Game:

The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles (2021)

Category:

Vlog

Duration: 3:32:59

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Originally recorded: June 13, 2022
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Hoo boy. This session did not go as planned whatsoever. Admittedly, trying to stick to the concept of finishing two "segments" per recording means that I'll probably easily hit the three-hour mark for the entirety of this game... but it leaves very little wiggle room for mistakes. And believe me, my hubris has shown itself once again in full force with this one. I'm just glad I never really pared down on my expectations for how long I expected this game to take me in the first place. I can only imagine just how much worse things could've gotten if my ego had gotten involved.

Last time, I mentioned that when it comes to the Ace Attorney games, I have a whole host of bad habits... and had alluded to the fact that my worst habit had yet to surface. Spoiler alert: that changed this time around. Allow me to introduce you to the exact reason why I've always been sort of reluctant to play Ace Attorney games under anything even resembling scrutiny. Basically, when it comes to hitting a dead end with progressing through trials, there are generally two avenues of thought. Some people simply try to reason through what potential piece of evidence could lead to the expected outcome by way of a convoluted thought process. Others simply resort to a walkthrough. But your humble narrator always opts for a third option: throw everything I possibly can at the wall and hope something sticks, dwindling health bar be damned! And that habit of mine came out in full force tonight, let me tell ya. I think what ticks me off the most about it is when I present a piece of evidence to a statement, it ends up being wrong, but then whenever I do find the correct piece of evidence to progress through the story... the piece of evidence also shows up as a part of the explanation. Seriously, that's probably my biggest pet peeve when it comes to the entire AA series, to the point where I used to want to throttle the developers for what I perceived as "playing a little trick on me". I don't get quite as hot-blooded about it as I used to, but it still irks me.

But frankly, if that were the worst thing that happened to me this time, it would've been fine. As I mentioned earlier, I had only recently gotten back into the AA series by way of the most recent release: The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles. In terms of quality of life upgrades, I'd have to say that it's the best AA game of all-time. But the thing is, I got a little too complacent when it came to that particular game. You see, upon running out of health, the game gives you the option to continue right where you met your end in court. What I forgot in the process of playing AAI2 is that this functionality wasn't present in the older games in the series, particularly those from the DS era... which is exactly where GK2 originated. So, as I was approaching the final climax of Chapter 2, I made one more wrong move, ran out of health... and was promptly booted back to the title screen, with the option to start from the beginning of the segment I had just reached. See, I hadn't been saving mid-game... so I didn't have any more recent saves to recover to. And just given how late it was at the time, I decided that it simply wasn't worth trying again that night and simply resigned myself to repeating nearly the entire segment next time. I just hope the game remembers that I looked through all of that dialogue before and lets me skip through it. But I guess I'm prepared if it isn't.

While I'm the son of an optimist, I've always had more of a dour view on life in general. Still, in my more recent years, I've tried my best to look on the bright side of things, despite my proclivity towards finding the cloud in every silver lining. Still, I guess the best thing I can say about this outcome is that at least it happened on the second case and not on what would most likely be an even longer case down the line. I'll just have to remember the old credo "save early, save often" from here on out. The thing is, this was the second time in as many days when not saving proved catastrophic for me. The only difference is that I could recover far more easily the first time around. The consequences this time were substantially more dire. A lesser man might have given up on the whole thing after a setback like this... but considering the fact that it was a catastrophe of my own creation, I'm still inclined to press onward. Hopefully, I'll be able to wrap up Chapter 2 next time... and even get started on the third one as well. If my recollection of the segment breakdowns is correct, this may actually prove beneficial in the long run. But I suppose only time will tell.

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