but it's one of the little things.

A New Beginning by the title suggests that the beginning is, in fact, new. That could mean a lot of different things. But I think they decided to take a large step backwards in this game and so the title turns out to be a very... err, faulty lie of a name.

Anyone who buys this game usually buys it with the warning that it has the slowest start-up of every Harvest Moon game. If you've been told this, the person who warned you is absolutely, positively 150% not lying. This game has a literal full year of dicking around before you can really get to do anything. On top of that, if you're not cheating your way through the game, you might find yourself with maybe... two or three bachelorettes for the first year. If you're playing as a girl, you have pretty much the same odds. See, this game is following the template of a few of the games in this year-- full customization. Rune Factory IV had it in the sense that you could decorate your rooms (it wasn't the focus of the game and everything is static so it's pretty annoying) and Animal Crossing had it in spades. This game really focuses on that aspect of gaming, so it has to teach you how you customize your town.

How, you ask? Well, Crocodile Dundee will give you Town Restoration plans, because even though you're not the mayor, you're the one making executive choices for the town. You choose where things are placed, like houses, fields, and so on. Full customization of your farm is, of course, the dream. I don't, however, see why the game changed so much between A Tale of Two Towns and this game.

FARM EVERYWHERE GOD DAMN IT

All Harvest Moon games have a story to break up the monotony of just farming everyday forever, which is why the Harvest Goddess usually is such a raging idiot. Thankfully, they decided to nix the whole "The Harvest Goddess made another whoopsie" story and went for "Everyone moved out of the town" story. I especially like that everyone just demolished their houses the moment they were leaving.

"My son and I run an inn, which I subsequently destroyed out of frustration that no one was coming to visit Echo Village."

Your job is to complete the Town Restoration plans that Crocodile Dundee has and create a new town from nothing. What does this have to do with getting married? Everything. You have to build someone's house in order for them to move in, and you have to build houses of people you don't even like to get people that you do like. I mean, if we were going for full customization, at the very least you should be allowed to pick who you want living in your town. On top of that, to get these people to live in your town, you'd better be cheating or just save everything you pick up, because the town restoration plans happen to be seasonal.

And don't get me started on the hoops you have to jump for the mine.

They don't seem seasonal, which is the problem. For one plan, you need to ship 10 honey, but one of the vital items doesn't appear in the summer or the winter. So if you reach this plan and you've been selling that item, you need to wait a season. The game is already slow enough without this bogging you down. Another thing is that rocks, which you need to break to make material stone, appear very rarely. If you don't buy material stone from Rebecca, good luck trying to finish the second and third plans within two or three years. What's stupid is that black rocks are all over the place, and black rocks take a special hammer to break. What's even more stupid is that small rocks are also literally everywhere but you barely use small material stone for anything.

Some liar somewhere told me that it was easy to make money in this game, which would be true if you weren't sinking your money into buying material stone and saving literally everything on the off chance that it might be used later, which again, would be something you'd have to do if you aren't using a walkthrough. But I guess the worst thing is that you have to buy items to start dating other people, even if they have reverse proposal/engagements. Like if you want to marry Neil, you need to be carrying a blue feather so that he can propose to you. What?

"I can't marry you unless you've put down at least 10000000G on our future. PS, I'm not going to help you on your farm, so... you know, fuck that."

To further the vast amounts of work you need to do for this game, you can get your cows and other produce animals to be more productive. Sounds good, right? Except your animals die and you have to level them up by giving them treats. "Eh." You say. "Still not that bad." Yeah, I know. That's why no one in game informs you and you only learn via straight up cheating that you have to give them a certain number of specific treats (cow, chicken, sheep) and a certain number of general treats to level up your animal. The plus side is, the treats roll over. The minus side is, it takes a bloody fortnight (okay, longer than that) and it adds to the already pretty long amount of time you spend tending to your crops daily. I suggest getting a pet that can herd when you have maybe five barn animals and let them feed themselves outside.

Pets have always been the bane of Harvest Moon because they never give you a pet to start out with, which means you get the pet animal so late in the game that the pet becomes more of a hassle than your produce animals. I get that you don't want the game to be too easy, Natsume, but by the time I buy my first cat or dog, I'm literally done with the game. So this game decided to cut that short (thankfully) and make it so you could buy pets early on, if you complete the town restoration plans quickly. The moment you see "Build a Cottage", you should just dump your money into that so you don't waste half your morning running into and out of buildings to feed your animals. Unless you only have chickens, in which case you have to build a separate place for them to eat outside AND you have to put food down for them everyday. The only upside  to chickens is that the star level of the eggs corresponds to the number of hearts a chick hatched from said egg will have.

And if you have ten chickens, prepare to spend an in-game hour picking them up and putting them down.

But this is a lot of complaining considering that I like the Harvest Moon titles a good deal. So why do I dislike this one so much? Outside of all that stuff I labeled above I just... don't think Harvest Moon has been progressing.

I get it, though. As we move forward, people want new and more exciting things and Harvest Moon is just a status quo. Farming isn't exciting (or new) and so of course players get bored with it. I mean, since Harvest Moon has appeared on the DS, I think only two games have been really original in the whole set. If we're talking about Wii games, don't even get me started-- Animal Parade is probably the best Harvest Moon game for the system and one of the better series installments, but I don't want to play Harvest Moon on a Wii, really. The creator of Harvest Moon, Yashuiro Wada, for some reason thought that the series itself was beyond saving (he called it a marriage simulator) and created a new game, Hometown Story. But that game seems to be suffering from the same flaws that this game is. It's slow, it's extremely boring, and after a while it becomes just... intensely annoying to play. It's like having a job on top of your real life job.

By the way, you can get married in this game, so... marriage simulator, this time without growing stuff.

But have you seen the reviews of that game-- have you played it yourself? I only played a little, but it suffers from Harvest Moon Syndrome hardcore, and it's worse off than the regular Harvest Moon games. Harvest Moon games start getting bad the moment you are no longer interested in the townspeople, romantically or otherwise. On top of that, without the nostalgic backing Harvest Moon has, it's very hard to want to continue playing Hometown Story. The character design took a step back and isn't as cute as Harvest Moon is, the characters are all bland and forgettable, the camera is ridiculous and the music is forgettable too. It's literally just Harvest Moon if you extract all the things that made you play Harvest Moon.

But we keep playing games like Harvest Moon and Hometown Story-- Why? It's a life simulator and we actually live lives, but Harvest Moon's charm comes from the small town closeness that it generates on top of the life simulation, in my opinion. The moment you stop trying to progress making the people in the game interesting is the moment that the game starts to stall. The way to make people continue to play Harvest Moon games is, quite simply, to keep giving them characters to learn about and to keep making the characters interesting. For example, after Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, you never had to build a relationship with your child again. In Animal Parade, they touched on it, but not in the same way that A Wonderful Life did-- instead of watching your child grow and having a relationship outside of "Hey kid, good to see you're still mine, " A Wonderful Life had character arcs for your child (depending on the mother, but that's still a thing that occurs in game). I don't know why, but this function was completely dropped from the game.

And look at him. HE'S ADORABLE.

With new technology comes better ways to make Harvest Moon interesting again. Why not make it so that people in towns get married to each other again? Why not have small story arcs for your child? Why not make it so that the amount of time you spend with your child as a baby influences the way your child treats you when it grows older-- why not have an "ending" to your character's game and have the child take your place in a New Game + option? How about using the 3DS's DLC to add new characters or levels to an actual mine and not the crap we got in A New Beginning and A Tale of Two Towns? If you're really all about making the game fully customizable, how about finally making the kid look like both parents i.e. make it so that making a black or Asian character isn't just a skin and is actually something that has continuity in the game? They could update the things people say via downloads, or make the characters change clothes depending on the season (they do change their clothes in some games, so the technology exists). There could be downloadable festivals, or ones that only show up on odd numbered years or even numbered years. Maybe make the game so that we can visit a nearby city and open a shop and hire people to run the store? Or make tons of different town events for each year that actually impact the town in some way? How about having characters be indifferent to you, or become your enemy over specific events instead of everyone just being sugary sweet all the time? How about more events that have an effect on your town's look and feel? How about making same sex friends have the option of becoming "best friends" and that resulting in different scenarios and options for the player? In all of Harvest Moon I can only remember one character actually dying, like for real dying. They had a tombstone and everything. Why not more character progressions in that way? What happened to just living your life in a town, even if the town isn't one of your creation?

I need to feel invested in order to play a life simulator. When you really think about the genre of life simulation, gameplay comes in two forms: either you are a god or you are one of the mortals. When you're a god, your "gameplay" comes from your own sense of humors and so forth. For example, the Sims is a life simulator in which you are a god, and people play those games in vastly different ways. But Harvest Moon is a life simulator in a different way. You're no god, you're just a person who lives in a town. Sometimes, you befriend everyone because you love everyone. Sometimes, you just don't befriend people. That's just how it is. Your gameplay experience by and large has nothing to do with who you are, except for who you marry and what you design your house to look like. But investment comes from the same place. Why are you playing the Sims? Are you playing to design houses? You might be, but you're probably not. You're probably playing because of the people. You're probably playing the Sims and enjoying being an immutable, infalliable voice in the lives of computer people. And in Harvest Moon, you might not be a god, but you're probably not playing the game to run a farm. There are plenty of free Facebook games for that. You're also most likely playing Harvest Moon for the people. The gameplay is different, but the investment is the same. You play the game not for the bells and whistles, but for the "lives" that you have the chance of touching.

And you play this game if you want to litter your friends walls with nonsense and terrible art.

I felt invested in the lives of the people in Rune Factory 4, I was invested in the conversations they had, the festivals, the events... everything. I wanted to protect the town and so I played and played until I had done so. That made the absolute mundane chore of farming (which it was, I'm serious) less mundane. It was less about me making a nest egg for myself and more about me getting Princess Points to get more things for the town. I stopped playing Rune Factory 4 right before I had enough Princess Points to nationalize the bath houses, and it wasn't because I was bored but because I had a backlog of games I had yet to finish writing reviews for. That is crazy.

A new Harvest Moon graces the horizon and while I spent this whole article stripping the veneer off of the series and saying what amounts to "there's no forward thinking here", I'm probably going to buy it because Harvest Moon is a dying breed. Say what you will about it, Harvest Moon is not a game that holds your hand, it's not a game that makes things easy, and the amount of nuance put into each game is commendable. But I spent all of Rune Factory pretty much talking about the good things in Harvest Moon, because those good things carried over into Rune Factory as a series. I hadn't even touched on every single good thing. Crazy.

I want the next Harvest Moon to be good, I really do. I can see why the series creator sees it as a lost cause. But what I'd tell him as a fan of the series is that this particular series has only really just begun. I'm not sure that in the world where Call of Duty still makes money (you know, with their one game) that Harvest Moon will become the next big thing, but I think there's still some merit to it's existence and continued existence. If Harvest Moon does, one day, run out of ideas outside of "create more characters and make the world larger" (cough cough Pokemon) then it's probably time to think about calling it quits. But right now, while I don't recommend A New Beginning, I do recommend the series.

Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies Special Episode: Turnabout Reclaimed

Yeah, this gonna be short and sweet. There's a new special episode for $6.03 (tax included, $5.99 w/o tax) and of course I need to review it because I said so much terrible crap about the game itself.

So the idea behind this case is that it is the story of Phoenix making his return after the events of Apollo Justice, so if you didn't play Apollo Justice (but you are reading this) then I'll ruin this for you: Phoenix lost his job and became the stepfather of a magician. But it makes sense, I promise.

When you lose your job, you get a magician. Also, psychic powers.

It features Athena even though I feel as though Athena... probably shouldn't have had anything to do with it. I mean, it doesn't make that much sense considering he's in Athena's first case and-- okay, I'm rambling. The point is, Athena's in this case, so they're probably going to milk the hell out of her power.

But before we get into this, I should make it pretty clear that they pumped this thing out without doing very much of a grammar check, so if grammar is one of your hot buttons, you'll find a few things that are annoying. Like... missing commas. There are a few of those. In the full game, some words are spelled wrong, so if you find a word spelled wrong here, don't get too surprised.

The upside to this is that Phoenix is the main character again! And of course he's just as brow beaten as ever, so I'm a happy camper. If you really like Phoenix's character, the beginning of this game (i.e. when you have to push buttons) is like a huge throwback. Even though it's with Apollo and Athena, the way the dialogue moves along is reminiscent of Larry and Maya. It's such a relief!

If something smells, it's usually the Butz.

So Phoenix exposits about being eight years behind on this whole "doing cases" thing, thinking about how they really need cases at this agency when the TV informs him of a murder at an aquarium that Athena and Apollo had been watching on TV. And then someone pops in and asks for Phoenix, and the game's afoot. And of course there are bad puns and silly jokes, because this is a Phoenix Wright game. And you're playing Phoenix Wright! You don't know how excited that makes me!

But of course it goes right off the deep end (no pun intended, honestly) when Phoenix chooses to go with Athena over Apollo. Then you just know the case is going to be littered with psychology stuff that isn't well thought out (since Athena's psychology is still pretty much just Apollo's power). But then, Athena is better suited to be a sidebar character (unfortunately. It would be awesome if there was a female lawyer on par with Mia in this series) so I guess it makes sense that he went with her over Apollo... but come on! Apollo's too adorable to leave behind, Phoenix!

So adorableeeeee

I didn't mention this in my previous review, but now is actually the best time to do this: The backdrops in this game are amazing. They have motion, they're SEGA levels of beautiful (that's pretty high, considering Sonic Colors) and the way you explore really makes the scenes feel real. In 3D, it's especially cool... if you don't get a headache and if you can get the 3D to work well. I love aquariums (and museums), and honestly if one looked even slightly like the one in this game, I'd visit everyday. They really sell it with the backdrops!

Also, also, also! The Phoenix Wright theme plays in this game and of course it is the best thing ever. When it plays for the first time that I can recall in this title at all, I couldn't help but get the most goofy smile ever, even though it comes on during a very obvious "Rise From The Ashes" sequence (trust me, when you play it and you hear the circumstances of this murder, you'll probably roll your eyes and think something along the lines of "And how did no one look at this and think foul play?"). It's awesome, just plain awesome. They reintroduce the notes function (which Athena should already know about, for the love of God, but she doesn't because why the hell not), and also they pretty much tell you how to play the game (for investigations, because you have to have beaten the tutorial trial to play this episode) so if you're looking for stuff to skip because you're boss at the game, there you go.

Also (and I'm sorry I keep fangirling, but this episode is kind of what I was hoping for in the full game), if you recall the 300 reference in Trials and Tribulations which of course you don't (or do, in which case I love you) there is another movie reference in this game. The magatama makes a re-emergence as well (and I didn't mention this in the review itself, but the music for the magatama is also fantastic), explaining the re-emergence of another character in a much better way than this character was introduced in game.

But then Athena sort of ruins everything by sort of bungling her backstory (seriously, everything about Athena is copied in one way or another) so I guess I'm back to my role as Athena Basher. But honestly, can you blame me? In a cast of such wide and colorful characters, she's more like a bystander. What makes it worse is that Phoenix keeps running into better sidebar characters. All it does is make Athena look bad. It would have been better for the game as a whole to just have Apollo be with him.

For the most part, if you're in this for a regular Phoenix romp, you've got it. Right down to terrible pun names (Norma DePlume, Capcom? Are you for real?) and the crazy plots. Athena's analytic psychology (of course) come to play here and it's about as useless as it was in the main game. Again, all Athena's doing is exposing "lies", which, need I remind you, both Phoenix and Apollo can do. Apollo's is the more applicable since his ability can be used anywhere.  The other thing is that Blackquill makes a point of stopping Apollo from using "gimmicks" but lets Athena go right on ahead and do her thing. Especially considering his stance for most of the game, it's highly unlikely that he'd allow this.

In a way, this case is a better version of the game as a whole. Athena's sidelined, except for when she helps in court (which I don't think the sidebar characters should be doing as much as Athena does, considering) and Phoenix is the leader of the case. Things are pretty okay, as far as characters and storylines are concerned. In fact, for all my complaints about Athena, she actually comes across as a real character in this case, like someone who could actually be added to the group. She really is a good sidebar character... it's just too bad she's the status quo for female sidebars in the series.

"Quick, make a peppy, cheerful character with an odd quirk!" "But we already have four of those!" "I SAID MAKE ANOTHER ONE!" -Capcom Design Team

The case itself is much more interesting than originally let on, because when I started playing I was like, "Ugh, clearly the client didn't do it, c'mon." But then it took a turn and I was pretty sure I knew who did it, but I really didn't want it to be that person.

Blackquill is in this case, because of course he is, but he's status quo too. I don't think Capcom is going to do better than Godot in the "dark, mysterious prosecutor" field. They're going to need a new angle.

This is pretty much all the mystery I need, thanks Capcom.

Just... throwing this one out there Capcom, but as far as new characters go, I'd be interested in seeing a detective like Ema again. You know, someone competent at their job and not a pain in the ass to get past during investigations, but still hard to beat in court? In fact, if you're going to go for that, why not give Ema her dream job in forensics and have someone take her place? I mean, Grouchy Ema was hilarious, but I think Ema deserves her dream job. Placing a detective like Ema, who clearly is out for the truth, with a prosecutor of interest-- like someone who was actually straight up bad, Manifred vonKarma style-- would be a good draw to a new Phoenix game.

In the end, this case is definitely worth the purchase. I feel like every case in this game should've been just like this case. It's damn near the best in this game, and it actually does approach being one of the better ones in the series, since it's a longform case (those ones always end up being some of the best cases). If you buy this game and you really want to have a great experience, I'd shell out the extra money. I do think it's kind of a farce that they're making you pay for this case (it being the best case in the game and all), instead of letting it just be free. I also hope there will be further new cases rather than new clothing downloads. I feel as though the developers must have realized that we're not interested in dressing Phoenix and the others up (it's a weird addition to a game that doesn't have high replay value to allow you to replay the game with different clothes) and might be working on new interesting cases.

Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies

Guys, am I an asshole? Because I dislike a lot of new additions to old games.

My last review was full of all kinds of love for Rune Factory 4, and I stopped playing Rune Factory to play Phoenix Wright right when it came out. I planned on writing a review right away, but you know what happened? I didn't like it. Much. At all. And this is after Apollo Justice, which I also didn't like. But you know what? I actually prefer psychic hobo Phoenix and the case of the curiously coincidental cases to the train wreck of a story in Phoenix Wright Dual Destinies. And I'm going to spoil the literal hell out of the two games that came previous to this one, so, you know. Be prepared.

But first, a recap. Recall, if you will, Phoenix Wright himself was the main character of three games: Ace Attorney, Ace Attorney: Justice for All, and Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations. The latter is probably the best game in the series, considering. Phoenix Wright as a series depends on four things: The cases, the prosecutor, the sidebar character, and the main character. If any one thing is falling off, then the game starts failing. Now, in the first Phoenix Wright, there was no standard, so of course everything was relatively strong. In Justice For All, they made a slight miscalcuation on how interested we'd be in Franziska considering they barely give us any reason to find her sympathetic, but the game is still strong regardless and Franziska is likeable all the same. But then there was Trials and Tribulations, and no one can live up to that.

I'm sympathetic, but then I played Miles Edgeworth.

Trials and Tribulations is a perfect ending point for the series, only we all knew that Phoenix Wright could never end there. But thinking about it, it included the story of Maya Fey, the sidebar character, and her cousin, Pearl Fey, it had a part of Phoenix's past in a sensible and meaningful way, it had a bit of Maya's sister and Phoenix's mentor Mia and her story, and to top all of it off, it had Godot, literally the best prosecutor since Edgeworth. He had purpose, he had a great story, and his motivation wasn't completely ludicrous or a clone of Edgeworth's like Franziska's motivation.

They went all out on the "tall, dark and handsome" here. I'm not mad about it!

But like I said, they couldn't rightly end Phoenix Wright on that note, and they started making Miles Edgeworth games. They made two, one which didn't come to America since everyone just straight up stole it here. But Miles Edgeworth is where they started screwing things up. You see, in Justice for All, Phoenix (Actually, it's Maya, but... the Phoenix series, in this case) introduced the Magatama. It's an interesting relic that, when imbued with power, allows Phoenix to see the locks on people's hearts (when they're lying to him). Phoenix needs Maya or Pearl to imbue it before he can use it. For whatever reason, Capcom was like, "This is the only thing people are interested in, not the murder cases or the skewed logic or the crazy characters." So in Miles Edgeworth they introduced possibly the most annoying character in the series, Kay Faraday. Kay came with her own deus ex machina, Little Thief. Why is it a deus ex? Well, that would be spoilers. You can skip this next paragraph if you don't want spoilers.

Seriously, spoilers like, right beneath this. But I'll put a picture where you can come back.

The technology for Little Thief is absolutely backwards. Look, Phoenix and Miles use non-touch screen phones and actually look through files and stuff, but there's a machine that not only projects holograms for miles, but was created by a lawyer? And there's only one of them, not two or three? I'm just saying it's stupid that a lawyer made a machine that basically solves all cases for you. Which it does if you're not stupid, so they make it so that Kay is retarded and can't use basic logic. Keep in mind though, that Little Thief does somewhat work in the context of their world... later. Phoenix and Miles both use CDs and videotapes within the course of literally every game, making them seem to be in a world parallel to ours technology wise. And then there's Little Thief.

See? I promised and I made good on it.

But that's only the beginning of the side characters basically having more power than the main character despite not having the experience of the main character, because the next American release is Apollo Justice. And if you haven't finished Apollo Justice, you should probably skip because I'm going to get into some story here. No worries, I've still got the black and white woman to help you out.

Thank god for this woman.

In Apollo Justice, you meet Apollo (Justice), the most adorable lawyer in the series. Sorry, I'm just in love with Apollo. Anyway, Apollo's sidebar character is Trucy, and Trucy's power is seeing tension. Yes, okay, the first thing anyone asks is "Can she see this hard on?" and the answer is "I don't know, probably, yeah." I mean they barely ever mention the laws behind this stuff. She's a magician and also, Phoenix's adopted daughter. This would be cute if it wasn't also annoying and completely contrived. COMPLETELY.

Apollo has an "even more powerful" version of the power that Trucy has. Coincidence? Yeah, absolutely. Two people with the same power... but you know what, that doesn't really mean anything. Right? Right. Yeah. Not until by sheer coincidence, they have the same mother.

But the game parallels and foreshadows the ending with the brothers Klavier and Kristoph. Seriously, this game was strangely all about family tragedies. It would've been okay if it was just Klavier and Kristoph and their family tragedy, but the fact that Apollo and Trucy are stuck in there with their double dose of family tragedy? Weird. I don't hate Apollo Justice or anything, but this is a painfully contrived. I mean, damn.

Alright. Only one more of these, maybe.

So I know what you're thinking. You're like, "What does any of this have to do with Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies?" Well, here's the thing. Sales of Phoenix Wright games in America have gone down drastically. It makes sense... somewhat. The games don't have a high replay value, so only collectors would really buy and keep the game. You're very likely to find the game used... or find people pirating it. Now, they didn't really have any issues with the first three Phoenix games, at least not as bad as Miles Edgeworth. But Miles Edgeworth and Apollo Justice were major missteps in the series that Capcom surprisingly didn't retcon immediately. But I give you props for that, Capcom. Nice work.

Now's the biggest ever spoiler corner, so I'll do you a solid since this is about to get wicked spoiler-y. If you've played both Miles Edgeworth and Apollo Justice, you can read on. If you're trying not to spoil the games but REALLY want to know about Dual Destinies... I commend your valiant effort, suggest you play the games, and will now use SOME LARGE ASS TEXT TO TELL YOU THAT THE NEXT FEW PARAGRAPHS ARE TOTALLY SPOILERS AND YOU SHOULD SKIP UNTIL YOU SEE SOME MORE LARGE ASS TEXT.

The thing is that Dual Destinies does sort of retcon some stuff for no reason. For example, Lamiroir, Apollo and Trucy's mother, wears distinctive clothes while singing. Klavier, who was in a band once and played with Lamiroir, doesn't mention the fact that a girl is dressing up in Lamiroir's clothes and singing the same song Lamiroir sung. No one in game does. No one in game mentions that Apollo and Trucy are siblings, making it seem like Phoenix didn't even tell them. Lamiroir doesn't even make an appearance, despite being super ultra ridiculous important at the end of the game for no reason in Apollo Justice. Okay, there is a reason that she's so important... but it's really, really ridiculous.

But even though they clearly "forget" everything in Apollo Justice... Pheonix remembers the black psyche locks. He even learns how to unlock them (anti-climatic: it's the same as the other locks). You can't just pick and choose the things you're going to forget, Capcom. You're telling a story in chronological order, not writing chapters out of order whenever you want. You could do that, no one's stopping you.

In Apollo Justice, the detective is Ema Skye, who was introduced in the first Phoenix Wright and appeared in Miles Edgeworth. She's nowhere to be seen in this game, despite the fact that her forensic science would be useful in this game. But that's probably why she's not in the game at all. In fact, there's a point in the game where I feel like Apollo would've just gone to Ema instead of the detective on hand but it would've just broken the game. She's a detective and a friend of Phoenix, Edgeworth, Trucy, and Apollo. Any one of them could've gone to her for help.

Edgeworth also knows about game breaker Little Thief, but for whatever reason doesn't have Kay with him or... have someone make him his own Little Thief? No? Okay, that's sensible. You just decided you didn't want to have a "solve every case" machine on hand? Got it. I don't mind the disappearance of Kay, I'm just concerned that no one was like, "Kay, do you mind if we make a copy of Little Thief? Your dad made it to solve literally every crime in the world and it would be nice if we could do that."

What about the Jurist System at the end of Apollo Justice? Did we forget about that, Capcom? Did we forget that we decided a jury is better than just straight up evidence? Looks like it. It's actually stupid how they never even address that they had a new system that pretty much made it impossible for another Phoenix Wright game to come out. They just forgot all about that system. Whatever, right? On top of that, this game has a very strong focus on what makes up some of the plot in Phoenix Wright, the forged evidence. The whole reason the Jurist System came to be had to do with the forged evidence, but it was discontinued in game, for some reason.

Welcome back, people who haven't played Miles Edgeworth and Apollo Justice. You've only just missed me being a fangirl. Let's talk about Dual Destinies.

Featuring Apollo Justice... and two other people. Apollo's in it, though.

Prior problems aside, right, this game has its own share of stupid things and they start with Athena. I actually like Athena as a character. She's bright, she's fun, she's excited to do her job... it's just too bad that she breaks the game completely.

Insert combobreaker joke here, I guess.

Athena's addition is A) Too soon after Apollo's, rendering his ability now completely useless, B) Unnecessary considering the cast of characters (her personality is a combination of other characters, like Maya's cheeriness and Kay's... uh, nearly everything and Trucy's oddities) C) Extremely forced (she's introduced as just "someone Phoenix met overseas," so clearly she should be in his agency) and D) A way to force Phoenix out of the game named after him.

Like I said, a good Phoenix Wright game depends a lot on the sidebar character, and you'll spend two cases with Athena as your sidebar but she isn't a sidebar character. This game literally does not have a sidebar character, so you don't have time to get used to any of the lawyers and you don't really have a character whom you can really depend on. And then there's Athena, and well... She's awful. Athena has a special ability-- I know, I'm so sorry about the lack of creativity going on at Capcom-- in the same strain as Apollo does. She can hear "the voices of people's heart," meaning that she can tell when they're lying. You know. Apollo's power.

Hey, Athena, if you can hear the voices of people's hearts, why is Apollo even using his power?

Now, to make it not Apollo's power, she says she's studied psychology. Ah, and you know how it actually takes like forever to become a lawyer, and how studying psychology might also take a few years? Yeah, no, she's like 18. Apollo's like 24 and she's like 18 and already a lawyer. Before you start complaining that Fransika was 18 and she was a prosecutor, at the very least her father had clout and the kind of crazed maniac in him to force her into that role. Athena had no one like that, so it's implausible that this is a real thing. And I'm not trying to base this in reality, I'm just going by norms within the series. Franziska was forced through in Europe, like Klavier, but both came from families with lawyers in them. But here's the kicker-- Everyone who has been a prosecutor at 18 has done it in Europe. But two characters are under 18 and about to become a part of the system after going to school in America. Ugh, Capcom, you're killing me here.

It's not an error, though. I guess America's finally catching up with Europe. Wait a--

Athena, like Apollo, has a physical power that gets augmented via an item. For Apollo, it's his bracelet. For Athena, it's Widget. Widget has like, two or three lines, max, and basically does nothing but make faces for the whole game. It also makes no sense considering Widget shows her "true feelings" but half the time seems to only show what she's feeling on the surface, which are far from her real feelings. And you might as well throw it in the same bucket as Little Thief and call it a deus ex, although they do explain how widget can even be a thing in game.

But to further make Widget and Athena not the same as Apollo's power (and not really working because SERIOUSLY), Athena's power changes the way you do your testimonies. It is pretty fun, but it has a lot of arbitrary rules. But I think what bothers me is that when Athena uses her power you can't lose. Apollo could lose in his game, but Athena literally cannot lose in this game. Inexcusable, Capcom. You can't add in a new character with a power and then make it so that you can't fuck up with her power. There's no tension that way. For shame!

Japanese to not spoil things, but anyway. The testimonies look pretty cool.

Her segments fail in the sense that she can just keep adding things to her repertoire. First it's like, "You've got to look for odd emotions," then it's like, "Widget is translating their voice into images that we need to correct" then it's like, "Look for odd emotions that only seem odd some of the time but not all of the time." I mean yes, for the sake of the game you need to differentiate Athena from Apollo, but if they were just going to be the same person, then Athena either didn't need to be made... or really needed a different power altogether. Her name is Athena, for god's sake. She's not even the goddess of truth (or hearing, for that matter). Apollo's power at least makes sense considering his namesake and Phoenix's name refers to his comeback ability, but Athena's named after a Greek goddess-- pretty much the Greek goddess, and has no connection to her namesake at all. Coming from a series that banks on naming conventions (Yeah, I'm looking at you Redd White... and hey, Gaspen Payne and Winston Payne, come join in), that's ridiculous.

But like I said, I don't hate Athena. She's actually a lot of fun. I like her expressions-- it reminds me of the things I liked in Kay-- the upbeat cheeriness really comes through in her character model. I like the way she talks, it's like a mix of Maya and Trucy. The yellow clothes and her intro with a judo throw is too close to Emmy from Professor Layton-- and Capcom, you worked with Level 5, so that's inexcusable-- but then she never uses judo again, just talks about going for runs and has an odd parallel with Apollo's Chords of Steel. She and Apollo have good chemistry. She doesn't really have chemistry with Trucy, but Trucy's barely in the game. And even though Phoenix is the namesake, she's barely got chemistry with him. But she is new...ish. So I suppose it's okay for her to be that way.

Emmy's pretty much nothing like Athena aside from the yellow and the excitedness and... Okay, they're realllllllly similar, but it only comes across full force if you've seen the Layton movies.

There is no main lawyer in this game, but Apollo is present more often than not. Phoenix is around (as in playable) in all of two cases, and in both he shows up like... after the case has already started up, as though he was busy doing other things and interrupted his schedule to be in the case. His name is on the case of the game. This should've be called "Everyone: Pheonix sometimes, but not always, actually nearly never". He's in the longest case and the first case of the game. The other two cases are split between Apollo and Athena. It makes me wonder why the game's called Dual Destinies... there's three lawyers and I'm not sure if the title is referring to Athena and the prosecutor or the fact that Apollo and Athena are new lawyers in the agency. Whose destinies are we talking about here? Seriously.

Dual Destinies: Now featuring three destinies

Apollo being the most drastic change in the game (the bandages and all), he steals the show hardcore. He's still sarcastic and still the only straightman to Phoenix and Trucy. Athena, even with her personality, can't hold a candle to him. That's crazy-- she's the newest character! For whatever reason, maybe to make Apollo less interesting, the case where Apollo is the lawyer is the only one where an anime cut scene straight up tells you who the culprit is. That. Is. Shit. Capcom.

You're too adorable, Apollo, I can't be mad at you.

Phoenix no longer is psychic, which makes no sense but was a good choice overall. They do retroactively explain how Phoenix could be psychic hobo Phoenix, but it still doesn't make total sense (it implies that more than one person is psychic hobo Phoenix, which is crazy, and also that people knew why Phoenix had to leave the profession, but then did nothing about it). But he has grown some, although he still has the defeatist attitude that made him adorable in the first three games.

And you're adorable this way, Phoenix. I'm sorry you got your job back. ...Wait, no-- I mean, I'm glad you got your job back! I'm glad!

Okay, so lawyers and sidebars are taken care of. What about the prosecutor?

Simon Blackquill is adorable, but he's not interesting. Here's the thing, okay? He's a good guy. And don't you start bullshitting me and acting like I ruined the game, there's no twist here. Literally no Chief Prosecutor would allow a criminal to act as a prosecutor unless there is some other motive behind it, i.e. he's clearly a good guy. Klavier from Apollo Justice had this same problem-- he's cute but he's not interesting. Klavier actually ends up worse when the story is finished in my opinion and Simon just is bland in comparison.

Also, like... I guess in prison they just kept giving Simon clothes that he'd want to wear to go along with his hair and attitude? Sensible.

Simon's known for using psychology in court, which is a running theme in this game, surprise. But he does it to the point of straight up annoyance. His bird apparently has a super power where it knows when Apollo is using his power and prevents Apollo from using his power but not Athena from using her power. And the two of them pretty much have the same power. ...Power. Sorry, I just needed to say it one more time.

Simon's story isn't strong enough to hold the story up. Compare to Godot, whose motive was unknown because his backstory was unknown for a good portion of his game or Edgeworth, who at least had a bond with Phoenix which made the tension between them elevate. Simon barely has any of that and it means he's mysterious, but not in a way that's intriguing. I mean, I didn't know what his motive was, but then it turns out that he barely has a motive. I mean it's there, and yeah, it's interesting, but I walked into this game knowing Simon was a good guy and I didn't leave the game thinking, "Man, that really changed my perception on XXYY," I just came out with a mindset like, "Yeah, so I can see into the future using tropes, go figure."

So the cases, right? The cases must make this game okay. Welp, not really. The cases are long, but it's not as good as Trials and Tribulations. The case that Athena presides over and the last case are the best in the game, but Athena is a weak lawyer so her case doesn't seem as exciting as Apollo's and Phoenix's, and you can tell who's the bad guy. There are interesting characters to meet, but not as interesting as some previous characters were. The game doesn't do the "neatly tie everything up" that Apollo Justice did, but at least in Apollo Justice you felt tension during the game. I feel like there is no tension in this game. I guarantee you can guess the criminal in every case but the last one before you get into the case itself. The anime cutscenes are mostly filler, except for the one that straight up reveals the killer in Apollo's case. It's abysmal.

What hurts me the most here is that I can see where a good game could've risen from the ashes of this one. There are good twists within the last case and I like how the tutorial case ties into the story as a whole a lot, it's clever. But it would have been a lot better if Athena was strictly sidebar and didn't have any lawyer responsibilities. If Athena was strictly sidebar, then we wouldn't have had the immense amount of foreshadowing that we did, which sort of ruined the game for me. We should have peeks into the main story, yes, but Athena's hamfisting her story in and that's a bit... bad for her character.

I enjoyed how they retired Trucy, but then she proves how great she was as a sidebar by appearing only every now and then. Whenever she appeared, I was hoping she'd tag along because Apollo needed someone like Trucy-- bubbly and oblivious though oddly smart and easy to get along with-- to support him. Athena fits the role, but doesn't fit the bill. Unlike Pearl and Maya, who at least served as sidebar together, Athena never works alongside Apollo and Trucy and doesn't show her differences to Trucy well enough to be a sidebar to Apollo. For example, Trucy uses her magic and her bubbly charm to make people talk to her. Athena uses psychology. Everyone Athena managed to get information from, I could see Trucy getting information from too. The methods are different, but the end product is the same. Compare to Maya and Pearl. Maya herself didn't get very many people to open up to her, but she could if she channeled her sister, and she tended to only do that when she wanted to help Phoenix. Pearl only got people to talk to her to explain things, because she was young and removed from society. Neither of them could really get the same information out of people-- Pearl probably couldn't have gotten some of the information that Maya got until she got older. Trucy already has a game behind her, so Athena being able to get the same information that Trucy does is... well, weak. It's like... Why not have Trucy just be the sidebar, then?

The problem is that Athena doesn't have enough time in this game to become beloved on her own. Apollo and Trucy had a whole game to themselves before popping into this one, so even if you didn't like them, you still understood who they were and their characters. Athena is buried underneath the strength of these other characters, it hurts her as a lawyer and as a character. She's just not interesting enough to be the focus of the story, and they're trying really hard to make her interesting and failing. They needed to flesh out Phoenix and Apollo further before dragging in a new character.

If I was in the habit of giving games star ratings or number ratings, this would have one of the lowest ratings I could muster for the series, probably tying with Miles Edgeworth in the "I don't see why we needed to see this story, but I guess you're laying the foundation for a better story" department. That's pretty bad. I think the update in graphics was unnecessary, the anime cut scenes were okay but useless and distracting, the addition of a new lawyer on top of already having a new character was a bad choice, the "power" in this game was already used and so is meaningless, and all in all, this game ended up worse than Apollo Justice. If we're only talking about the defense attorney games within the series, that means it is the worst "Ace Attorney" game.

That's not a bad thing, though. Apollo Justice was pretty good despite its flaws.

Capcom, for the future, you already ruined your "powers" with Apollo Justice. He literally can see when people are lying, and I guess if you decide that some people don't have small ticks when they lie, then you could add Athena in and call it new. But it's not imaginative or creative, and it weakens your character as a whole. I'd say if you really wanted to add a new character with a power, you should add one with a power that only borderline has to do with lying. For example, you already have characters who can channel spirits so you could probably make another supernatural character. Someone who can see into the past? Someone who can read intentions off of murder weapons? I mean you really can't make another character who can see/hear lies. It's unreasonable. If you do, at least make it like Phoenix's, where you have to present the magatama to people and it has to be recharged-- and can't be used during a trial.

If you're a fan of the series, you probably already bought this. If you're coming in new, drop this game and spend like $10 on Trials and Tribulations or the original Phoenix Wright. Money better spent, I assure you. This is very much a "for the fans" kind of game, without really recapturing the magic that made fans get into this series in the first place. For shame. I was looking forward to this, too.