I liked this game personally, but there was too much to be pissed off about. It made the game less enjoyable. I'm not really going to go into a full detailed review, but how they handled things were not good IMO.

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Personally I consider it the weakest of the series.

Too short and painfully easy, I know it's a new arc but come on, not all new gamers are braindead and need everyone to hold their hands through the cases. You don't even get to present profiles.

Lack of development of the new main characters while a lot of the others suffered from bland "Penny Nicolas" syndrome. I did like a select few though, namely Eldoon, Daryan, Vera and Valant. Others like Klavier and Zak I just wanted to jump into the game and whack their smug dickholery faces in with a kayak paddle.

Phoenix has been demoted to shady hobo-like mentor. Jees if you're going to shoehorn him into a series he didn't belong in at least give him some dignity.

The scientific investigation is too simple and dull, not enough chances to play around with the system like in 1-5.

I have no problem with reusing GBA sprites for case 4-4, but man, the newer characters just look weird in the older courtroom. Either update the older characters' sprites or make the newer ones more GBA quality.

Overall the game was a disappointment to me. A real shame cause it had a lot of potental. Maybe AA5 and beyond will fix the plot and character related problems, but sadly it won't make this game any better.

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Totally agreed with both of you. I tried to like AJ, I really honestly did, but I'm bitter about Capcom discarding the older characters like they were trash. What the hell. I don't know why they felt it necessary to change casts...there are several very successful video game series that keep the same characters the whole way through. (Ignoring the fact that I think Klavier and Kristoph--especially Kristoph--need to get bitchslapped. And die. They were annoying as fuck.)

I mean, I can't really tell anybody this because it's a mortal sin to dislike AJ. ._.

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Actually, I thought that some of the newer sprites were a bit rough around the edges (Young Trucy especially).

As far as the cases go, 4-1 was excellent, 4-2 and 4-3 were so-so, and 4-4 was awful.

Despite how much people seem to hate it I actually loved this game. Yes I'm sad Edgeworth and most of the other original PW characters aren't in it, but I love the new characters too. I'm going to risk saying this even if a million rabid fans are going to pull my eyes out of their sockets, but if you milk a series too much it tends to lose it's quality. So I think switching things up a bit kept the series from getting overdone. Cake is nice, but cake every day isn't so nice, you'd like to have a pie every once and a while (lol at my bad dessert metophor.)
That said there are many, many, maaaaaaaany problems with the new game. I love Klavier but he's not the best prosecutor in town, not like Godot who hated your guts and tore your cases apart like a rabid squirrel. Or Manfred who...well He's just to nice, he would have made a better detective than prosecutor (though I would'nt want him to replce Ema.) The game seemed a little on the short side and a lot of the characters weren't very memorable, take Drew Misham and Wesley Stickler for instance.
Also, I don't know why people keep saying it's too easy, I found it to be a little harder than the second AA game. But not as brain numbingly painful as the third one, I thought it was a nice balance.

4-4 was a great case. If people would stop bitching about how the MASON system makes no sense, they would enjoy it more.

In my opinion, the game was great. A nice breath of fresh air with all the new characters, which is better than having all the old ones become stale. I'd like to know what happened to them as well, but everything will be explained eventually. The cases were interesting with some nice plot twists. The difficulty was balanced.

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It's a great game, but Apollo was too smart to be rookie, in other words, game was easier than the first 3.

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It's not just the Mason System.

It's the fact that the final trial day is nothing more than a formality since you already KNOW everything is Kristoph's fault, and the fact that the whole trial is one short testimony, a couple easy Presents, a VERY easy Perceive, then getting to sit back and do nothing while the Gavins bicker with each other for a half hour until KLAVIER finally breaks Kristoph just by going "Uhh, you know we have a jury now, right?"

I don't care that 4-4 let Klavier finally get a little development. It was still the biggest letdown in the series.


Apollo wasn't "too smart." Phoenix, Trucy, and Klavier fed you all the answers through the whole game.

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This game needs to change its title. It isn't called Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney

It's called Phoenix Wright WITH Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney.

Throughout the whole entire game I felt like someone was just holding my hand and walking me through the game like I was stupid. Apollo Justice is a branch off the GS/PW series. With that you need to recreate a new feel of characters that you can sympathize with.

As far as difficulty went I was surprised how easier they made it. I had a much harder time playing PW:AA on my first run through than with AJ:AA. Perceive System can't compare to Psyche-Locks. Personally I think using the Perceive system in court is a cheap trick to finding holes in testimony that you can easily solve by pressing and presenting evidence if they put in said evidence.

People liked psyche-locks so much the Capcom team producing AJ probably just decided to add something similar but obviously different. Its cheap.


Characters were okay to say the least. Some characters I really loved but some I didn't relate to on an human scale at all.

Also why the hell does everyone know EVERYTHING before Apollo does. And when they do know, which they do, why the hell do they baby him about it and hold his hand through the case. It happened in every single case. Sure it makes the game play easier but Ace Attorney is a murder mystery game. You have to figure it out on your own and frankly I didn't get the satisfaction of figuring it out on my own because basically every character walked me through the case.

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I liked it. It may not be the best in the series, but it is still better than JFA and that says a lot. I liked many of the new characters, they were just as good as the older.

WhiteElephant worded my feelings on AJ better than I could have ever hoped to. Especially the part about the title of the game. I've said that so many times. I feel the exact same about the game.

Except throw in complaints about Klavier as a prosecutor, which ties in with the whole hand-holding thing, I suppose.

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I loved the game too. I see nothing wrong with how they handled. I wish they made connections or at least MENTIONS , but eh, I still loved the game and its cases.

I thought Apollo justice was awesome loved the charecters and the music and having phoneix in it was great too. as i have said alot only downside was final trial in 4-4 was abit on the easy and short side.
Alot of people say this game is still largly focused on phoneix which i agree it is .but it was nice to play as someone new and have phoneixs help on the sidelines granted apollo didnt do much on his own but everyone else beat him to it i belive givin time he can make a great attonrey and i have heard for GS5 there is no phoneix wright so i am interested to see how that will work. In regards to people saying that apollo was fed all the answers, he was just starting out and i think if i remember he realize some of the answers himself but everyone beat him to it. Maybe he will be better in AA5

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4-4 was actually the only case in that game that I felt was good. But other than that, seriously what happened? No reference to Maya, Edgeworth, any of them. And yes the mason system made no sense. It's also called Ace Attorney, not Ace Phoenix does all the work and helps Apollo be a decent Attorney.

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True dat.

But that made me happy ^_^ Since I luv Phoenix, I was actually kinda happy that he was still the defense attorney (Since Apollo was a stupid idiot who does absolutely nothing)

When I picked it up and stuff, I really didn't want to like it (I wanted to kill Apollo for taking Phoenix's spotlight) but I actually enjoyed it in the end. (Although it's still the 2nd worst series in the game... I think they're only gonna make worse than JFA if they tried)

My impressions (Spoilerz, obviously):

4-1: This was a neat case, and made a good first impression. It really showed off the improved graphics, with the opening cinematic, and the rendering of the crime scene. Having the mentor be the criminal was also a pretty big twist.

4-2: They had a good idea--3 small crimes that combined into 1 big murder. They just didn't execute it right.

4-3: Another good idea--a crime that follows a song. This might have been good if Machi shooting Romein was actually plausible

4-4: And then it got good again This case had a good story, so it was interesting. I luved playing as Phoenix again.(*insert Phoenix heart-eyed sprite here) I didn't really get the Mason System, but I took it for what it was and enjoyed it.... Psyche-Locks are fun, and I wasn't going to let a little unexplained time traveling ruin that! Also, this had 3 trial parts, which pleased me very much. And, it took a while to get to Apollo's backstory, but it was worth it. I think this case was really just transitioning from Phoenix to Apollo, which is why it centered on Phoenix so much (they had to explain it!) but in GS5 it will really focus on Apollo a lot more. (Assuming they stick with Apollo )


Pros:
-Some good characters (Trucy, Guy, Ema, Vera)
-Much better graphics
-Phoenix's game, not Apollo's (Okay, this might be a con to some....)

Cons:
-Klavier. Seriously. There are several other cons, I don't care. This section is devoted to me bashing Klavier.
First off, he became a prosecutor at age 17. WTF?! Edgeworth, who could kick Klavier's butt any day, became a prosecutor at 20, which was considered amazing. And he was obsessed with becoming a lawyer when he was 9 years old. Edgeworth, obsessed with becoming a lawyer his entire life, became one at 20. Klavier just tops at 17. Now you're probably thinking, "What about Franny? How can you be angry at Klavier for becoming a prosecutor at 17 when Franny did at 13?" That's because Franny was the daughter of Manfred, probably the greatest prosecutor of all time. (I know he was evil and all, but seriously: he lost 1 case in his entire 40-year career.) Her first word was probably "Objection". (Okay, it was probably "fool". But then I'm sure "Objection" was second!) Klavier just waltz out of the no-name Gavin family as a 17-year old prosecutor. I mean, when you first played AA and found out Edgeworth became a prosecutor at 20, you would go like, "Whoa." In JFA, when you found out Franny become a prosecutor at 13, you would go, "WHOA!" But not they've ruined it by doing it for every. single. character. When I heard Klavier became a prosecutor at 17, I just went "meh". If they introduce a new prosecutor that becomes a prosecutor at 24 (the normal age), everyone is probably going to think: "What is he (or her)? Stupid?"
And then, it's not just that he had to be a super-17-year-old-genius prosecutor, he had to be a prettyboy in a boy band who is the most famous celebrity in the entire world! In additiong to being a prosecutor (which gets a lot of money), he had to get even more money!
So he's super-smart, super-cute, super-talented, and super-popular. Of course, then they had to make him EVEN BETTER by making him obsessed with the truth. Bah. Edgeworth hated your guts. Sure, he became obsessed with the truth, but to do that you had to solve a case that happened 15 years ago with one piece of crummy evidence. And get shocked with a 100,000 volt taser. Franny and Godot hated your guts even more than Edgey. They only stopped when, after they had failed their mission to beat Phoenix, they realized they wouldn't be able to succeed in their mission, gave up on it, and then had no reason to hate Phoenix. But Klavier is too good for that. He has to be "for the truth" from the start. It's not like you can have conflict with him or anything.
And when you put all that together, you get this perfect prosecutor who babies you through each case.

In case you couldn't tell, I really really really hate Klavier.

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Message to capcom: Number 1 fanrequest for GS5...

Judge: Court is now in session for the trial of Mr. McInnocent.
McInnocent: I DIDN'T DO IT!
Payne: The victim's name is...
...Mr. Klavier Gavin.
Apollo: Whaaaa?
Payne: He was stabbed 17 times before being tossed off a bridge into a pit of rabid flesh-eating mongrels. His remains were then boiled in sulphuric acid.
Trucy: Oh my god...
Payne: Death was then caused by a shot to the forehead.
Apollo: I see. Wait...THEN???

I too am a bit peeved by the lack of any other PW characters, but only because they had the audacity to include Phoenix himself. I actually think it would have been very nice for them to try anew with the whole cast, and possibly only make tiny references to the old characters. (It's what I'm trying with my series)

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i think that this game was most definitely my favourite out of the whole series. like seriously. i loved it. i loved the storyline. i love how everything tied in with everything. i thought it was great. there is just one thing that got to me, in the last case.

Apollo Justice, for me, was waayyy too easy (I mean, I didn't even have to use a walkthrough while I used a little walkthrough in the other games) The first case is the greatest first case in the history of first cases but then everything went downhill from there. They had some great ideas but they just didn't work out like they're supposed to. I agree with what everyone else said about how Apollo was basically guided through the cases like a baby and how Klaviar just seems too perfect...o-o;And imo, there are too many unanswered questions in this game, like (well, maybe they'll answer them in GS5)

[rants]
Oh and, they could at least mention some of the old characters as a reference or something D: I REALLY want to know how Maya, Pearl, and all the old characters are doing :O Yes, it's a new arc, but they don't have to throw the old characters away like yesterday's trash =/ I know that they don't want to confuse the new players with the old characters that don't even have to do with Apollo, but Nick has a lot of old friends that are very important to him and all we get is a little "that kid" ?! D: and I think most of the people who bought Apollo Justice have played the old games, so it wouldn't hurt if they make Nick mention them, or better yet, make him tell Trucy of his lawyer days and how his friends helped out and all the silly and serious situations they've been in and them her afterwards what happened to them, right?
[/rant]






Yay for run-on sentences XD and sorry for my really poor English x]

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3-1 is pretty good. I mean, But 3-1 and 4-1 are the two best, but I'm just not sure which is first and which is second.





You could get this in GS5, y'know. The whole point of GS5 was to figure out what happened to Phoenix, and learn a bit about Apollo. If they threw in a bunch of backstory for other old PW characters, it could get kinda messy and diluted.








Aw, you're English is fine!





YES!!!!!!!! *adds to things he wants in GS5*

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in regards to JFA being pointless case 2-2 is really the only important one u learn about morgan and the fey clan and why morgan is in dentention for T&T if u dnt play 2-2 u makes bits of 3-5 harder to understand imo but JFA was good only case i didnt like was 2-1

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The fact that JFA is backstory to the amazing 3-5 (and slightly 3-3) does not make it any better.

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Haha, that's true =3 But random cases are good too ;D and in JFA, we kinda learned about the Fey Clan backstory *well only 2-2 but yeah xD* and we all have our opinions ;D and yeah, I just replayed 3-1; I think it's a good first case too ;D hahaha XD but AJ's first case is more surprising and unexpected ^^;


lol, i make no sense

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Order of first cases is 4-1 > 3-1 > 1-1 > 2-1

It would have been 4-3-2-1 if they hadn't thought

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I think you missed the moral of Justice for All by a long shot.

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it was the only game i actually finished by myself and i am a stupid nincompoop! it was that simple. I miss the psyche-locks that were actually hard to unlock. I got all excited when Kristoph had like 5 NEW seemingly hard to unlock ones then disappointed to the fact that the creator totally forgot about them. The guilty verdict to Kristoph seemed too easy.

Seriously Klaviar was a horrible prosecutor. Like Ema said (dun remember exact) "a prosecutor is cool and strong and fight for the guilty verdict" [ok fine i wasn't close to what she actually said but thats what i think a prosecutor should be like] I can't believe Klaviar would even have a perfect win record if he literally guided Apollo into defeat him.
-with prosecutors like Klaviar who need defense attorneys?-

I'm not gonna use spoiler tags because it's already in the title.

What to say about Apollo Justice?
The new characters were good. But not as good as Maya, Pearl, Edgeworth, and ofc Phoenix were. Yeah, Phoenix was in the game, but this is a kind of mockery to have him without Maya and Pearl.
Sorry, I just can't get over with that.
Yeah, I can come up with explanations that make sense and are faithful to both the original trilogy and AJ, but how could the game simply ignore it? It felt deliberate from the creators. Nothing stopped them from including a few mentions of the old characters, especially the ones the closest to Phoenix (Maya and Pearl).
Trucy was good, but not as good as Maya and Pearl.
Klavier was good, but not as good as Edgeworth, Franziska or Godot.
Kristoph was good, but not nearly as good as Dahlia.
...
You get the idea.
While the cast and the overall game is still very good, it feels like a downgrade.

Please Capcom, make GS5 feature a short visit to Kurain and tie those damn loose ends! It felt really annoying that AA3 closed everything, but then AA4 just screwed it all up by Phoenix losing his bade only 2 months after 3-5. Why couldn't they give him a year to be happy with Maya and Pearl?
Again, nothing stopped them from doing so. So please let GS5 tie all the new lose ends and explain everything about Phoenix and co, so after the series can focus ONLY on Apollo.

About the cases.
4-1 was... the most disappointing case ever. it's not bad, but not good either. I consider it the least good case in the series. I mean, 2-1 started kind of bad, but it was very funny and the ending was satisfactory. 4-1 wasn't. It ended really badly.

4-2... started very strangely, with having to find Trucy's panties and so on. And the defendant was a stupid idiot. I couldn't sympathize with him at all. But the case was good and funny.

4-3 was great! The idea of following a song was brilliant, the characters, the twists and everything were great too.

4-4... I was a little spoiled beforehand, so I wasn't that much shocked about Apollo and Trucy being siblings and such. But the parts with Phoenix were amazing. I especially liked that you can examine the defendant lobby, for the first time in the series. Oh, and i absolutely loathe most of the characters. Kristoph, ofc, it was intended that we have to hate him, but I could never forgive Drew and Zak. They got what they deserved in my opinion. I really couldn't stand Vera either. She was another Regina.

Overall, I made a list in which I put the 18 cases in the order I liked them.
Just for curiosity I gave them points, like the first one got 17, the second 16, and so on (my least favorite one, which would be 4-1 got 0).
Game 1 got 30 points, game 2 got 36, game 3 is by far the best with 58, and game 4... got 29.
So it's 3 > 2 > 1 > 4.

That's all.

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ok well most of the other people said what i think about this game and probably put it better. and since spoilers are in the title i didn't stick them in here. you were warned!
well at first i wanted to do a mass murder on capcom for switching the main character but since i'm the smartest person in the world i thought the main character would be trucy so when i found out that it would be apollo justice (worst. name. ever.) i really went crazy. the percive system does bot beat the powa of a magatama! and magatamas have a cooler name. klavier=worst prosecutor and the game should be called phoenix wright with apollo justice ace attorney. kristoph was way to easy to defeat and the annoying part is that you didn't even get a confession! capcom should not have just dumped the whole cast of characters. when we go back to nick's last trial maya should have been there.
4-1 was ok. hobos rule. i still liked 2-1 better. nothing beats nick saying "i guess my name's phoenix wright. that's a strange name." or however he put it.
4-2 nice concept. total wrong way to do it. wesely stickler is weird.
4-3 this would be a good case IF IT WAS POSSIBLE FOR MACHI TO COMMIT MURDER!!!!!!!
4-4 i liked the mason system. that was the only good part really. the fact that klavier is a jerk (ok he's not a jerk he's a good guy. and that's why i want to slap him!!!) kind of ruined it. i didn't like the jurist's system since it was yet another excuse for the game to be to easy!!! i already got that zak was shadi since i saw my sis in the middle of talking to zak so i asked why she was talking to shadi and she said omg!! zak is shadi! and the fact that lamiroir was thalahassa (how do you spell her name!?) i realized after i saw the picture of thalahassa. however apollo and trucy being sibs surprised me so much i nearly fell off my bed! (yes i'm special) vera's case=pointless. yes kristoph is evil. but since we found that out in the mason system there was no point in going back to court. in most of the other cases you find evidence in investigation but find the killer and understand the evidence in court. plus you didn't even have to prove kristoph guilty. the jurist's did their thing. i really liked the credits. the pictures falling and making a scrapbook was awesome wicked!

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Uh.. what happened to Phoenix is not explained properly because it's inexplicable that the old chars don't feature hugely in his life. So their absence was confusing, and made it messy and diluted.

Brief opinion on cases:

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Not really. Why would Franny, Edgey, Larry, or anyone like that be in the court for that case? The only person who would've been there was Maya, and that can be easily explained with just a "She went up to Hazakura Temple that week to train." The only time we would've seen an old character (besides Maya in court) would have been afterwards, during the MASON System. However, the MASON System showed only what important to 4-4. I don't think Franny whipping Phoenix for being "A foolish fool who is foolishly fooled into presenting foolishly foolish false evidence" or Pearl getting upset and crying falls under that category.

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I'd love to think that Maya sometimes has to go to training.
For example, during the flashback case, during 4-2, during 4-3 and during 4-4.

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I said in the game, not the flashback trial. I didn't say they had to appear onscreen. They just had to be mentioned in a way showing they still featured importantly in Phoenix's life.

What uncannily convenient timing.. I can't believe that.

4-1 is the worst plothole. He's on trial for murder. Maya would come out to support him. Guess she could be keeping away from Kristoph...

There are *months* when Phoenix is offscreen. The writers should have just mentioned he was with Maya and Edgeworth at this time. Since Maya and Edgeworth were obviously using all their influence of Kurain Master and higher prosecutor to get that jury trial happening. [That is the only explanation. A disbarred evidence forging hobo in the position otherwise? Not a chance.]

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Oh. My bad

Still, a lot can happen in 7 years. You never know.

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AJ was... good, not great but i enjoyed it.

But as other people already said, the main problem in the game is that they changed the title, but the protagonist was the same. The main plot of the game was pretty much all phoenix and a little to nothing apollo, and that made Justice like a filler, In fact I wasn´t so pissed that they took of all the older character, but the thing is that I would like to be a totally new history with Apollo as the center, not Phoenix. Oh yeah, the Gavins were a letdown too.

Also, the game was easy, in fact the most difficult case to me was 4-3 (But mostly because I didn´t catch all the music stuff), 4-2 was hard also, but 4-4? 3 evidence and you win the case? Not works. And 4-1 never atracted my attention, it was just a opening case with more history of Wright.

Aside of that, the game was good: good filler characters, great music and entertaining moments , it isn´t my favorite AA, but I didn´t dislike it.

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i think they were doing that so this is like nick's conclusion and he won't be in the next game.

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I played this game as the second one from the series, so I was indeed quite new in it. But I did expect them to at least MENTION old characters, which they did not. o_o Not even in the flashback trial. Dissapointing, yeah..
The game was quite enjoyable and fun otherwise. I liked the soundtracks. ^^

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Yeah, they should have either focused on Apollo and make Phoenix only a minor character in this, or they should have written a proper story for Phoenix that doesn't ruin everything from the first 3 games. That flashback trial happened to suddenly.
All those hard work of Phoenix in his 14 cases were in vain.
Maya and Pearl could have eased the situation, and probably did, probably did not.
Because the game doesn't fucking tell it!
In small parts, cases, the story of Apollo Justice is quite good (especially cases 2 and 3), but as a whole... it would be better if it never happened.
Sorry, I just realized that I keep bashing the game constantly for this sole reason, but I won't rest until they give Phoenix what he deserves... a happy life. He once got it in 3-5 and the creators took it away from him.
I hate them for doing so. But I also love them for making an overall great game which had great moments, twists and fun.

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the 14 cases he did werent in vain because he still put evil people behind bars , its just in the end he unknownly used a forged piece of evidence thats all but poor phoneix :(

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His reputation was screwed up too.
After putting all those criminals in jail, he deserved something better than what happened.

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I really liked the game tbh

Case 4-2 bored me but apart from that the storyline was epic


Kristoph has become my favourite character now aside from Godot




He's a great character that they should have done more with

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How could they do anything more? It was pretty apparent that he was a cold-blooded, conniving killer. Sure, I agree that maybe they could've gone into his intentions a little deeper, but as far as character development goes there really wasn't much room for that anyways. :/ That's just my opinion though.

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