The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles has gotten me thinking about the series as a whole and if this was a wise decision on the developers' part. As much as I love Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice, this video (contains spoilers from the second case of the first game) from Ratatoskr touches on what I think are some good points regarding how sticking with Phoenix and those around him for so long has become a hindrance to the writing; there's still things that you can do with Phoenix, Miles, Apollo, Athena, and others, but there's so much already established about them that it's hard to develop them any more, which in turn presents the danger of them becoming flat characters. There's also the problem of spectacle creep (for those unfamiliar with the term, Extra Credits has a video on the topic); Phoenix and co. have in the past two games ended a culture of corruption that gripped the entire legal system and dethroned a usurper. Where do you go from there?

By moving to a new setting with new characters, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles gave the writers much more room to maneuver now that they were no longer bound by established characters. I'm reminded of how the Fire Emblem series rarely keeps a particular setting and cast of characters around for more than two entries and think the Ace Attorney games could benefit from a similar approach. I don't know how much more room there is to develop The Great Ace Attorney's cast and setting before it runs into the same problems as the main series, so I'm not calling for a new setting and cast just yet. Rather, I just think Capcom would be wise to keep in mind the value of starting fresh every now and then. As someone who has written fan fiction, I think there's also value in leaving the fans with some gaps to fill in the way they prefer.

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definitely.

i was getting very tired of Ace Attorney by the time of AA5 or AA6. i'd gravitated more to Danganronpa because it was very different, and a breath of fresh air... until that got stale too.
then playing the DGS games brought me back into AA again.

heck, i'd enjoy something like AA4 again even. it still has phoenix, but it takes a very different direction from the original trilogy. pity they had to go back on things.

People have already tossed around the idea of having Athena being the main lead for AA7 and I can see that working. They don't even need to go after some bigger more powerful villain. JfA and T&T's culprits were relatively small after AA1 had a CEO, a mafia boss, and an undefeated prosecutor.

On the flip side, TGAA starting with a new cast in a different time period meant they have more freedom to alter the dynamics however they pleased, making for a fresh experience. But it also meant that it had to spend a lot of time establishing a new setting. I didn't mind that, but I have seen a lot of complaints about the first two cases of TGAA being "too long."

So yeah, it could go either way, though that depends on who ends up taking over the series direction.
Actually scratch all of that I just want to see the Skyes again.

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I hear you there. An AAI-style game with a reinstated Lana as the prosecutor and Ema as the detective would be a dream come true for me. That said, there's the risk of falling into the trap of being too closely bound to the main series. I think it's workable as long as it's allowed to have its own story and secondary cast separate from the main series, not unlike how AAI is largely separate from the main series as far as story and cast are concerned. Pity there isn't (to my knowledge) an AAI casemaker or I'd look into making such a game myself (though given my inexperience, I doubt it would be anything incredible).

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Yeah, like your video says, this has been a bit of a problem for the AA series since AJ had his spotlight stolen. A chance for a brand new mythos they never did much with and using Phoenix as a much different character? Was great and interesting and it's a shame they couldn't stick to it, even if I liked AA5 and 6.

As for TGAA? I'm in Case 5 the first game and right now I'd overall say it's a bad game. Yes the music is good quality though I don't think I like it as much as regular AA music due to the musical limitations of keeping music in tone with the setting so I don't hold that against it. Yes the characters are generally interesting and charming and the animations are wonderful. I just find the story very...very dull so far.

I'd rate the cases thusly so far.
DGS1 = 3/5, 2 = -1/5, 3= 4/5, 4= 2/5.

We'll see how 5 sticks the landing but based on the video there and my suspicion that it's just setting up for Resolve will probably put it 3/5 at highest if it goes that way.

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