Hallo, alle miteinander, and welcome back to another week of Wright Wednesday. This is the series where we recap, analyze, and review the various cases in the Ace Attorney series. Today, we're covering the last part of Recipe for the Turnabout. My name is Roy, and I'm genderfluid.
Let's get right to it! The day starts in the Defendant Lobby, where Phoenix and Maya are trying to console Maggey about their chances, considering how little actually happened on the first day of court. After she leaves to head into the courtroom, Gumshoe shows up, giving back the green bottle Phoenix picked up in the restaurant’s kitchen. It’s been analyzed now, and it’s actually the medication the victim was taking for his eardrum. There’s no fingerprint analysis though, someone in the lab screwed up and they’d need another hour to redo it. There’s no time for that though, so they head into the trial.
Gotta love that inconvenient result.
Godot starts the trial by claiming that he has a solution to all of the issues in Victor Kudo’s testimony, and with it, there’ll be no problems with the prosecution’s case. The witness to thank for those solutions is, of course, Jean Armstrong, who we know is in the pocket of the real killer. The Judge immediately asks if he’s a woman, but Armstrong clarifies that he is a ‘pert and perky gentleman’. Oh, and Armstrong is also clearly smitten with Godot. First Ron DeLite, and now Armstrong, it seems the mysterious prosecutor knows how to attract men.
So, how exactly does Armstrong try to explain the contradictions? Why, he says that he’d bought a large mirror to hang in the middle of the dining room, which means that Victor Kudo saw everything in reverse, making it not a problem. A large mirror we haven’t heard anything about until now. Don’t know about you, but I’m thinking Pink is a little sus.
It's a pretty obvious dodge, and things feel off from the start.
The mirror in question was apparently 4 meters wide and 2 meters high, making it utterly enormous and a huge safety hazard to put in a restaurant. Armstrong claims he actually got it for the ceiling, originally, before deciding it wouldn’t work. The thing is, the mirror does exist, Godot was able to confirm it being bought and sent to Armstrong the day before the murder. The contradiction comes from somewhere else: if the witness saw everything reflected, then he would have seen the witnesses’s HMD eye monitor thing on the other side, but he clearly testified seeing it on the only eye it can work with.
I do have to wonder...what's the deal with the mirror? Like, actually? Obviously this is a lie, so...was there some other reason a giant mirror was delivered to the restaurant? What was Armstrong gonna do with it?
From what I can tell, it does exist, it just never showed up, and Armstrong really did order it as decoration. But it still feels weird as heck.
Godot’s
rebuttal is a bit odd. He basically says that it was obvious that
Kudo’s memory of things was muddled, so relying on his version of events
won’t really mean anything for a contradiction. For some reason, they
follow it up with a new testimony, also about the mirror, that just
clarifies exactly where it was and where the witness was sitting at the
time of the murder. The problem here is with something that seemed
inconsequential: Victor Kudo mentioned knocking over the vase on his
table when the murder happened, but the photo of the crime scene shows
the table adjacent to the victim’s has an upright vase. This proves that
the victim couldn’t have sat there, and Phoenix uses that to shatter
the entire mirror hypothesis.
We seem to be going back and forth on whether we can trust the details of Kudo's testimony.
This all actually does hit Godot, there really isn’t a way for him to wiggle out of the facts. The Judge puts forward the original contradiction with Kudo’s testimony, and Godot says that if Phoenix doesn’t think his mirror idea is right, then Phoenix will have to put forward his own theory. Of course, there are a lot of contradictions to clear up with this whole scene, more than just the damaged eardrum. Luckily, it’s thinking through all the details that don’t add up that finally clues Phoenix in to the truth.
Which is, frankly, a bit bonkers and I did not really understand it at first. When the game required me to decide on it.
There are three choices to pick from. One has Phoenix just say Kudo got it wrong, which is an issue when it’s Phoenix who has been making such a big deal out of these contradictions. The second is that the doctor made the mistake and it was the other ear that was injured, which is just silly. But the third, and silly-sounding real answer, is that the victim was ‘a phony’. What Phoenix actually means by that is, that what Victor Kudo saw was not the murder itself. The witness saw someone pretending to be Glen Elg, faking a death, which led to all the small contradictions they’d found thus far. This sets off Godot enough that he talks back to the Judge, which legitimately pisses the Judge off.
But
I mean, I get it. This one twist makes a big difference in how
believable the case is, to me at least, so I can see Godot being taken
completely aback.
As
for why anyone would fake the murder, the answer is clear to Phoenix:
doing so created a new witness, Victor Kudo, and they’d made sure that
the old man saw the waitress putting something in the coffee. Of course,
this means the waitress in the reproduction was also a fake, but Godot
points out that even with no other customers, Armstrong at least would
have known what was going on. Which means a new testimony from him about
whether Phoenix’s story is true or not.
There doesn’t seem to be anything new in the testimony, it’s largely the same thing we’ve heard before. He’s still trying to hide Tigre’s crime. However, once the testimony is done, the Judge points out that he’s lied about the entire mirror issue, calling out that it’s perjury, and that he’ll be punished for that crime later on. I do wish the fact that lying on the stand leads to perjury was brought up more often in this series.
It feels like most witnesses get away with it. A lot.
The key is to Press regarding the timing of when Glen Elg arrived, and specifically ask for the time of the event. Armstrong will feign not to remember at first, but the Judge recalls Gumshoe says the crime was reported at 2:25pm, so from that Armstrong estimates that Elg arrived just after 2pm. The problem there is, the lottery show the victim was listening to before his death only aired at 1:30pm, and it lasts for 10 minutes. Which means that it was long over before Elg even entered the building.
Always nice to have these kinds of timing mistakes factor in again. The first case of the series set me up to watch for those, and I haven't often gotten to actually call them out since then.
This all only goes further to support Phoenix’s entire theory of the murder being reproduced later on. Godot tries to stop Phoenix before he can build up a head of steam, asking where the real Glen Elg was while the fake one was putting on a show. Not only that, but the court will want evidence to support whatever Phoenix says. The right move is to say the body was in the Kitchen, and use the bottle of medicine that Gumshoe gave as the evidence. It was missing from the scene initially, and the fact it ended up back there is a clue that the body had been stashed there for a while.
Armstrong doesn’t have a breakdown over being accused of murder by the Judge, but Godot kind of does, as he downs a whole mug of coffee. He then explains he drinks a full mug of bitter coffee anyone lies to him. Deep. Oh, and then he attacks the liar with the empty mug. Armstrong desperately tries to backpedal, but the Judge notices him slip into Spanish, and it’s clear to everyone that the man can’t be trusted. (Oh, and the Judge is fluent in Spanish I guess??) Armstrong does insist he isn’t the killer, which we know to be the case, but he does get one more testimony to actually explain stuff that really happened. For a change of pace.
Actual events for once. That's nice.
The new testimony has Armstrong admit to hiding the body, confessing that someone forced him to do so. He can’t say who it is, even if we know, and it’s made clear that when the victim really died, he wasn’t alone at his table. Maggey had been right this entire time. Pressing the details leads to Armstrong admitting he hid the defendant’s unconscious body in the back as well. The way to get him to admit who the real killer is requires Presenting the loan contract Jean has with Tender Lender. From there, Phoenix can name Furio Tigre, and Armstrong backs it. Jean also clarifies that he wasn’t involved with the evidence that implicated Maggey, he had no clue any of that was done.
I do feel sorry for Armstrong. He clearly didn't want to do any of this, and ended up involved in worse stuff than he even realized.
The Judge wants Furio Tigre called as a witness, and is ready to close the trial for a day so they can get him in tomorrow, but Godot says all he needs is a 30 minute recess. Now, you might be thinking that with Armstrong’s testimony and how well it lines up with literally all the evidence, Maggey should just get a Not Guilty and they can arrest and try Tigre later. But Godot says that they don’t know if the chef tells the truth, and that ‘the trial could go either way’. I think that’s ridiculous, but whatever, we need a courtroom confrontation with the villain.
During the recess, Phoenix has to cut through Maya’s optimism with the observation that they’ll have to prove Armstrong’s testimony is true, and Tigre will certainly deny it all. And Phoenix isn’t confident they have the case-making evidence to combat that line of attack. But Gumshoe is so antsy that Phoenix sends him back to the precinct with the ear medication bottle, hoping he can get it checked for fingerprints before the trial is over. He’ll at least need to keep from losing until he gets back.
Tigre denies even knowing about the case, claiming he was cooped up in his office all month. He adds an attack on Phoenix, saying he just nitpicks until he wins and promising to punish him for any useless line of questioning. The Judge goes along with this, raising the stakes on Pressing Tigre’s statements.
Because it makes complete sense that a witness complaining about an attorney means that attorney is now under tighter scrutiny.
Tigre doubles down on being in his office all month and not knowing Glen Elg, which makes it easy to present the “Meet The Tiger” event in Elg’s calendar (love that the techie keeps a physical calendar for some reason). This proves that not only does Tigre know him, he met with him on the day of the murder. Tigre claims he was just messing with Wright to see how good he was, and the Judge’s attempts to chastise him for lying end, predictably, with the Judge hiding under his bench.
I am surprised that Tigre doesn't try to say that must have been referring to some other tiger.
Tigre still claims he never met the victim; apparently he made an appointment to meet him at his office, but he never showed, and Tigre has never been to Tres Bien. The matches found on his desk easily disprove that. But even after admitting he was at the restaurant, he still claims he never met Glen Elg. Supposedly, he went to the restaurant to meet with him, but walked in on the scene of the crime and left immediately rather than get involved with the incoming cops.
I do find what he's doing fairly clever, if scummy as hell.
Of course, there’s a partition between the door and the seat Glen Elg died at, making Tigre’s version of events impossible. Godot tries to object with Kudo’s testimony, but it comes back to Phoenix’s theory that the myriad contradictions in this case are only explained by a dramatic recreation of the murder for Kudo to witness. Phoenix accuses Tigre of murdering Elg and staging the whole thing later on, with the help of Viola Cadaverini as the waitress.
But Tigre further claims that, though he was there and did meet with the victim, he couldn’t have poisoned him. In yet another testimony, Tigre claims that he’d met with Elg to talk about the $100,000 he owed on his loan. Since Elg won the lottery halfway through the conversation, Tigre had no motive to kill him; Elg would have easily paid him back anyway, and Tigre would have no reason to kill him.
It would be a good point, if we didn't have evidence to the contrary.
Exactly. The MC Bomber computer virus would be worth many times what Elg owed. He posits that Elg put his programming skills up as collateral on his loan, and when the lottery saved him from needing to give it up, Tigre killed him to take it anyway. Godot says a loan shark wouldn’t need to resort to murder to make a couple million dollars, but Phoenix knows there’s a reason why Tigre was under pressure to make the money immediately: Viola’s medical bills.
I love Godot's reaction to learning who Viola is.
Oh yes, Godot immediately knows just how serious this has gotten.
Phoenix fills in the court on the event: six months ago, Tigre was involved in a traffic accident that left Viola Cadaverini, granddaughter of the famous mob boss Bruto Cadaverini, in need of expensive, urgent surgery. As both compensation and penance, Tigre found himself owing one million dollars to a man who could easily have him killed. And Tigre did manage to pay this sum. Phoenix posits that he had always intended to collect the collateral from Elg, knowing he had no way to pay the loan back in full; but when Elg luckily won the lottery, he suddenly had a way out, and Tigre had to kill him to get the virus he so desperately needed. So he did. Then he hid the body with the coerced help of Armstrong, and replayed the scene with himself as Elg and Viola as the waitress when Kudo was there to witness the “murder.”
It all wraps up pretty tidily.
True, considering how out there the whole idea is.
But nonetheless, Tigre laughs at this preposterous idea, saying he’s too careful to do something so harebrained and stupid, and Phoenix agrees. There’s one more part to his plan: pose as Phoenix Wright and purposefully bomb the trial, to ensure the truth can’t be exposed in court. Phoenix presents the cheap cardboard attorney badge, which the Judge ironically thinks is so cheap no one could be fooled by it. This accusation slowly jogs the Judge’s memory, and he recalls Tigre standing in Phoenix’s place that day.
Too bad they got the same Judge as before.
Unfortunately, in some strange legal logic, they slither out of this, and the Judge feels uncomfortable laying down a verdict based on his own memory, no matter how certain. More proof is needed, and however suspicious this all is, there is still no evidence Tigre poisoned Elg. But just in the nick of time, Gumshoe shows up with the decisive evidence! The bottle of Elg’s medication, with Tigre’s prints all over it!
Well, the logic is that the Judge knows that Tigre is the fake Phoenix, but in order for that to be admissible in court, he would have to testify himself, which he can't.
I suppose that makes sense, in an annoying sort of way.
Unfortunately, Phoenix doesn’t think Tigre's prints on the bottle will matter. It doesn’t prove that Tigre poisoned Elg, just that he was there that day, and we’ve already established that. Gumshoe is disappointed that the evidence he worked so hard to get turned out to be useless, but Maggey overheard and seems shocked that he did so much for her. But he leaves, dejected, before she can say any more.
Boy howdy, I wonder how Phoenix will get out of this one!
They go back into court without a clear path to victory. But Phoenix has a plan. He presents the bottle, saying only that it has Tigre’s fingerprints on it. Tigre, he realizes, is the only person in the room who doesn’t already know what’s inside. So he says it contained the poison. But of course, Tigre laughs this off, claiming that’s not the bottle with the poison in it; that bottle was brown, and made of glass. Aaaaaand there it is. He just admitted his own guilt.
That's some powerful irony.
Tigre isn't the sharpest knife in kitchen. He breaks down in the face of his own admission, and is escorted out. Maggey Byrde is found innocent, and after the trial she confronts Gumshoe. She asks why he didn’t say she was innocent in his testimony (which is still a silly thing to be upset about, but alright), and he leaves in anxiety. Phoenix tells Maggey he was worried about her this whole time, and gives her Gumshoe’s second lunchbox as proof. She tearfully eats the weenies, and the case comes to an end.
That is does! Which brings us to our final analysis for this case. What's on your mind to start with, Sam?
Well...mostly that it's a letdown, to be quite honest. There's pretty much no closure for any of the character threads; we never even see Viola again after her tearful realization in the last segment, we get nothing about Armstrong's struggle with debt because we never see him again after his testimony, and we get the bare minimum about Gumshoe and Maggey without any actual interaction between the two of them at the end. It's like all the interesting character arcs and thematic through-lines got dropped as soon as the mystery was solved, which...kind of sucks, to be honest, and makes for a much weaker story overall.
That's a very interesting take, and not one I necessarily agree with. I felt Viola's story felt good where it ended, nor did we need to ruminate further on Armstrong's debt. I will agree that the ending in the lobby feels rushed. It would have been a lot stronger if Maggey and Gumshoe had a real reconciliation scene, or if her anger at him felt more justified from the beginning. While I definitely have problems with this case, I actually find the back half of this segment to be fairly strong.
The courtroom segment was pretty great! The way Tigre kept moving the goalposts bit by bit whenever we disproved one of his lies kept things moving in a clear direction, and it was exciting and fun. And for it to end with such a stupid mistake as describing the poison bottle was a hilarious way to end things. This final courtroom segment really was good.
I guess, in my mind, these stories often haven't gone far enough thematically. We've talked about how the running theme throughout this game seems to be masks, and how that's kind of shallow compared to the previous two games, but it feels like it's often just on the verge of using that recurring theme to go a bit deeper. In this case, I feel like there's a lot of interesting potential in exploring how Tigre's pretending to care about Viola under threat of her family could have meant once she realized and processed it. That's the biggest example, though I'd also have liked to see how Armstrong responded to being pushed so far by his circumstances, and especially how Maggey and Gumshoe might have reacted to letting their guards down around each other and being honest about what was going on. It just felt like there were some interesting plot threads that didn't really go anywhere, and each of them had the potential to dig deeper in interesting ways.
I guess that's why I feel kind of stuck for this one, in terms of analysis. It feels like it didn't quite manage to meaningfully develop the meaning it had going from when last we talked about it, so I'm kind of at a loss for how to talk about it now that it's done.
Those are fairly good points. Like you said, this game in general is kind of weak on a thematic level, and while this isn't the first time in the series we've seen a case have some interesting elements that it just didn't go far enough with, it does feel more like a betrayal when it's endemic to this game as a whole. Really, the only thing this segment added thematically in terms of the whole masks idea is that Phoenix could only win against the fake attorney, who faked a murder scene, was with fake evidence. But while that is some neat symmetry between gameplay, story, and theme, it isn't really enough to make the case as a whole stand in terms of meaning...anything, really.
That's kind of what brought it down for me in the end, really. It's not the worst offender in the series for squandering thematic potential (not when Turnabout Frigging Big Top exists), but the fact that it ramped up so consistently until just kind of dropping it all at the very end left me feeling kind of empty about it.
Well I try to be Mx. Positivity, so let's see if we can dig for some stuff to put a smile on your face. Let's talk about Gumshoe a little! I know you like Gumshoe! I actually found that bit right when he brings the evidence again, and it's revealed to seemingly be useless, really interesting. Namely, that Gumshoe actually starts getting really down on himself. I can't remember if we've ever seen him show this kind of insecurity about himself before, but it's something that does add a bit of depth to our silly police friend.
Gumshoe is still a perfect cinnamon roll, and I agree that scene is somewhat unique. I feel like Gumshoe's insecurities have always been evident, considering how much he dedicates himself to being useful to people he admires and how visibly disappointed he gets when he fails to adequately help them, but this case is far more personal for him. The disappointment of failing to help Maggey is a different kind of despondency, and one far more openly self-critical. And he deserves better.
One thing I definitely found interesting in this segment is the ending. Namely, how Phoenix wins. This is another moment of Phoenix very deliberately skirting the edges of the law to win, something he's done a few times before. The other big example we've already looked at comes from Rise from the Ashes, when Phoenix used a lot of Exact Wording to avoid breaking Evidence Law to defeat Gant. This move was a bit beyond that. If it hadn't worked, lying to the court about evidence like that could have backfired.
There's something so interesting about how Godot responds to the victory by calling Phoenix a terrifying man. I read that as Godot seeing that Phoenix, under the right pressure, is a capable of crossing lines most people wouldn't expect to win. This serves as pretty good foreshadowing for the next game, where Phoenix becomes a far more morally grey character.
Very true. I feel like Apollo Justice basically just takes all these little moments and treats them with more gravity, and it works pretty well. Because yeah, this trilogy sort of glosses over how grey some of this can get.
But I also love this ending simply because of how absurd it is. That we went through all this rigamarole, countered all these lies, and he just...spouts it out. Makes me feel like that journalist who had been looking into Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian envoy for years, only for Don Jr. to just straight-up tweet about it. It's a hilarious way to end the trial.
It's absurd, but I do feel like it works with Tigre's character, which I suppose we could get more into. Your comparison feels pretty apt, because Tigre's a small time criminal over his head, who still thinks he can lie and intimidate his way out of this. But his overconfidence is his undoing.
Oh, it's 100% perfect for his character. It's a show of incompetence that's completely fitting, yet also believable that it wouldn't have already been exploited earlier in the trial. Got to exhaust all the actual, fact-based options before getting desperate enough to try something like Phoenix does at the end of this case, but of course he's going to fall for something like that even if he'd managed to lie his way through the trial so far. It's pretty perfect.
So...I hate to ruin the happy ending Maggey got at the end of the trial, but I have to point this out. Because I'm me. The case leaves off on this happy note that hey, maybe Maggey can turn around her bad luck! But guess what? She gets suspected of murder two months later.
I
But
Why
Maggey is currently tied with Maya and Phoenix for the record of being accused of murder the most times in the series, if you count the incident I'm referring to that comes up later, since she's only suspected but not arrested.
That's not quite as bad, at least, but still. She deserves to catch a break.
So, during the recap, you seemed to have some issues with the solution to the murder mystery. Professor, why it that?
I guess the whole "the entire thing was a reenactment" bit was a little unbelievable for me. It ended up being explained alright, but it did not even occur to me by the time the game expected me to figure it out, and frankly I feel like it's a relatively uninteresting way to resolve the whole situation. Suddenly none of what was seen even matters, rather than having to figure out how to reconcile it with the other facts. It's not the worst thing, it just didn't super work for me.
Huh. I actually think it's a rather neat solution. After all, it ties in thematically with the whole faking and phonies angle, and it's really the only solution I feel like would have made sense. From the beginning, this was a case built on seemingly unsolvable contradictions. Maggey's account was completely different from Kudo's, and as the issues with what he saw mounted, it became more and more clear that what he saw couldn't match Maggey's account.
Is the idea of reenacting the crime a bit silly? Sure, but it's Ace Attorney, there's a spirit medium who channels ghosts but whose clothes and hair stay the same. There was of course danger that someone else could have come upon them trying it, but the restaurant is incredibly unpopular, and Kudo was a regular. I suppose I can't imagine another solution to the mystery presented, and I've seen quite a few murder mystery stories that go down that route. The killer recreating the murder to create fake witnesses or throw off the timeline is a known trick in the writer's bag, I suppose. In a way, we already saw a variant of that in Turnabout Goodbyes.
Here's the thing; everyone in the restaurant was in on it except Maggey (who had fainted) and Kudo (who was an unobservant idiot). I fully expected they were just lying about it and manipulating evidence to eliminate any trace of what actually happened. It was just about all clicking in my mind when suddenly the game wanted me to say they staged the murder entirely. It was just a really sharp left turn for me that felt real big and weird for how absurd it was. But I agree it fits thematically, and it probably just threw me off a bit.
I guess I just don't know how they could have used any other explanation with that central contradiction of Maggey seeing two people at the table, but Kudo only seeing one.
Fair enough, but after pretty much throwing Kudo's testimony out for being unreliable it wouldn't really have had to line up perfectly with what he said. It just still seemed to me like it was working up to a plausible explanation when it completely switched tracks and expected me to see it coming. But maybe I just wasn't paying enough attention.
I wouldn't say you weren't paying attention, more that you were expecting the case to zig when it zagged. It happens to everyone, and you are right that the mystery writing here isn't exactly the series at top form.
In other things that happen in the segment, during the recess, when you have to ask Gumshoe to look at some other evidence, Presenting the wrong thing leads to Maya completely ignoring Phoenix and giving over the bottle instead.
Huh. I like that, actually. I'm here for a "but thou must" choice giving Maya a chance to shine.
I can't remember if we've talked about it before, but a character trait of Godot's that shows up in this segment is how he refers to people as animals. He did it a bit last case, and here he frequently calls Tigre a tiger. That's kind of an obvious thing to call him, but the way he does it feels like a weird dehumanization.
It fits. He breaks characters down into archetypes, simplifies them. I get the impression that's easier for him than seeing them as full and complex human beings.
Which is definitely something we will talk a lot about next week. Also, we didn't mention it in the recap, but they employed a penalty system for Presses with Tigre similar to what we disliked with Moe the Clown. Of course, the reason it works here is that Tigre is the final boss of the case, his intimidation makes that mechanic make a little more sense, and there's no instant game over in his testimonies.
Yes, it helps ramp up tension at a point where it makes sense, for a reason that makes sense, which is an improvement over the same mechanic in Big Top.
Where it was just nonsense.
As were most things in Big Top.
If you Press one of the statements in Tigre's second testimony, the Judge starts reminiscing on an old case of his where the defendant swallowed something with poison in it, but Phoenix jumps in to move on to something else, clearly embarrassed.
Haha, I didn't catch that. Great little detail.
When the detail of the matches from Tres Bien comes up, Godot reveals that Gumshoe took five books of them himself, because he just really needs them and doesn't have the money.
Poor Gumshoe. He deserves better, as always.
When talking about how broke the victim was, Godot points out the guy only had 58 cents on him, which pisses Tigre off because “What?! Youse tellin’ me he wasn’t even gonna pay for the coffee!?” Evil or not, he has a point.
Yeah, that's entirely fair.
I’m starting to think the Judge actually is more tech-aware than he seems, and he just likes screwing with people. In fact, the more I see the Judge being befuddled by normal things, contrasted with how intelligent he is on other issues, the more convinced I am of this.
Always hard to tell the difference between "actually just messing with people" and just being a silly character in games like these, but I'd buy that.
During Phoenix's explanation of the crime, there's a reference to that fandom-famous typo from the bad end of Justice for All. “But then a miracle happened. The kind that Mr. Tigre would prefer to say never happened.”
Oh, I suppose that is a callback, huh. Bold of them to reference that typo.
Well, looks like we're ready to finish up analysis and move on to the review. When it comes to judging these cases, we’re not just looking at the usual stuff, like how funny and cool and exciting that particular case happens to be. We also have to take into account what role the case plays in the larger game, and how it takes care of the needs it is assigned to. Recipe for a Turnabout is the game’s Filler Case, which tend to have a negative reputation. One can understand why: by design, Filler Cases aren’t really supposed to stand out. They’re sandwiched between the Establishing Case, which introduces the major characters of that particular game, and the Finale Case, which is the huge climax to top off the whole thing. So, why do we have Filler Cases?
The main role of this sort of case is to give us more time with the Assistant and Rival for the game. Repetition breeds familiarity, and we need another story with them to get a better handle on them. The Filler Case also helps the player understand the Status Quo more so it can be properly shaken up later. Most Filler Cases are just about the main characters in their everyday lives, instead of coming off of a big event. Of course, it’s also good for it to lay more foundation for the plot and thematic elements that carry that particular game in the series, and it still should be fun in its own right.
And the good news is, this is automatically not the worst of them because Turnabout Big Top exists! It's got a low bar to clear on that front.
That is definitely true! Regardless of our rougher feelings for this case, it definitely has more stuff going on than that case does. Let's actually get into the good stuff for this case. The premise is a really interesting one, and it's better paced as a mystery than either Filler Case before it was. Tigre is a pretty strong villain, both in how hateable he is and how entertaining he is, and Viola (while not given as much focus as she honestly deserves) is a pretty standout character.
What's more, I didn't find myself as confused or frustrated during the investigation segments as either of the previous filler cases. It rarely relied on trial-and-error or required me to run around randomly hoping for an event to trigger. And while it has its share of uncomfortable subtext (mostly with Armstrong), it never feels intentionally malicious with it.
I'd absolutely agree there. The Investigation segments were far better in design this time around. The structure of this mystery is, once again, something I find myself appreciating more and more. Murder mysteries where the struggle is finding out who did it is relatively easy, but giving away that answer and instead making the mechanics of how the crime happened, and how to put together all the facts in a way that makes sense, is a lot more challenging.
True, and while I wouldn't call this a top-tier Phoenix Wright mystery, it was compelling enough. All in all I enjoyed it.
Nice things done, say the bad things Sam.
Well I said before that I feel it sort of drops its more interesting character stuff at the end, and that did hurt my opinion of the case quite a bit. Also, its treatment of both Kudo's creepiness and of Armstrong's apparent gender are both not great, for various reasons. But really, the case just overall feels...fine. The mystery is passable, the characters are enjoyable enough but nothing standout for the series, the twists work but aren't mind-blowing... it feels like a functional Ace Attorney case. Fun, but not much else.
That's a great way to put it, Sam. Despite having seeds of greatness at its core, this case doesn't reach its full potential.
We rate these cases on a scale from 1 to 10, but it isn’t like you see with most folks. Here, it’s all relative. A 10 is for the best cases of the series, a 1 is for the worst, and a 5 or 6 is something more average. Personally, I think most Ace Attorney cases are quite good, even when you get into the lower numbers like 3’s and 4’s. Speaking of, I give this case a 4/10, but I should clarify it’s the highest in that number, on the cusp of being a 5. On my ranking sheet, it is exactly one spot below Turnabout Samurai, the lowest of the 5’s, which I think is kind of fitting.
I rate this case just a little lower because, for all it’s interesting ideas and well-crafted moments, there’s just something kind of hollow about it. It has several characters who either do little to enhance the experience or who drag it down actively, at least for me. In comparison, Turnabout Samurai, for all its flaws, actually feels like it has more going on with it, and did far more for the series as a whole with its impact on the lore and dynamic of the series.
This is one of those where we give the same score, though its place among the others adjacent to it is slightly different. I'm giving it a 4 as well, which puts it on the same level as Turnabout Samurai. Samurai had the far better story, but it also had a lot of gameplay frustrations that this one lacks. It's a solid but unimpressive case in pretty much all respects, so slightly below average feels about right for it.
This is actually your first time scoring two cases with the same number. I am also not far off from where you are, honestly. If I introduced decimals to my scores, which I won't because it would throw off the lovely bell curve I have going on, Turnabout Samurai would be 5.1 or 5, and Recipe for Turnabout would be a 4.9
Makes sense. I'd say very similar cases overall, though this one is more even.
I'd agree with that, I just tend to reward messy stories with great peaks over even stories then try less. But that's it for this case, and next week we have something special! For the first time since Rise from the Ashes we have the introduction of a new type of case, and I am sure it will be one to remember. Auf wiedersehen!
See you then!
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