[PG]Matt Engarde And The Unknown Tragedy

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TheSenate27
Posts: 8
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[PG]Matt Engarde And The Unknown Tragedy

Post by TheSenate27 »

After being Imprisoned, Matt Engarde's life seemed predestined.
Until, of course, this.
http://www.aaonline.fr/player.php?trial_id=103023
Hope you all enjoy!
Please let me know what you thought and if there are any bugs or errors.
Oh, and spoilers for, Jfa, T&T and AJ.
Minor Update:
Spoiler : :
Just an update, due to the fact that there's already a Kristoph Gavin Ace Attorney series, I've changed the next instsallment's name to "Kristoph Gavin: Election of Objections"
Last edited by TheSenate27 on Tue Jun 12, 2018 5:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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risefromtheashes
Posts: 366
Joined: Wed Apr 04, 2018 2:33 am
Spoken languages: English, Russian, Armenian, Spanish

Re: [PG]Matt Engarde And The Unknown Tragedy

Post by risefromtheashes »

I'm gonna leave a quick review here. (Spoiler alert, obviously.)
Spoiler : Very Blunt Review :
I'm... sort of lost for words, to be honest. And not in a good way.

I'll be honest, I did like the premise. At first, I had an alright impression - a few grammar/spelling errors here and there, but I thought it was pretty cool.
But the game was really short and rushed - there wasn't a lot of dialogue, and what dialogue there was was also rushed. There was a distinct lack of fluff text, and the fourth wall breaks were... out of nowhere, to be honest. (Seriously, there were a LOT of typos and grammar errors. A lot.)

The plot was pretty lackluster too. Everything was very confusing, and I didn't understand what was going on 95% of the time. All I understood was "everyone's going to die, Moon Spear, Matt uses a Magatama, Moon Spear, evil warden, Moon Spear, Morgan Fey randomness, Moon Spear, stupid televised game, Moon Spear, Kristoph basically kills himself, weird TV-show-style resolution". I understood that the Moon Spear is used to split "Shades"/alter-egos from their hosts, but how the hell would that work? See, 1. Lambert would be pretty stupid to think that he could build up enough Shades to rule the world or whatever (it's not like 80% of the world has multiple personalities), and 2. How would the splitting work? Would the personalities just be incorporeal souls or something, like in Undertale, or would the split create a new body? It's all really confusing.

The other thing about the plot is that there were so many unanswered questions. 1. What does the ring even do? 2. Why would Gavin need to destroy his mind, however that would work. 3. What did half of the characters even do? 4. How would the "kill everyone who calls" thing work? 5. What kind of damn coincidence does there have to be for Redd White, Godot, Kristoph Gavin, Matt Engarde, Morgan Fey, and Iris Hawthorne to be in the same prison in the same sector, and for White to even be alive at this point? I'd assume he's been executed by the time Apollo Justice rolls around.

I also had a distinct problem with the lack of characterization for everyone. Every character just seemed generic. No one had any of their previous quirks from their own games applied, and they were all very bland. Lots of the dialogue just went as if the same person was speaking to themself in different voices.
My last problem is with the gameplay. There were a lot of weird frames that would wait about 5 seconds before progressing with the text, which honestly really bothered me. And while I definitely think it was clever to implement puzzles into an AA game, I think it could've been executed a lot better. 1. Think of your own puzzles and don't just copy them from the Professor Layton series. It's seriously not that hard to think of an easy, original puzzle, especially if you have so many as reference. 2. If you're going to use actual Psyche-Locks but also use the Psyche-Lock animation as a way of demonstrating how many puzzles the player has solved, you need to use a different animation or at least recolor the Psyche-Locks for the puzzle application. Hell, you could also do something like draw text on the screen and edit it with MS Paint. Blackrune does that in several of his trials for the intros and such, but it could be done in this scenario as well.

Overall, I didn't like the case much, but I still think that a lot of editing and working on the gameplay can turn this into a pretty decent fancase.
My unofficial-reviewer score: 3.5/10
Feel free to leave a response with your words in red or something. I'm open to getting answers for the questions I may have misunderstood.
The Mindcastle System
(Don't know what a system is? Play 6-4, and take a look here.)
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OUR CASES:
- Athena Cykes ~ Locks on the Heart (synopsis)
- May Your Memory Be a Blessing
- A Little Piece of Healing
- The Killer Turnabout (~70% complete!)
- I guess we made the Looking Back case comp ceremony with Super legenda, but that's not an actual case

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Check out our music & art thread here!
TheSenate27
Posts: 8
Joined: Mon Apr 16, 2018 6:47 pm
Gender: Male
Spoken languages: English

Re: [PG]Matt Engarde And The Unknown Tragedy

Post by TheSenate27 »

Hi, thanks for taking the time to review. As it's only my second trial, I appreciate any and all feedback I get. Most things you asked about were things I have answers to, however weren't in the game due to my lack of fleshing out, which you picked up on.
Spoiler : :
Firstly, Shades. Apologies it wasn't made clear, but everyone on Earth has a Shade. Secondly, Iris' Ring/pendant allows people without spirit powers to access those powers they lack. With Kristoph, the reason he wanted to destroy his mind was because it was all but destroyed by Lambert, and he couldn't take it any more.
Thank you again for reviewing, and for your optimistic outlook on the future of my Ace Attorney Canon. If there's any other questions you have, please let me know.
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