So which was it?
AA's unraveling of the past, as Edgeworth must come to face the truth of the DL-6 incident?
JFA's search for the definition of justice, as Phoenix struggles to be a true lawyer?

What's your opinion?
(And don't say GS3 or GS4...)

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GS5! *maulotaur'd*

The first one was better because it had a better story to the proceedings.

Four, in terms of review scores. But I say three.

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JFA is my personal favorite. I love the cases and the characters and just, well... everything. :D

Hi five, Pineapple! Probably one of the few who prefer the second installment, I also love JFA, although that may be biased because that's the only one of the series I own. I've played AA, but it just didn't have that charm JFA gave me. x3; TaT sounds like it's going to be great.

I would have to say JFA because I really prefer Franziska over Edgeworth as the main prosecutor. Even though it comes in 2nd, AA gets brownie points because it had Ema <3

The first game wins for the fifth case. That case had the best characters. Period. Also very good plot twists.
If the first game hadn't gotten the addition of the fifth case, I'd probably have to rank the two games equally.

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I prefer JFA more, I have an unhealthy obsession over Franziska!! :S

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I love both and think their strengths are a bit different, but overall my favorite is the first game--which is pretty much all personal preference coming out, because Edgeworth is my favorite character.

I also, well, managed to really enjoy all the cases from the first game whereas 2-3 really didn't do anything for me at all.

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I'd have to say JFA, because of case 2-2 . That is by far my favorite case in the series (so far). Case 2-4 was really well done as well. I feel like the cases in the first game went more for the three days mark then actually making long and indepth chapters.

pw1. it had the most unique case, since you got into the whole 'scientific investigation' thing.

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jfa, methinks. I just liked more of the characters and stories, though aa is very close. :o

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PW:AA is definitely my favourite of the two. Not only does it have a GREAT back story on Edgeworth's past, it also has-in my opinion-the BEST music of the two games thus far! (Obviously, once GS3 comes out and I hear its music and play the game, I might change my opinion. Hard to say at this point.)
I also really enjoyed the cases more in the first game and I really enjoyed the fifth case in the first game as well. It was brilliantly done and well constructed, in my view.

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Justice For All. It makes you examine what Justice really is.

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I enjoy them both EQUALLY! 'Nuff said.

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For the one's that have come out in America, I'll say AA1.

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... D: Can I say both?

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I Like All PW Games!

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AA1, but omly by a bit. Without the fifth case, I'd probably rate them about the same.

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Well, I can safely say that AA:TT will be better than both PW:AA and AA:JFA. And as far as I can see, GS4 is better then all of them. I'll be looking forward to this one.

So they would be:

GS4 (AA4)
AA:TT (AA3)
PW:AA (AA1)
AA:JFA (AA2)

Where JFA is the worst. And no, this is not (only) because of my hate for Franziska and adrian. It is mostly for the fact that:

1) The opening case was better in AA3 (WAY WAY better) - AA4 as well.
2) Case 2 had a nice storyline element - but still fails to the case 2 in AA1 and AA3.
3) Case 3 is an okay case - but only mediocre. It still falls short to AA1 AND AA3.
4) It only has 4 cases. Okay, so lengthwise they would be the same.... but not storyline wise. The length came because the psyce-lock system was a real drag in this one.
5) Okay, case 4 was actually a really good case. Not the best. For while it is probably better than AA1 case 4, is is most certainly NOT better than AA1 case 5! And even if you think it is, you still have the value of two but slighly worse cases over one. As for the last case of AA3, I'm not going to even TELL you how awesome (but completely fricked out) that case is.
6) AA2 had no significant ongoing plotline element,


but in all the other games you have significant very good themes:





7) AA3 has a better use of the psyce-lock system.
8) AA2 had terrible charrecters (compared to the other games or not), and only a handful of charrecters makes a real impact.
9) Maya is seriously annoying. No, I mean VERY annoying.
10) The entire translation is better in AA1..... can't comment on AA3 and AA4, obviously.
11) The music, while awesomly composed, has terrible TERRIBLE quality of sounds playing them. It made the music awful except for very few (2 or 3) of them.
12) AA2 is alot more dependant on cameos from the first game than AA3 (slightly), and AA4 (especially).

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Wow, hard question. I've played the first two games and loved them both, but for different reasons. Erm.....I can't remember the first one too well, but I'm still going to sit on the fence (not literally of course) and say both ^_^

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I'd have to say AA.
5 cases, and I think Manfried von Karma is one badass mofo.

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Personally, I liked JFA the best. I, of course, haven't played GS3 or GS4, but I still think that JFA would be a hard act to follow. In fact, I would almost absolutely disagree with most of the things that Mikker put up as reasons for disliking JFA. So, just to put up a defense (not meant to agitate or start problems), I'll refute some of them. Keep in mind also, that I played JFA first.



Okay, so I have played the fan translated first case of GS3, and I've played the GS4 demo (hell, I *am* Odoroki :P), and I personally think that none of the cases even come close to holding a candle to JFA's. Maybe that's part of playing it first, but imagine if the first case you played in any of the games revolved around To me, that is pretty intense. I actually DID feel nervous. I honestly think that none of the other games really would have evoked that emotion out of me, even if I had played them first. Having done Mock Trial, I know that you're already pretty nervous, even if you're prepared and have done it before, so it was very easy for me to imagine what that was like, and easy to get into. Overall, I think that because of this, JFA's first case was incredibly powerful.



I haven't plays GS3, but as far as the mystery and trial elements go, I think that JFA's case 2 was WAY better than the first one.

This is a bit of an aberration, but while I'm on it... Personally, I wasn't a huge fan of all the backstory stuff - I think the only reason the backstory of AA1 was even interesting to me was because of the hype generated by all the allusions to it in JFA. Otherwise, a lot of things in AA1, like would have just come up too abruptly for me to really care. However, only because I played JFA first, did I have the curiosity to learn exactly what happened and how.



Really...? I guess I can't say much about GS3 as usual, but I found case 1-3 to be really forgettable. I remember the gist of what happened, but nothing really sticks out in my mind. It's like when you play a really mediocre RPG and you forget the finer details of what happened within a week of playing it. ...Or does that only happen to me... :/ Oh well. I thought that case 2-3, while having some really, really brash personalities (I admittedly don't like Franziska either, so having all those circus freaks PLUS her was stressful), I thought that the story and the mystery and such were really well done, and the guilty party was incredibly interesting - not only the personality, but figuring out how this person's reasoning for commiting the crime.




Honestly, while I wouldn't mind having five cases, I really would much more enjoy having four really good cases, which is what I think JFA delivered. Case 1-1 was incredibly short, and Case 1-5, while being an interesting story, was WAAAAAAY too long, and was honestly, in my opinion, a fucking HELL to play. Like, I was really irritable the entire time I went through case 1-5. It's a good story, but I felt that you had to sift through a lot of crap to get to it. Also, I've heard that while GS3 has five cases, that one of the other cases besides the first one was short, too.

Also, is the psyche-lock system different in GS3? I honestly don't know...but you say that the psyche-lock was a drag 'in this one', making it sound like it was cooler in GS3. What did you mean by that?



I'll admit that case 1-4 was good, but still not better than 2-4 at all. I also would not say that case 1-5 comes even close, just because it was such a DRAG to play! And, for what it's worth, I thought that even though 1-5 wound up having a good story, it started out really, really, really boring.

And yeah, I don't exactly know a whole lot about GS3, but I expect that case to be the best. Still, I think of all the ones I've played, case 2-4 takes the crown by a longshot.



Personally, I don't think that a significant ongoing plotline element or ubiquitous theme is very necesary. JFA's main theme was only really present in the last case, and it had a GREAT dramatic impact, nontheless. If anything, I would say that AA1's recurring theme made it a little more boring - I notice what you're saying, and it kind of made the game a little boring in that regard. What you listed for GS3 doesn't really sound like much of a literary theme at all, though.



I guess I asked already, but could you give me an idea of what you mean?



I suppose specific examples would be nice, although I'm sure I already disagree - I really enjoyed the wide variety of characters present in JFA.



...ONLY in JFA? :P Well, I don't find her annoying, really...but I didn't think she was any worse or better in the first game. Hell, you saw a lot less of her in JFA than you did in AA1, and even then, she managed to deliver some of the funniest lines in the game.



You know, as much as I NEVER thought I'd say this about any translation concerning Alexander O. Smith...I really found JFA's dialogue to be much more enjoyable, and even more believable for some characters (particularly Phoenix and Gumshoe) than in AA1. The only real trouble with JFA were the typos, which really don't faze me at all, except '...never happen', because it admittedly was just a weird, weird place to have one. Oh well...



I always hear people say this, but I never really understand what they're saying. Besides the fact that this is a rather specific complaint (specific in that it really wouldn't even be an issue if we were talking about the GBA versions), it's the exact same soundfont in all the games, too.

To further this point even more, I would dare say that JFA has the best music of all the games. I've heard the first two soundtracks in their entirety, and I've heard all the stock themes of GS3. With the exception of the Search ~ Opening theme, JFA's compositions are just flat out BETTER than AA1 - ESPECIALLY the courtroom songs. On that note, I still like JFA's Search ~ Opening theme; I just think that AA1's version is more fun to listen to and more in context.

Speaking of which, another reason that I would say JFA has the best music is because all of its stock themes (Courtroom themes, Investigation Themes) are much better than the rest of the games when put in context (except the one song I mentioned).

- AA1's Courtroom themes, for example, don't really carry any tension - they're either intense (which is just weird in a courtroom game), or, dare I say, HAPPY sounding (Courtroom Lobby theme, Trial Begins theme).

- GS3, while being the most fun to listen to on its own, falls under the same problem - all of the themes in GS3 are way too intense (and believe me, I WANTED to like GS3's the best - Noriyuki Iwadare is my favorite VGM composer, and I'm VERY biased in his favor).

GS4 has the right tension, but...like, the wrong context, I guess? What I mean is, it sounds way too futuristic, like a Megaman game. Now, sure, you might say "Well, that's because he (Toshihiko Horiyama) was a composer for the MMX games." Well, I counter that by saying that the JFA composer (Akemi Kimura) has worked on just as many MMX games - not only that, but his compositions were excellent and in context for the MMX games, too. Akemi Kimura was able to take these two completely different games and write very different very appropriate music for both. Horiyama, when taken out of his element, performed adequately, but not nearly as well as Kimura, in my opinion.

Overall, the tense atmosphere that Kimura created with the JFA music captures the feeling of a courtroom very well - definitely the best of all the games, in my opinion - AA1 and GS3 are too dramatic, and GS4 sounds like it's being played to a completely different ambience/atmosphere than a courtroom.



Besides the fact that this isn't a very fair grounds for comparison (GS4 only had cameos out of necesity - Shu Takumi didn't want there to be any in the first place - and AA1 very well couldn't have any cameos, cos it was the first game), but it's false; beyond the mainstay characters (Phoenix, Mia, Maya, Miles, Gumshoe, Payne, and the Judge), there were only three cameos in the second game (four, if you count references to Misty Fey). I don't know a lot about GS3, but I already know that there's more than that (I know of at least five or six). I'm not sure if this is what you mean, though - did you mean something else? I'm not sure that it matters much either way, but I'll hear you out.


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Again, I do wish I'd played GS3, so I could use that in my comparison, but I definitely think that AA1 doesn't come close. I might not have even played the JFA if I played the first game first. That's not to say it's bad - I liked the game; however, it really just was 'okay' to me. JFA very quickly became one of my favorite GAMES, and is definitely what I would attribute to my being excited about GS3 being released here - not AA1.

It's not really fair to refer to case 1-5 as a reason that PW1 is better, seeing as it was designed a few years after the third game came out, and thusly could use some of the advancements they'd made in the next two games on the first one.

that being said, while the typos detract from JFA, the improvement of the psyche-locks and being able to present character profiles, in addition to the wonderful shakeup of the formulaic episode template in case 4 more than balance things out.

I like JFA's Gumshoe more than AA's Gumshoe, too.

1) I thought the JFA Case 1 idea was bland and boring. Interesting you feel the oposite.

2) That was happens when you don't play games in the order they were MENT to be played...

3) I thought 1-3 was a very interesting case. It's above 1-4, at least. 2-3, on the other hand, isn't special IMO.

4) You thought 1-5 was a.... drag? WTF, that was probably the most exciting case so far! Is it because there was so much evidence to randomly present? Hmmm?

And in GS3, the psyce locks are NOT a giant drag that doesn't mean any sence. I felt it was in JFA. QUITE ALOT.

5) Matter of opinion.

6) An ongoing plotline is quite neccecery to tie the storyline together. It was bad in 1 and 2. Better in 2, I'll give you that, but NOT 3.

7) Answered :)

8) I didn't like several charecters in JFA. You don't HATE them, but they are.... mediocre. Hotti, morgan, JFA maya, franziska, the entire mediocre case 3 crew, emo adrian. I DID hate adiand and franziska, but considering you are not supposed to do that apperently, I'll count that ageanst their charrecters.

9) Maya wasn't funny. She was dumb. And yes, only in JFA. She was interesting in the first.

10) I don't mean the spelling errors. I mean the fact that they put so many jokes and pop-cultures in that it at some points were hard to destinguish the 'serious' parts from the 'funny', even if quite fun at first, ruins the charrecters, and if that happens, you have a bad translation.

11) I don't doubt that the JFA music is excelent - and perhaps the best (Akemi Kimura fan myself). What I'm saying is that the QUALITY of the sound material was MUCH MUCH WORSE than any of the other games. It sounded more like a SNES og GB for the most part, not a DS. I hate JFA for ruining such absolutely good music - and you have to make your ears NOT hear all the bad sound effects that is build of the music for it actually to be awesome. When I listen to some music from AA1 and GS4, and compare the QUALITY alone with AA2, there is such a big diffrence that this point in itself is enough to warrent a remake of it. REALLY.

12) Yeah, I just put this in because I thought of it. Might go into the area with the translation and sucky charrecters more.

Oh, and for the 'present profiles' and 'psyce locks', that is something that you EXPECT to happen. You don't like Mega Man 4 more than Mega Man 2 by the simple reason that you now can charge your shots, right? There is more to it, and you still see people loving Mega Man 2 even long after the original series ended.
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Generally, AA1 is rather close to AA2 in quality, but both are quite behind AA3, IMO.

Of course, what game you get first matters alot. Alot of the surprise is gone when you play a continuation. I got mine ruined even more because of european release dates being later than the american. So I already knew the most major plot points in the game. Especially the thread 'Who is your favorite Villain, from JFA' was a real bad one. You couldn't TELL that it was a spoiler before you opened it and saw the murderers names....

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Last edited by Mikker on Mon Apr 16, 2007 3:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I would have to say GS1

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I'm glad I did, though; I probably would have found all those things I mentioned to be very poorly executed, otherwise.



1-5 started out terribly boring, which didn't help...All the 3D evidence manipulation stuff usually felt more gimmicky than cool...I thought that pretty much all the characters were really lame, and it was incredibly long. On top of that, I felt like case 1-5 had the most 'what the hell do you do now' parts in it than I've seen in all the rest of the cases combined. Bleh. I really could have done without it.



I'm pretty sure that even Shu Takumi said that all of the cases should be enjoyable as standalone episodes. While it's definitely NICE to have that, I don't think it's necesary, and, at least in AA1, it's not even handled all that well. To me, it's the character interaction and the mystery that really makes the story great.



Hmm...I didn't think it was bad at all in JFA, but I guess I can't say much until I have something to compare it to...



I think using Hotti as an example would be just as much of a cheapshot as if I were to use Penny Nichols as evidence to the contrary, man :P He's just there for a little bit of comic relief. Otherwise, I don't really know what to say, other than that I disagree, heh.

Well, actually...I will agree with you about Franziska. That is the one thing I liked better about AA1 - Miles Edgeworth is easily a MUCH more interesting prosecutor than Franziska, and the only characters that really annoy me in these games are the ones that waste a lot of time with their actions and mannerisms (Wellington, Franziska)...I'm a really, really hard person to bother, so most peoples' personalities don't annoy me at all.




I completely disagree... "Spine-Tingling Legal Action..." "...Don't fake the funk on a nasty dunk" "You the man now..." "Roll over..." amongst other lines had me in hysterics the whole time, and these are only the ones I could think of off the top of my head. Either way, you only worked with her in one case in the game.



I think that over-using weird phrases like "so-n-so can't be faulted for lack of enthusiasm", which doesn't even sound like something that Phoenix would say, makes for a comparatively bad translation. While competently translated into English, it just doesn't sound like something he would say. I felt this way more than once when playing the game. Oh, and not to mention that if you want to get into going overboard with jokes, having a person talk entirely in leet-speak was a little strange, too. Personally, it's no bother to me, but I think that if you're going to fault JFA on going overboard with pop-culture references (which I don't think it did - it's not like they threw them in at completely inappropriate times. Unless you can think of a few examples?), then you would have to acknowledge that one, because people don't talk with smiley emoticons in real life.



GS4 was made entirely on the DS, so they didn't use any of the old GBA sounds. AA1 and JFA did, and not only did they use the exact same soundfont (Which is why, for example, the songs from AA1 still sound exactly the same), but I think the quality went up about the same as AA1 did. I guess there's not much else we can really talk about here - we just disagree, heh. :P



I'm not trying to be a dick, but I have no idea what that second paragraph was in response to. Could you elaborate?

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I'll grant that GS3 is probably going to be the best one...I should probably not be making pre-expectations, though...

And, while you're right to an extent, my argument about playing the second one first is that I seriously think I wouldn't have enjoyed most (if any) of the plot elements in the AA1 if I'd played it first, because a lot of them came out of the blue, with no allusion to it, or no time to really build up empathy for characters, in certain cases. With JFA, you have a lot of time to be curious about the mystery of 'what happened?' So, for that reason, the main plot points of AA1 were interesting to me - ONLY because I'd played JFA first.

I've decided to change my answer to JFA :) I just loved it too much! <3

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Hmm... GS1 and 2 were decent, but I'd have to say it'd be GS3

-says just to smite the no gs3 or 4 answers-

I love Mei Kuruma (Von Krama i believe) in GS3.
I didn't really like her in GS2. :P

Are you... me? Although I havn't played GS3, the reasoning towards 1&2 is exactly what I would say. So I like your opinion.

Some GS2 spoilers ahead.

Though I liked GS1 better in most aspects, I have to disagree on there not being a central theme to it. Cases 1, 2, and 4 all had to do with somebody hiding their true identity (Wellington, Mimi, Matt), which then carried over to Phoenix and Edgeworth finding their own in a way, or at least getting more development out of it. In fact, I thought that this focus was one of the redeeming qualities of the game, even if it didn't really have much impact on me until the last case.

Oh, I think Mikker's reference to Mega Man 2 and 4 are in response to me.

I'll justify my position by saying that Mega Man 2 had several notable improvements over the first one, including a total of 8 robot masters, larger stages, and movement items, so while it is somewhat invalid to like a sequel more for "exciting new features!" the ability to present profiles (moreso than the psyche-locks which felt too gimmicky) opened up new possibilities for the investigation.

I'm changing my answer to PW1. PW2 was just a liiittle too convoluted for its own good. I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around the

Gyakuten Saiban 4. Believe it.

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number 1. because of 2 reasons:
1. it was the first Phoenix Wright I ever played and it had me hooked
2. the music was spectacular and the rush is fantastic when You find a contradiction

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Skankin' Garbage:

I give you, Edgeworth in AA2 had a better apperence in AA1. HOWEVER, and this is important, he is EQUALLY awesome in 1-5. And when he also is there in one case in AA2..... you know what I mean.

About Sal Monella: The 1337 speach gave him charracter. It made him, not only a serious laugh in itself, but it gave him a destinct feature - not unlike a whip, or similar. And yeah, I get what you mean about hotti, and AA1 is not without mediocre charrecters. Like Greeseburger and the bellboy. But when most of the main cast of new introduced charracters are the same deal... I don't know what to say. It has some cool charracters in the last case (specifically: matt and shelly),

(and the 2nd paragraph was to the fact that you said that having the 2nd game have extra features was a plus point)

Iskander: You are not alone - I wasn't refering to you - and I personally prefer MM 4. Played both at the same time on the Nintendo so that isn't the issue.

Interestingly enough, this might be because I played MM4 AFTER MM2. Hence I felt several things were missing - and this might be the reason why I don't like the game as much as MM4. Same thing could be true with PW.

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Of the two, I'd have to say JFA simply because of the final case. It was a complete emotional roller-coaster, kept me guessing until the end, and had an awesome appearance by Edgeworth.

That said, I also really enjoy AA cases 4 and 5 because of the characters and the depth of the story.

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Sure, I think he's actually great all the time - Edgeworth is a great character. Still, 1-5 or no, I really just think that the writing in AA1 is not as good within the mood of the game as JFA. It's certainly not bad, though. I wouldn't complain about it, except for that I have something to care about.



Okay, leet-speak gave Sal Manella character. I'm not arguing that; but, when you cite something like 'going overboard with jokes' as a reason why JFA should be ranked lower than AA1, I think it's crazy that you wouldn completely neglect this. I mean, let's look at a few things:

- Nerdy types like Sal, IRL, do not talk like that; in fact, they make a mockery of people who talk like that. I've occasionally heard 'pwn' and the 'xor' suffix in real speech, but anything beyond that seems completely incorrect, in my opinion.

- So, let's pretend that, for some reason, it DOES make sense that Sal would talk like that: Writing it in leet-speak with all the numbers in the words (i.e. j00, r0x0rz, etc.), writing in abbreviations (i.e. WTF, LMAO), writing smileys INTO the character's speech (not even to MENTION that there's a very high possibility that a person playing the game would not know ANYTHING about this internet phenomenon)...And THEN randomly having him talk with absolutely none of these nuances in his speech? That's inconsistent, bad forethought, AND going overboard with a joke (I suppose the last one sort of implies the first two, anyways).

There are plenty of other things I've noticed that are inconsistent with the writing of AA1, but I'll wait to mention them since the point I'm debating here is concerning 'going overboard with jokes.' Now, don't get me wrong: This didn't bother me at ALL. What I'm saying is that when you make that sort of argument against JFA while neglecting this example, which trumps pretty much ANY INSTANCE of this in JFA, I think that's a little weird. Needless to say, I don't think JFA went overboard with its jokes at all. Do you have any examples?



This is sort of a bogus analogy, though - mostly because they are from two different genres. In a game like Mega Man, where there isn't much incentive to WAIT before you shoot (mostly due to lack of mobility - if you're not firing, you're getting fired and, and evading shots can be quite a bitch...now, MMX, on the other hand...), which makes the concept of charging a shot in MM completely superfluous (in fact, everything I saw in the original MM series past MM3 just seemed like the series was trying to fix something that wasn't broken...). To get into more detail about the discussion, look at the Megaman Zero, series; every new feature was fixing something about the original design that was VERY WRONG about it (too many weapon levels to attain, completely useless weapons, too hard to get EX Attacks from bosses with very little incentive, etc).

On the other hand, in the Phoenix Wright games, where investigation phases were completely bare, and boring to play - especially with no psyche-locks or some similar feature to give you a reason to think things through when presenting evidence - an innovation like psyche-locks is incredibly welcome, because it makes the investigation phase of the game - previous a very boring part of the game to play - suddenly more interesting.

It has nothing to do with what was expected...it has to do with what's necesary. It sounds like GS3 got this right, and didn't try to fix it up or innovate it. It's very important when making a new game with a similar engine to not make completely banal changes to the system just to make it new. Psyche-Locks? A great, welcome addition to the game. Charge Shots (in MMClassic), Beat, Rush JetPack, Rush Search? Not so much. And, while MM3 did present sliding, which was a pretty decent innovation, it didn't really change the gameplay nearly as drastically as, say, dashing in MMX, or even all the game innovations that MM2 made from MM1.

I can't remember much of the jokes from JFA, all I know is that the jokes covered their personalities. That is what I disagree with you on that one.

Oh, and you thought investigation was boring in AA1? I didn't. I thought it was just as exciting as the courts themselves. With the introduction of psyce locks, this was completely ruined. You had to spend ALOT more time walking arround and getting random evidence. I got stuck ALOT in ALL 3 CASES in JFA because of psycelocks being unbreakable (couldn't find evidence, etc). In JFA, lacking a single event, that might even seem to not matter much (Juan's autograph?) PUT THE GAME ON HOLD. I never had to read walkthroughs for AA1, but I had to do it for AA2 in.... all three cases, most in 4th. This wasn't because I couldn't get through court, but because I couldn't get past certain plot points because of lacked mini-events. In short, the investigation phases in AA2 were prolonged alot - but not in a good way. Now, in case 1-5..... you don't really get stuck in investigation much. unless you don't examine the scenes proberly, or you don't get whats going on. In case 2-4, it took me a day trying to get past a scene where EVERY ONE of the witnesses had psyce locks. I was completely stuck, and what I lacked was a scene with Franny throwing you the autograph - I still don't remember how I unlocked it. At this point, I had tried presenting everything to everyone, twice for some, and never got any result out from it. No hints in the game at all. And you know what was missing? The guitar case. I clicked on it, and it said how much of a mess the room was. I wasn't clicking on the lid, but on the case itself. So I couldn't get further.

Now, in GS3 - which I played before AA2 - this has been pretty much fixed. It doesn't take luck or hours upon hours to find that one missing piece of evidence. In AA2, this is basicly frustrating.

Oh, and for the Mega Man - are you arguing just to argue? You can add features, or remove them, or edit them just to make it diffrent than earlier games. Some might like them, some might not. You might not want to charge your shots, but some might. You might not want to utilize the games microphone for objections, but some might. There is little diffrence in the way the games are structured in this manner.

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Okay. There's not much to be debated though, if you don't have any specific examples.



I don't know what to say...that never really happened to me. Either way, without Psyche-Locks I think that investigations weren't fun to play because there was no penalty to simply presenting every piece of evidence to everyone - the only real 'gameplay challenge', if you could call it that, was making sure you found all of the evidence. With Psyche-Locks, it felt like you had a very clear goal during the investigations, and examining scenes really thoroughly was never a big deal for me.



No, I'm not arguing just to argue; I'm adressing this specific statement from you:



There's a very big difference between adding things that truly improve a system, and a simple gimmick. When you compare charging shots to using the mic for objections, you're comparing two gimmicks. When you compare charging shots to psyche-locks, which add an actual gameplay element to the otherwise barebones investigation phases of the game, you're not making a very valid comparison. Charging shots really didn't have any potential to make the game better, but psyche-locks definitely did; even if you don't agree that they did in JFA, you have definitely admitted to enjoying their implementation in GS3, so I don't see how you could disagree about that. It's quite the opposite when thinking about charging shots in Mega Man - In 99% of all situations where you can charge a shot or use rapid fire with the pea shooter, rapid fire winds up being the better choice. That's why charge shots are purely a gimmick in MM4 in my opinion.

This is the exact same reason why people like MM2 better - MM2 made the gameplay innovations to the series that really mattered - ones that are still pretty widely used in MM games today. That's why fans tend to like two and three the best, and not MM4 - because in the end, while charge shots wound up being great in a modified game engine that implemented the idea much better (MMX, MMZ, MMZX), it was a pretty inept feature in MM4. Psyche-Locks, presenting character profiles, and having a lifebar in which more or less than 1/5 of your life could be removed for making a mistake were all changes which helped the game out in a big way.

I've only played the GS1/2, and it's a hard decison, but I think I prefer GS2. The music is better (I love Cornered from GS2 and Great Revival) and I really enjoyed the first case, as opposed to GS1's first case - it's a tad dull.

*sees the argument about Sal's l33t speak and slaps forehead*

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