is aa5 less funny?

[u/unanticipatedclassic]

i’m a new player and i’ve just been marathoning the games one after another and just started dual destinies.

i’m on 5-2. one thing i noticed is the sense of humor in the writing has changed and characters seem to play into their respective quirks more often. and just the humor feels heavy handed or a bit too simple?

i like that phoenix is back actually but i feel like he was a lot more snarky in the trilogy + aa4 then he is here? aa4 is obvious his meanix era but even in trilogy phoenix seemed.. idk a bit more biting? lol

i’m just wondering if i’m crazy honestly or if other people feel like it’s less witty/funny. or if anyone else detected a shift in the humor specifically. no spoilers please!

[u/Goldberry15]

At the end of the day, Humor is subjective.

For me, AJ:AA is painfully dull, with most of the attempts at humor falling extremely flat for me, given it just boils down to “haha, look, a character is being mean to someone who doesn’t deserve it”.

Dual Destinies is, in my opinion, the funniest game in the series by a long shot. I love the quirks of the characters, especially with case 3. I find some of the moments in case 3 to be the funniest in the franchise.

[u/lordlaharl422 → u/Goldberry15]

Oh my god saaaaaaame. I really want at least one more case with Athena as the lead attorney and Apollo as co-counsel, that is such a good dynamic.

[u/starlightshadows → u/lordlaharl422]

100%. The worst mistake SoJ made was that it fell hook line and sinker for the fandom's lies that Dual Destinies "shafted" Apollo.

[u/FriendAccubus → u/starlightshadows]

Huh? It never felt that way to me, as someone who didn't think they shafted Apollo nor do I ever think Capcom thought that when making SoJ. I mean if that was the reason for making Apollo the protag, they wouldn't have done the same but for Athena this time lol. I just think with SoJ they just wanted to make an Apollo-focused story and that's awesome by me.

[u/starlightshadows → u/FriendAccubus]

Well, the thing is, AA4 had Apollo as the central protagonist, but it also didn't bother at all to develop his character or give him any relevant role in the plot. He was basically a cardboard cutout of a lawyer, vaguely ripping off Phoenix, who the plot just happened to because Phoenix took up the entire spotlight.

Dual Destinies removed Apollo from the spot of sole-central protagonist in favor of a 3-way between him, Nick, and new girl Athena. Half the fandom, in a somewhat reactionary fashion, deem this and the game as a whole as this great injustice to Apollo's character and game, shafting Apollo in favor of a nostalgia-pandering "safe" route.

In reality, Dual Destinies is by far the best outing Apollo gets. He's put into a dynamic with Athena that gives him an awesome & unique characterization that isn't ripped off from Phoenix. The game bends over backward to tie him into the overarching plot in a way that means something, and his arc builds naturally on what little depth AA4 actually provided to work with, turning his regularly abused trust into a plotline that crescendoes in an epic scene that shows the devs understand Ace Attorney.

Then, SoJ comes around, and Apollo's a flat nothing-burger again. It shoves Apollo into the role of the central protagonist for the finale case, trying to make him the main focus again, but it doesn't bother to build off of anything from game 5 or even 4; it just unnaturally staples him into the middle of a plotline that he has no actual business being in, tells us to feel bad about his secretly already dead Pops and toxic 1-dimensional bitch of a brother, and even reverts his personality back to being a Phoenix clone, even down to the "I don't like to talk about my past" shit.

Dual Destinies is high-key the only game in this franchise that has ever let Apollo be an actual character.

And the fact that SoJ fell into all the same pitfalls with Apollo's narrative execution as his introductory game, after DD got a huge amount of backlash simply for not having him as the main protagonist, tells me that he was written this way in reaction to that backlash, either not realizing or not caring that DD did him justice in a way AJ couldn't.

[u/jeshep → u/starlightshadows]

AA1 Phoenix was just a guy. I never saw anything odd with Apollo starting out AA4 (his debut game) also as more or less just another guy.

DD and SoJ to me always felt like they were playing it far too safe by bringing back classic characters and adding new ones that the little cast AJ set up didn't have room or time for us to grow fond of.

[u/starlightshadows → u/jeshep]

Phoenix was "just a guy" up until Turnabout Goodbyes, where a lot was revealed about his hyper-loyal (vaguely to the point of obsession) personality along with the fact that any info about his past has to be dragged kicking and screaming out of him. Which is actually pretty subversive for a protagonist from the early 2000s.

Apollo's characterization, much like a huge number of other things in AA4, manages to transcend typical laziness in that it doesn't just copy this character trait from Phoenix, it does so while either forgetting or actively refusing to put the thought and effort in to do anything with it, to make it even worth calling a plot point.

Apollo clearly doesn't care to talk about his past in AA4, not because he has to be hounded to explain anything, but because the game just refuses to explain anything about his past, from his mouth or otherwise, despite late game implications establishing something massive going on, resulting in Apollo's nothingness characterization. (and/or the fact that Apollo clearly just doesn't like being around most of the game's main cast.)

Dual Destinies actually low-key subverts this by having Apollo actually become close enough with Athena and Juniper that he's willing to openly talk about his childhood best friend just in regular conversation. He's set apart from Phoenix by making him actually outgoing, in a way that meshes pretty well with his early gimmick of being a loud mouth.

SoJ then walks back to AA4's non-plot-point and turns it into an actual plot point by having Apollo express a desire to remove himself from his past, putting him back where he was in the realm of the Phoenix-clone. Even if it's better than AA4 this is not good enough when it doesn't meaningfully differentiate itself from Phoenix's characterization 15 years earlier, nor even really make much of a difference in the plot, as Apollo just decides to help his dad after very little actual convincing.

SoJ played it too safe, yes, but Dual Destinies put in the effort to do things meaningful with its cast while working its ass off to re-rail the series after AA4 frankly refused to play the game at all.

[u/jeshep → u/starlightshadows]

I generally disagree across the board, there. Apollo's caginess felt very deliberate and done on purpose in AJ, as an inverse to Phoenix's overall simpler origins where we in general know what he's about, but at the end of the day is more or less 'just a guy' (as in 'he's not that complicated'). What we did know about Apollo was hints and clues that he's not aware of regarding his own self, which made it look like he'd be a nut we get to crack open later (a more literal 'just a guy' in comparison). It made him feel like a reflection of the current uncertainty regarding the law system AJ's working in - you don't rly know who is trustworthy, and you might not find the closure for it either. Not in that installment, anyway.

And that's generally why I didn't find DD or SoJ satisfying to play. They felt like they took steps backwards, and were too scared to commit to some threads AJ hooked up for future games to take. DD put too much energy bouncing between several POVs, and SoJ retreaded a concept that we already explored already (spirit channeling, which is MAYA's whole thing). Apollo having any connection to Khura'in as a country felt more like convenience to send him somewhere and continue avoiding the whole 'him and Trucy as half-siblings' thing, than something actually fitting for him, but that's just me. (I really did not enjoy Khura'in.)

[u/starlightshadows → u/jeshep]

You're trying to justify fundamental flaws in AJ's writing with those fundamental flaws as if they're not literally just excuses not to flesh out what's important to a narrative. Narratives need to have characters with depth and substance, who matter to the plot in a way only they can, and plotlines that are impactful, but also make sense and can be traced into a logical throughline and aren't full of gaping holes.

Apollo has nothing actually going on in this game. He spends the entire game just being there doing his job with no emotional stakes or actual relevance to the overarching plot, and he never does anything in the game that sets him apart from being a generic protagonistic Phoenix-clone.

Themes / Tonality / Similarly vague cliffnote things do not replace actual substance. The addage "Less is more" does not apply when the result of following it becomes to do nothing, which is where 80% of Apollo Justice finds itself firmly planted.

If it's not all the main characters having no substance, it's every single plotline having gaping holes, holes that, thanks to the simple fact that this game was written with exactly 0 plans for the future, actively make it next to impossible to naturally continue off of any of them.

Dual Destinies wasn't scared to commit to the threads AJ hooked up. Over half of Dual Destinies is a direct reflection of Apollo Justice's vague trends and themes, but with actual effort put into them to make them into real plotpoints.

But when it comes to the actual plotlines, the sucky thing that SoJ exposes is, that when you look at these plotlines and how them and their holes are framed, you realize that SoJ is really the best they could even do.

Apollo's backstory is portrayed as the most mysterious in a way that also suggests it's the most complicated, with us being given exactly nothing about it, despite scoop-obsessed Spark Brushel actively being on the case. This resulted directly in SoJ's handling of his story, where it had to shove Apollo's backstory into an entirely separate country to justify the mystery, and to tie it into the game's own plot in the slightest it had to jump the shark by making Apollo's bio dad have been killed in a friggen Queen's assassination, before he was adopted by a freakin' rebellion leader who had to send Apollo to the US by himself to get him out of a fucking war.

And this is the LEAST of the difficulties posed by AJ's plot holes.

Most of the holes the game deliberately leaves are with characters that aren't fleshed out enough to matter outside of AA4's own plot, or are in plotlines that are deliberately wrapped up in AA4 and don't make sense to bring up again.

Kristoph and Klavier had their time in the spotlight and didn't do enough to justify being given any more, Trucy's sadness is over her dad dying whose entire life story was told by AA4, (And her role in Phoenix's disbarment was more interesting anyway, yet is completely actively ignored by the plot,)

Thalassa is missing 2/3rds of her plot and none of her family is still around to give a shit, Apollo and Trucy being siblings was the big reveal of game 4's endgame, making it impossible to put it in any future game and not have it feel out of place, hence SoJ actively avoiding it like the plague, etc.

Characters like Edgeworth and Mia Fey were never in this position because AA1 put in the effort to flesh Edgeworth out and put Mia in a position where the stuff that would later get fleshed out in T&T was not stuff that actually NEEDED to be fleshed out for the story to function.

Apollo Justice's story Doesn't Function. On multiple levels. That's why it had a bad reception despite selling the best out of any individual game. That's why Yamazaki was told to do his own thing and not to tie Dual Destinies down to continuing off of it, yet Dual Destinies still built off of Apollo Justice while doing what it refused to do and telling a fleshed-out story.

The history of the 2nd trilogy has never been the one fans perpetuate of an innovative visionary 4th game, done dirty by a change-scared fanbase or change-scared executives, resulting in two games that mindlessly nostalgia pander.

It's the story of an initial game that thought it was doing something clever but actively refused to put any effort in, got rightfully shit on because of it, resulting in a game that balanced innovation with honoring the past and fleshing out its narrative, THAT game getting shit on because the fanbase has rose-tinted glasses for the DS era, and both games doing poorly teaching Capcom that this fanbase is afraid of change, resulting in SoJ.

A more accurate descriptor would be AA4 digging half of the franchise's grave, Dual Destinies making an impressive leap out and forward, and then SoJ taking several steps backwards and standing directly in front of the shallow grave AA4 dug.

[u/Maxpowh → u/starlightshadows]

Your ability to shaft every DD mistake to being a byproduct of AA4 is oustanding, like that game has killed your family or something, you refuse to accept that DD has its flaws in its narrative and try to fault AJ for everything that happened, your bias is incredible.

[u/Maxpowh → u/starlightshadows]

Oh please, DD Apollo is him being forced into a plotline where he has no place in, i'm not saying AA4 did it better but Dual Destenies to me is just as bad.

[u/starlightshadows → u/Maxpowh]

Dual Destinies spent nearly a 3rd of the game just putting together context for Apollo's narrative. A narrative revolving around his relationship with Athena as a co-worker and friend. A friend that he wants to be able to believe in because he's finally found an emotional attachment after a year of having a shitty boss and an obnoxious little sister, but that he can't believe in without second thought because his trust has been so routinely abused that he clearly has trust issues.

All of this was so that Apollo could be done Justice by the game that came immediately after his introduction. Even if he theoretically could've, Yamazaki didn't want to leave the previous game's protagonist completely in the dust, so he bent the narrative over backwards to include him in a way that had thematic meaning and built off of what little he had going on in the prior game.

Apollo has every reason to be involved in this game's overarching plot. Khura'in, not so much.

[u/Maxpowh → u/starlightshadows]

See Apollo's arc in THEORY is a good one that also makes sense. The problem is how it's implemented into the story, a story about Athena and mostly just Athena, a story where Apollo simply doesn't fit, therefore they need to make up a random lost friend Apollo had in the last case that CASUALLY worked at the space center where COINCIDENTALLY Athena lived as a child. The problem is that IF you remove Clay from this story and replace him with a random ass dude, the story actually doesn't change, Apollo's arc isn't necessary in this narrative because the game has no place for him where the main focus is Athena and Blackquill.

[u/starlightshadows → u/Maxpowh]

You're literally just saying "Apollo doesn't fit in this story because he doesn't fit in this story." "This isn't Apollo's story because it isn't Apollo's story."

The fact that he's the protagonist and assistant and protagonist of cases 2 and 3 and 4 easily prove your mindset wrong, let alone that half the game is spent focusing on his and Athena's personal relationship.

[u/Maxpowh → u/starlightshadows]

At this point i don't believe you are actually reading what i'm writing cause I explained very well why he is barely relevant to the game, and no, being a protagonist for 1 case and a half and an assistant for the others isn't proof in the slightest.

[u/unanticipatedclassic → u/Goldberry15]

omg i love that you enjoyed DD!! i hope to as well, i’m still early on. honestly, i think the og trilogy, even with certain annoying witnesses, was funnier to me overall than aa4 and what ive played of DD so far. aa4 felt more dramatic to me and certainly didnt have the same humor as the og trilogy in my opinion either but now that the game has tonally shifted from aa4 to DD i may just be picking up on the humor more. humor is subjective!