*The 3D graphics (meaning the models, not the 3D screen) are fantastic! I'm don't think they're necessarily better than the sprites, (and I wouldn't ever ask for the sprites in the other games to be replaced) but I think they're as good as the sprites and there isn't any bad about them so far. The only thing I'd say is that completely new characters (Athena, Simon, etc.) look amazing and I don't give them a second thought but returning characters (so far Phoenix, Payne (kind of), Apollo, and Trucy look a little strange to me sometimes, but that's only because I just spent like 100 hours seeing the sprite versions of those characters over the last few months).

*The actual 3D effects are cool, although I'm a little disappointed that the frame rate drops ever so slightly when it's turned on. The actual effect looks so great that I won't turn it off though! The two issues where the 3D is a problem are cutscenes and investigation. The cutscenes usually look great in 3D, but occasionally there will be shots where the characters look like they're just simply on a flat layer above the ground. This probably can't be helped, but I don't remember it happening in Layton and the Miracle Mask. I could be mistaken though. I've only investigated 1 area (the Fox chamber) but I also had trouble seeing the cursor and the action when my 3DS was at the highest 3D setting. This is a problem Layton also had, but it was MUCH less extreme. Still, keeping in mind that any future consoles that will play DD probably won't be 3D, this is a problem that will disappear eventually.

*So far I really like the story. I'm really enjoying the cases and I'm not quite sure why everybody finds Case 2 so bad but I'm only on the second investigation so maybe something happens down the road. Case 1 was a great way to start the case. I think it's the first time where a case 1 that happens after one or more cases doesn't bother me (I felt it wasn't very helpful in JFA and AAI). The one thing I felt in case 1 was that I didn't feel like I was jumping into what happened after AJ, it felt really distant (this is what it is supposed to feel like, of course, so it's not a criticism). Then Case 2 started and it really does feel like Apollo Justice 2, as it has the same style and tone as that game did. Looking back, I really like how they used these two cases to first throw you into this new AA world where these characters have known eachother for 6 months, then take you back to where you were post-Turnabout Sucession. I really like the new characters as well, and Taka sitting on the judge's head is priceless.

*The localization feels just like the other games, to me (although I also didn't notice a real difference between AAI and the other games as well so keep that in mind) and all the characters sound like they should sound. When I heard certain characters overdue it with their character traits ("I'm Fine" and the magic panties) I got worried but it's still in the AJ area at the moment. When I was playing AJ I was surprised how much Apollo actually says I'm Fine in that game, so so far it hasn't been a problem.

*It might be just me, but court segments seem longer. This is good, as these segments always went really fast for me. I've also been stumped once or twice, although I figured it out in about 5 minutes (and the one time I needed to use a consultation was a certain part where Tonate said he clearly saw his ID. I automatically noticed the R was broken when I first saw the photo, and assumed everyone in the game did as well, so I couldn't find the contradiction until Athena pointed out the testimony. That's happened in the other games once or twice too, though). But I don't notice a big difficulty decrease from the other games. The consultation feature is a cool way to get a little hint as well.

*The only place that feels less than the other games is the investigation phase. The backgrounds are so cool, so it drives me crazy I can't examine them. I don't really like that it automatically jumps you from scene to scene, and I'm not big about the "go anywhere anytime" ability (in fact I actually still go from, say Wright Anything Agency to Yokai Lane to the Garden to the Foyer to the Chamber, even if I could just go straight to the chamber, just so I don't miss something and so I feel like the characters are really traveling in the world. I think a big part of why I love investigation segments as much as court is because of all the side conversations you can have, so that is disappointing.

As it stands right now, if I compare my experience with the other games' cases 1 and 2, then DD is already my second favorite game in the series after AJ. That will likely change when I look at the game as a whole though (I doubt it can beat out the original AA) or if somehow the quality drops. But I already like it more than the AAI games, JFA, and T&T, so I'd say DD has totally exceeded my expectations so far. I can't wait to play the rest!

Just got inside Tenma Taro's chamber. That was some pretty creepy ambiance, with the "set" design and the audio. And finding that weird statue. I'm actually really enjoying this case. Like a lot. Like, better than T&T Case 2, AAI Case 2, and AAI2 Case 2. (AA Case 2 and JFA Case 2 are still better than this in my opinion and AJ case 2 us about the same.) I'm still surprised so many people dislike it. Is it the Yokai thing or is it the fact that they show L'Belle killing the guy? I'm going to assume it's the latter, as that did seem a little unnecessary.

many religions and spiritual groups do this kind of thing in real life, where a deity or event or something similar is said to appear or be somewhere or have taken place sometime that historically would have been different or out of palce. (Look at the upcoming Christmas holiday, which Christians celebrate as the day of Jesus' birth, even though the date of Christmas itself has changed throughout the years, with December 25 also being the winter solstice, and the believed date of Jesus' birth to be anywhere in the years of 7 to 2 B.C.). It's less meant to be "this really happened" and is more a way to get across a spiritual idea. My guess is a good amount of people in Nine-tails look at the chamber as more spiritual and less literal anyway. Probably the Temna Taro chamber is more of a metaphor for conquering your demons, and letting him out to battle Nine-Tails again is symbolic of that as well. And just like in real life, some might take something more literally, like Jinxie does.

Ted Tonate: he's a police department bombs expert. He used his position to disarm explosives and later sell them in the black market to make a lot of easy cash (seeing as how we all know officers get paid little to nothing even with positive evaluations from prosecutors). Candice Arms grabbed him red-handed, so under the pressure of the moment, he hit her. Hard. On the head. He let the moment take over him. That's all. He's a tutorial case culprit, he doesn't need to have a deep meaning.

Florent L'Belle: the guy had serious dept problems and thought that stealing whatever treasure was inside the Tenma Taro chamber would help him (except the treasure was already robbed, many years ago). Why did he kill the village chief? He was one of the select few to know that there was actually a treasure inside the chamber, so if Florent had stolen the treasure and left the man alive, he would have been persecuted.

Aristotle Means: felt intimidated from the other professor, so in the spite of the moment, he murdered her. Other than that, see it from the metaphoric point of view: the end justifies the means won over the truth being above all, as in, the dark age spreading.

the Phantom: he's an international superspy, hiding his identity is a key factor, so when he found out a woman managed to find key traits to his voice, he decided to murder her because, y'know, if the government ever published that, his life would be in jeopardy. Of course, things got worse. He killed her, but her daughter damaged his hand and blood spilled on the moon stone. Sadly, he couldn't take the rock with him, so the only thing he could do was send the rock to space. Unfortunately, a couple of years later, the rock returns safe and sound and, this time, the one to kill was one Clay Terrans because he was carrying the stone. To summarize all of this: he kills because his identity was going to be revealed, and if that happened, the international governments and mafias would be on his tail.

A tragic clown that planned the events of the entire game.

How the Zeng-Fah president had an affair with an American and actually had a child whom he decided to visit, but sadly, ended up assassinated.

1. A fair point. Though, I don't think being the first case is an excuse for an average villain. T&T and AJ had pretty good first cases that later got expanded on.

2. Right. His motive was pretty basic, but my favorite AA cases usually have the motive being a bit more "personal"; so to speak. The DLC case is a good example.

3. Same as above. Means murdered the teacher because she caught him/confronted him on his bribery. Spur of the moment. I get that it ties into the case, although my bias here might be how I was getting tired of the "THE ENDS JUSTIFIES THE MEANS" message that case kept hammering into me.

4. That's basically his job though. The killings probably weren't personal, and were just for the sake of achieving his objectives; although I can't help but wonder just HOW damaging a simple psych profile could've been. I just felt that, as a final villain, someone who was basically carrying out his job wasn't as satisfying as von Karma, Gant, or even Kristoph Gavin.

First, an international smuggling ring and now international space wars. With spies.

1. DD did the same in TaT and AJ: the final boss was related to the tutorial case, only that DD did it differently: the big baddie was related to the case right before the last one, I mean, you don't need to pace things from the get go, you can do it at different periods of time and space, there are actual guidelines for this and it's left to the writer(s)' discretion.

2. You said it, your favorite, but the writers intended to write something.

3. Writers intention.

4. Gant, von Karma and Gavin are extreme cases when compared to the Phantom. Damon did it all for putting a serial killer on death row, fame and power. Manfred did it for pride. Kristoph did it out of jealousy and the Phantom because he felt his identity was at risk, as in, his life was in danger.

Third, Means's staff being there before the mock trial.

Speaking of the spear... Wouldn't it make sense if the spear/staff dropped with the body? (Unless means was there to pick it up and clean the rubble around the body.)

Yes, he was there. I doubt he'd pick anyone else to pull out a corpse from where the bust was supposed to be, lay her body at the center of the stage, and head back up to the art building to send a statue crashing down on Klavier's bust when he already set himself an alibi. If he had an accomplice, he'd likely have let that person take the fall. "By all means", remember?

5-1 was the same as any other intro case, really- short and to the point. But I found myself really bored by it and Athena's new technology seemed a bit forced and tacky to me. I like my Ace Attorney games to rely on good old fashioned thinking and examining evidence rather than gimmicks that have been cropping up more and more as the series goes on.

But it was just an intro case so I didn't really place too much stock in it. The graphics were solid and the music is very AJ-esque. I found myself wanting to play AJ as I went through the case.

I haven't been on this site since DD came out as I knew I wanted to wait until the semester ended before I started the game so I'm not really up on popular consensus. What little I've read, however, it seems that people don't like 5-2?

I'm mixed about it. On one hand, the visuals and music are very good for this case specifically! I really like the atmosphere and tone and I think it's solid as far as atmosphere goes. It's immersive enough on those fronts.

As for the Japanese themes being discordant, well, there wasn't much to be done about that and I think the whole 'tourism' idea works as well as anything could. I'm very gung-ho for Japanese themes in media; obviously if I wasn't I wouldn't watch so much stuff from Japan. But with Ace Attorney, I feel it does break the California canon a bit. If the English series started off being in Japan, I'd say shove as much culture in it as you please! But since we began with a rather American style I can see why people would be unhappy with this case for these cultural reasons. I understand why they're there and it's not really a problem for me. Apollo and Athena seem distanced enough from it all to keep it seemingly American.

What starts to become a problem though is how obvious some of the plot points are. I breezed through the first day of trial with literally no difficulty and no thought was required. The tube of hand cream on the floor of the Forbidden Chamber made me facepalm because since the opening animation already showed us who the murderer was, it was as unsubtle as unsubtle could get. Even when they subverted it a bit with Filch having been the one who dropped it (or at least that's what everyone's agreeing on at the point in the case where I am). Everything just seems really obvious. I hope things become more difficult as the game goes on.

Initially I was like "lol carbon copy of all other female aides" but then I realized that many characters are carbon copies of other characters and that's not really a problem that started here in this game so I dropped that thought. I'm pretty happy with Athena! I like that she's a lawyer and can contribute more from that end of the spectrum. She appears to have a ~*~*~mysterious past that made her become a lawyer*~*~*~* like everyone else but I'll let that slide as I'm guessing that Blackquill is involved heavily in it so I'll hold out my opinion on that for now.

Ehhhhhhhh.... I really hope there's actual depth to this guy? For a main character, he's got less depth than a sheet of paper. It'd work alright for a minor villain or a single-case defendant or whatever, but... Not looking good so far. He just seems to be really stupid.

I'm not sure what I was thinking when I played AJ but I was really neutral about Apollo. But I think he's excellent now! And he seems the same as he did before but whatever it is, I'm really liking him. If every other character is a bit unrealistic, Apollo is bang-on relatable.

Well first you have to compare it to the OTHER third cases, so my bar was low. 4-3 is about the only third case in the franchise which actually factors in to the overall story of the game in question, so getting to play as Athena and get her development was wonderful and kept things fresh as we were still coming to know her and it felt like fresh new ground.

The threesome had really well crafted personalities to my eye and the spoilers regarding both Hugh and Robin caught me completely off-guard.

It had some fun with the Mock-Mock Trial which also brought Klavier in for a moment. It had a decent amount of investigation gameplay, such as building the statue, a really difficult to solve murder case (and for the first time in the franchise the CGs are not depicting things which really happened, which makes it harder to get ahead on) and even if the killer was the world's easiest to spot--- his breakdown was pretty much the best one in the 7 Years Later franchise. And it gave Simon his moment to save Athena, even if the translation of that scene is very mis-leading.

Also: "It's you people! Hahaha! In Justice we trust!"

My only disappointments are:

1. There was no gameplay gimmick using the recorded audio or video like there was in 1-5 and 4-3 which... well, sucks. Those were solid gameplay elements. I suppose that's why Dual Destinies is listed as a Visual Novel instead of a Video Game on Tropes.

2. Klavier and Phoenix were in the case together and the subject matter of the entire case was "The Ends Justify The Means!" and yet the subject of Phoenix handing a forged bloody ace to Apollo in his first trial never comes up. It actually upset me by the end that Phoenix was cleared of wrong-doing without ever acknowledging that he did to Apollo what Kristoph once did to him and all he got was punched for his trouble.

3. Juniper is a flat character and I still did not buy her love with Apollo. That should have been given a bigger focus if they wanted to push for it, or dropped all together to let Athena have a childhood friend character that can flesh her out without being pawned on Justice.

Fair enough, we'll just have to agree to disagree. Personally, I couldn't stand Hugh and having the theme of friendship shoved down my throat.

The mock mock trial was just unnecessary (and it makes me wonder why they even bothered giving Klavier sprites for standing in court), and the whole dressing up statues thingy was just retarded. Which is something one should expect in an Ace Attorney game, I'll admit, but this crossed the line of 'unlikely' to 'flat out impossible'. It didn't help that Means, while he had several hilarious lines, was a very boring villain.

Personally, I think Juniper was one of the highlights of the case. It showed us that there was more to that little sickly girl than what was initially shown. And while nothing will ever happen between Apollo and Juniper, I still love her knitting animation.