DAMMIIIT! IT'S NOT FAAAAAAIR!!

First of all, I really like this game. It's visually everything I expected from an AA game on the 3DS, Blackquill is one of the best prosecutors, the music is terriffic and I love the cases we got. Fullbright as the main villain was a great way of not falling back into the whole "The prosecutor did it" cliché but still keeping the same OMGWTFBBQ moment. Marvelously done, I really love this game, but I'm just not sure where the writers want to go.

In the Phoenix trilogy we started with a rookie Phoenix who couldn't even do anything without Mia pointing it out. He grew in a more capable attorney who simply relied on contradictions and bluffed his way out of it. In the end, when he took on the final case against Godot all on his own, he was finally a good attorney who not only found contradicitons, but could also quickly use these to prove his clients innocence. The games grew (in difficulty) with Phoenix, as well as with the player.
After that we got Apollo. 7 years after T&T, Phoenix had become a boss (both figuratively en litterally). He lost his badge but, as we saw in the flashback case, he became a top class lawyer who defended like a pro, not relying on luck or bluff. That's no way to completely fill a "fun and whacky" Ace Attorney game, so we got Apollo. To me AA4 feels like an interlude between the Phounix trilogy and a new 'era' starting with AA5. It's a great game the slowly introduces us to how things are going to work from now on while still being a good AA game in it's own right.
So what I expected from AA5 was the Wright Anything Agency with Phoenix as the boss, while Athena and Apollo did the defending. And half of the game was like that. Case 2, 3 and 4 had Athena and Apollo defending, swapping around who was the main attorney and who was the assistant. This gave some great cases where we could bluff our way to victory again. Athena being tied up to prove a body could be made to look like a statue was a great part of case 3. It really reminded me of the Phoenix trilogy without forcefully relying on old material.
And that's where the problem starts. Though half of the game is what I expected the series to go with, Athena and Apollo investigating while Phoenix just gives cryptic hints and doesn't give a damn like in AA4, but the other half was back to Phoenix being his bluffing and wacky self. It just doesn't work for me. That's not how Phoenix is anymore. He's no longer the 'bluff king' the game keeps throwing at you. It's actually quite annoying to have the game forcefully reminding you every 5 minutes that Phoenix is bluffing, Apollo says that he's fine and that Trucy has magic panties. The game overuses old material in favor of creating new. I get it that Capcom also wants to give us a nostalgia run by letting us play as Phoenix with Pearl by his side just like in the good ol' past, but in my opinion those should be side-cases, like DLC. Not part of the main plot. I'm halfway through the DLC case now, and it's here that I can really enjoy the blast to the past with Phoenix. It's a side case made for nostalgia.
Also, I got a feeling the game is a bit too easy when it comes to Psyche-locks and the bracelet. I'm fine with the lack of penalties, but the bracelet gives you the statement with the twitch immediately and as soon as a psyche-lock appears you always already have all the evidence you need. Was a bit of a letdown.

Dual Destinies stays exactly on the middle line. It wants to be a game all about Apollo and Athena who are rookie lawyers, slowly getting better, but at the same time it wants to shove nostalgia and Phoenix into your face. Phoenix has grown as we have seen in AA4, he shouldn't act the way he does when he's the main attorney. I hope 5, 6 and 7 become a new trilogy focussing on the grow of Apollo and Athena. I really hope AA6 let's Phoenix go a little more, keeping him as the boss and mentor but not as the main lawyer. I hope Athena and Apollo get their own running gags (like Oldbag being everywhere and Larry being the defendant A LOT in the Phoenix trilogy) instead of relying on old material. (Except stepladders. Those are awesome.)

The series is going further into a new generation of lawyers. Let the past go Capcom, keep Phoenix himself apart for the DLC. Release the AA123 collection on 3DS so new games can see how Phoenix became the man he is today. But please, continue the series with the new characters and make this a truly new chapter in the AA series.

...but it started going downhill for me after the Phantom began ripping his masks off. It was shocking at first, but it didn't do very much for me. The end was a bit underwhelming for how crazy and chaotic the whole case had been up to that point. I also wasn't particularly a fan of some of the dialogue toward the very end. It wasn't necessarily horrible, but Phoenix, Athena, and Apollo preaching at the Phantom about emotions pre-breakdown felt a tad too forced and corny, even for AA.

How, exactly? They successfully pinned both murders of the UR-1 Incident and the Cosmic Turnabout, he looked the same: emotionless. Then they counterattacked with two facts:

1. All of his employers and victims will attempt to assassinate him.

2. He doesn't know who he is anymore.

Perhaps this just boils down to taste. I replayed the end of case 5 last night to see if I might get something else out of it, and I think my main problem here is the way that part was written. It still felt cheesy to me - if they had just dialed it down a bit, I think I would have liked it more. Come to think of it, there was a lot of weird "expositing" toward the end of the case. Simon says something like, "Yes, because I covered for Athena, I allowed the Phantom to escape, and caused people to distrust the courts with my conviction" followed by Phoenix saying, "I share part of the blame as well, for being accused of forging evidence," etc. It felt stilted and unnecessary, since we already knew all of that beforehand. It also followed that pretty cool exchange where they both agreed to take down the Phantom together. They could have just left it at that, IMO.

How would I have made it better? Hard to say. I don't really know myself, I just know it still didn't sit quite well with me. Maybe give us some more time questioning the Phantom post-mask ripoff? (Nothing Alba-length, but enough to build up to the emotions stuff a bit more.) I guess you could argue that it's hard not to get at least a little cheesy when emotions are the crux of the last case, but eh.

Or maybe I just don't prefer the emotional angle/nonentity villain...heh. I did find the case ultimately satisfying, though, so my feelings are obviously pretty mixed.

Hadn't it already been mentioned a few times at that point that Nick had been disbarred for forging evidence? Pretty sure Edgeworth discusses it at length right before Case 5's trial.

I'm a bit annoyed we never learn where Widget came from, or who designed or made it. I was expecting that to be mentioned somewhere sooner or later. I like to assume that maybe Athenas mum made it or something, seeing as she worked with robots and clever things like that.

Her "breakdown" faces really scared me, but in a good way. It made me feel scared and sorry for her, like I wanted to help her... Especially the first time I saw her distressed face in case 5... Man I got chills...

Also not overly impressed with Fulbright's breakdown, well, I wasn't the very first time seeing it, it's alright now I've seen it a couple times. But still... I do wish the phantom was given a face and identidy at the end, but maybe there's a reason he didn't...

You have to admit that pasting facial hair on everyone throughout the last trial would have made everything better. Disappointingly, they didn't take a silly route.

Things are supposed to be more dramatic in the Japanese version, but I still felt the whole thing was forced, so at least it's not the localization's fault.

I could have gone with the silly route actually, haha. After all that Scooby Doo mask stuff, fake facial hair would not have been totally out of place. Get some Yuri Cosmos mustaches up in here.

But in all seriousness, that's a bit disappointing about the Japanese version. I was thinking it might have been better in the original - which doesn't really matter for me, I guess, since I don't know Japanese - but I guess not.

Even Fulbright was kind of spoiled by Phoenix right before the player had to select the true culprit. Fulbright was a great final culprit, though. Totally never saw it coming even if Case4-5 was running out of suspects. I honestly think that they could have combined 4 and 5 together in one final case. I mean, in Case 1.2, Maya was declared Not Guilty, but Phoenix was arrested in her stead, but that wasn't split in two cases.

ALSO, was I the only one who expected Case 5's big plot twist to be that Athena is actually a robot made by her "mother"? I can't be the only one who thought that.

Means' breakdown was the best ever.

Yeah, even though he wasn't super intimidating, I had a blast cross-examining Fulbright up until the Phantom reveal. Dude had me rollin'.

His transformation was one of the best visual gags in the series. It took me a few screens to see that his mohawk was supposed to be a Spartan helmet.