3.5/5 ★ – Hootus900's review of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney − Dual Destinies.

This will have marked my 8th game I’ve finished in this series out of 11. The formula is starting to wear on me a bit, with a lot of the series’ flaws becoming more apparent to me and the magic being gone to an extent. That being said, the writing team has done yet another excellent job in case design and dialogue. The writing of these games has always been what keeps me going. Sure it has a brand of humor that I don’t find funny most of the time, but each character has a distinct personality that perfectly matches their design. The only character I wasn’t a fan of was Blackquill, this game’s prosecutor. I wasn’t a fan of his quirks and the backstory they gave him wasn’t as endearing to me. I also was not a fan of Bobby, the game’s detective. I felt that his emotions were way too exaggerated, but that ended up playing into an end game twist that immediately dispelled that complaint and I thought it was brilliant. As I mentioned I’ve played most of the games in this series and I intend to finish, however some aspects of the design as a whole are starting to weigh down on the experience. I am fully convinced now that the investigation segments are the worst parts of these games, as there is a ton of filler dialogue and most of the important revelations happen during the trials. I think danganronpa hit a great balance of fun and engaging investigations, and the great ace attorney is probably my favorite offering in that department, as simply being able to inspect the 3d models of each piece of evidence to reveal more clues about them made each discovery exciting. The late game chapters also tend to run long (see Apollo justices 4 hour long chapter) which is great for wrapping up the game’s overarching narrative but can lose my interest quickly. To wrap up my thoughts I wouldn’t say this is a bad addition to the series at all. It brings together the main protagonists from the series thus far and gives each of them their time to shine. Gameplay wise I wasn’t a huge fan of the emotion meter, as the difficulty ranged from comically easy to cryptic and vague with little in between. Other than that mechanic, nothing makes this stand out from the rest of the series except marking its first foray into the 3d environment. Definitely worth a shot if you’ve invested yourself in the lore.