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.