1.5/5 ★ – JayTheCh1cken's review of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney − Trials and Tribulations.

Where do I even begin with this game? I struggle to say much because there's only so much I can say before beginning to repeat my earlier Ace Attorney reviews. I'll try anyway though. Just like Justice for All this game has even crazier and zanier case themes like having you defend a famous thief who turns out to be a shy wallflower too bumbling to be considered as such or a case where you have to deal with a criminal impersonating Phoenix. But again, just like Justice for All nothing lives up to its potential and it's even WORSE now! Godot is an annoying prosecutor without much redeeming qualities who reads like a try hard edgy self insert character. He's "the dark and brooding ghost from Mia's past back from the dead for revenge on Phoenix with a soft spot for Maya" and you get goofy moments like him being feared in court as unbeatable despite never prosecuting a single case ever. I hate it here. The first case is interesting enough. Playing as a greenhorn Mia defending a young Phoenix is interesting, and the angle of Phoenix having a girlfriend (who is the culprit here) is fun. The second case is the aforementioned thief case. The first case in the series that isn't a murder! ...until it becomes one anyway because lul. The culprit is fun but the journey to figuring the plot is convoluted, though I must admit the whole plan of the culprit wanting to get himself declared guilty for a petty theft over a murder is interesting. Seeing Larry again isn't as fun as the game thinks it is. The defendant getting declared innocent also irks me when he actually IS a thief who somehow gets off without any punishment (especially compared to the end of the game when relatively innocent characters get harsher punishments). The third case is likewise the imposter Phoenix case. We have a pretty big cast here but the chef is annoying and the old man is ugly so I don't like seeing either of them. The imposter Phoenix is fun himself but for some reason doesn't get much screentime and we don't really see much of him actually being an imposter. His assistant is fun too but also doesn't have much screentime. Seeing Maggie again and having Gumshoe crush over her is fun I guess. The fourth case is another lame flashback. Nothing really means anything here in the long run. The witness killing himself on the stand is a crazy end to the case but it really only allows obviously evil Dahlia to get away (only for her to get found guilty in case one because who even cares). Now...this was all building up to the INSANITY that is the fifth case. I apologize for everything bad I said about Justice for All case three after seeing this. THIS is the worst case in the entire series. I was actively losing brain cells playing it. It's long, and I can't really get into it without talking spoilers. This case is a follow up of Justice for All's second case with Morgan Fey back again trying to kill Maya to get Pearl to become the new head of the Fey families. And then a lot of stuff happens. Misty Fey, after being hyped up in the first game, finally shows up only to not really do anything and die to be the victim of the case. Dahlia (who's been executed after the first case, which comes out of nowhere) has a secret sister (after already having another sister in the last case) in Iris, and the both of them are ALSO Pearl's sisters as well making it so like there's four siblings to keep up with? Edgeworth and Franziska come back and you get to play as Edgeworth for a day and have Franziska help investigate, but other than that they don't really do much. Worst of all Larry is back. Out of all of this brainrot we get some LEGENDARY stupid Ace Attorney moments like Misty's corpse vine swinging across a canyon. It's the worst of all wacky Ace Attorney plots and nothing makes sense. And for some reason they decide to have this all take place at the same stupid bridge the fourth case took place at. It also never ends. Even with the whole point of the case being to defend Iris, that ultimately gets forgotten about quickly. By the second day, Dahlia is back from the grave getting channeled in court revealing the entire plan but nobody seems to care. Beating Dahlia doesn't even mean anything when, like she points out, she's already dead and you can't really do anything to her in the long run. And when you DO finally beat her the case doesn't even end and you have to spend 30 more minutes exposing Godot as the real person who killed Misty (even if he did so to stop Dahlia who was possessing her from killing Maya) with Maya all the while begging you to stop. And even after you've proven beyond a shadow of a doubt Godot was there and killed Misty you still have to keep going for no reason. By the end of the case I'm tired and mad. By the halfway point I had figured it all out and yet the case decided to keep going in spite of that. The whole plot of Misty dying after finally showing up after so long is stupid. The entire evil plan relies on Pearl following her evil mom's orders and even when people like Godot learn beforehand that Misty and Maya are going to be targeted to be killed they still all lose the proper function of their brain and allow things to happen. And then the case ends with Iris and Godot both going to jail despite the former only covering up the case (compared to the other 3 people who were in on it actively trying to kill Maya) and the latter defending Maya. I don't even like Godot and I felt rotten. That's the game, mostly. Some other thoughts are that Pearl is woefully underutilized in this game and that there's too many statements in the cross examinations that despite saying the same thing as other statements still penalize you if you try to present the evidence the game wants you to present. Now I'm tired. How this game is liked so much I don't know.