Our most important investigation yet is underway, with Maya Fey’s life hanging in the balance. If Matt Engarde truly didn’t kill the victim, then we need to find another suspect quickly. The trial is fast approaching.

I preface this by saying that I personally love Miles Edgeworth. He is one of my favorite characters in the Ace Attorney games and I am far from alone in that.

However, as much as Phoenix himself is (rightfully) angry at him for leaving a suicide note and going away for a full year, the game itself doesn’t do enough to call attention to how fucked up it is to do that to people who love and care about you. One might argue that part of that is the urgency of the case we’re working on, but that’s never stopped this series from having a moment before.

After all, we’re already about to tackle some dark subjects very soon.

Well, that certainly escalated quickly. With Maya out of the picture, we’ll need to be Engarde if we want to get the full acquittal we need to save her.

As is expected of a good Ace Attorney case, already the game has done a lot of work to seed hints as to who the true culprit is and what their motivations are. And often, it comes from small details that players are unlikely to pick up on during their first read.

It makes replaying a game like this worthwhile even after you’ve solved the case. Knowing who the culprit is ahead of time gives one the freedom to appreciate the artistry that goes into the construction of the full package. Once again, I find myself praising the dev and localization team for their efforts.

This fancy party for the rich is famous is nice, but honestly it’s so boring without a crime to invest- OH THANK GOD SOMEBODY GOT KILLED!

I have always been a staunch supporter of asset reuse where it makes sense, and this case shows off how it can be done creatively. Each of the returning characters, Lotta Hart, Will Powers, and Wendy Oldbag, all have valid reasons for being a part of this scenario, and having them here gives us a chance to catch up on what’s happened in their lives since we last met them in our previous cases. Additionally, it allows us as players to mentally rule them out as suspects. Given that we already know so much about them, including that they don’t have it in them to commit murder, the fact they’re here means we can focus on other characters more central to the mystery as viable suspects.

And even then, it’s somewhat unfair to call this pure asset reuse. Another outfit had to be drawn up for Will Powers to reuse all of his poses, and Wendy Oldbag gets a brand new costume with a few new poses to add to the character. These are new assets that had to be designed for these characters, and that’s worth at last acknowledging.

It’s impressive artistry all the same.

We have established a motive, a means, and an opportunity for our prime suspect. Now all we need is decisive evidence, and with it we’ll at last close out Turnabout Big Top and begin the final case of Justice For All.

Now, I know that the scene with Edgeworth between Case 3 and 4 basically states that Edgeworth was the one who seeded the idea that Franziska should order the surprise search, but I still believe in my heart that she wouldn’t have if she wasn’t already receptive to it. We’ll get more into it in later games in the series, but she does have a strong sense of justice and doesn’t like leaving any stone unturned. She probably already picked up on the feeling that Acro was hiding something. I doubt Gumshoe would’ve needed much to convince her.

And as for the next, thank god no one’s been killed. It would be a shame to have murder ruin to festivities.

We’re so close to the end of Turnabout Big Top. We have proven the means and the opportunity for our primary suspect, Acro, to commit the crime. All we need now is to pin down his motivation.

And there we have it: Our motive has been established. It was, in fact, as someone in my chat put it, “a comedy of errors” that led to the deepest tragedy. As is often the case in murder mystery fiction, misinterpretations and miscommunications lead to irrevocable consequences.

I’ve seen objections to the way Acro titled his note “To The Murderer” and not “To Regina”, chiefly because as someone who has lived with Regina and the other circus performers for most of his life, he should know that she would probably think it wasn’t her the note was referring to.

I don’t disagree that if he was a logical actor if the real world, that point would have merit. However, as a fictional entity in a murder mystery, this is an excellent story beat. It gives us something to mull over as we investigate the crime and his motive for committing it. Additionally, the argument assumes he is acting rationally, when he is about to murder someone in cold blood that he knew wasn’t hostile or threatening when talking would’ve easily solved this problem. Merely resorting to murder in this situation with such low stakes implies extremely irrational thinking, something Acro would no doubt agree with since he later regrets his decisions.

While we’ve spent far longer on Turnabout Big Top than I ever intended to, I don’t think it’s as bad a case as people make it out to be. Next time, we’ll truly wrap it up with decisive evidence, and move on to the final case of Justice For All.

With our foundation, we have all we need to build our case and send Acro tumbling down to Earth.

As improbable as it seems, we have now established a viable opportunity and means by which Acro could have killed the Ringmaster. Only one thing needs to be established before we can close our case: Motive.

Next time, motive is exactly what we intend to explore before we put an end to Turnabout Big Top and move on to the finale of Justice For All.

The last day of trial for Turnabout Big Top is almost upon us. The tent pole witness is about to take the stand, but we’ll make sure it’s not an escape act.

Even if we know Acro is the true culprit, we still need to prove both how and why he would do so. But before we can get into that, we need to establish a bit of ground work, and that’s exactly what was done just now.

With that foundation set, we can finally start to build our case next time!

Our investigation continues, but first we should take a moment to speak with Prosecutor von Karma to hear when she has to say about her “revenge”.

It is astounding just how badly Rise From the Ashes messes with the canon and timeline of this series, but specifically Justice For All. We’ve already discussed it at length, but the idea that Edgeworth *could* commit suicide after working to uncover severe corruption at the very heart of the police department and setting up his future career as a prosecutor is absurd, to the highest degree.

Having said that, I like the dimensionality this conversation adds to Franziska’s character. Rather than horrifically paraphrase someone else’s work, I will refer you to Wendy Rocket’s video on the prodigal prosecutor and its segment on this very conversation. She does a great job discussing how Franziska must feel having Miles Edgeworth, a man she treats like a brother, disappear without a trace after leaving a suicide note. Honestly, though it veers a bit too much into fan-fiction territory for my liking, her entire video essay and the one regarding Manfred von Karma is well worth a watch.

As for us, we have a trial we’re almost ready for. We just need a few more details.

With a dummy and a clown for witnesses, it’s no wonder that the trial was a joke, but we still managed to heckle our way out of it for another day of investigations. We just need to explain the… everything with Turnabout Big Top.

When looking for criticisms regarding Turnabout Big Top, one of the major issues that was brought up time and again was that Acro isn’t introduced until this act (and we won’t even see him until our next episode in 6-2). In a traditional whodunnit structure, one of the cardinal rules is that all of the suspects for the crime need to be introduced within roughly the first third of the mystery. This gives the audience a framework they can use when thinking about the clues being gathered over the course of the mystery.

Now that we’re in the last stages of Turnabout Big Top, and we’re only just being introduced to Acro now (even if he’s been mentioned in passing before), it would be unfair to expect the audience to reasonably peg him as the murder during the initial investigation.

Even in a story like this, where the Why and How are just as important as the Who, I would still say this is a problem because without knowing about Acro, we can’t even guess how or why he would commit a crime like this. The game needs to spend most of this second Investigation segment feeding us all of these relevant details because it couldn’t in the first. It doesn’t invalidate the initial setup, because the information established in the first half of the case comes into play with the resolution. But in a series that’s otherwise so careful about seeding details ahead of time so that they can have impactful payoffs, it’s a noticeable oversight.

The clown has Moe-sied over to the witness stand, and he’s clearly up to some funny business. Unfortunately for us, the judge is not amused, and neither is the prosecutor.

Let’s just hope we can get through this without feeling the whip.

Someone in the dev team clearly caught onto the fact that the dominant strategy is to aggressively press every statement until the objection is obvious, because I can’t think of any other reason to impose a penalty for pressing in a way that compels the clown to tell a tasteless joke. I can’t say I’m fond of it, but I understand why they made the attempt. Still, this is probably not the right context to apply that mechanic.

Oh well. At least the cross-examination is over. Now, we’re off to the next stage of our investigation.