Spoiler : Whirlwind's and Evolina's entry. HEAVY SPOILERS IT'S YOUR OWN FAULT IF YOU OPEN THIS :
Turnabout Dilemma
Yeah, I can see where this is going with that title. At first I wasn't quite sure what to think of it. The prologue seemed nice enough but basically amounted to the same vague stuff as usual. Then we're thrown right into a trial that's starts like many other. Well, except for the sad state of the courtroom. Which is never even explained for some reason. I guess it's normal for the people in that world. Well, I'm still not sure what to think of the world seeing how the setting gets never really epxlained, but the rest of the case certianly seems like a lot of thought went into it. In short, the final line changed everything.Let's see then.
Plot:
Solid. Though nothing terribly new. I didn't find any plotholes and it's easy to follow. As I said, the setting itself is never really explained. We know punishments are harsher and immediate, but aside from that it more or less feels like a normal trial with seemingly no chance of winning because the prosecutor has never been defeated etc. The twist at the end was a surprise though. Now the title suddenly makes sense, as does some of Desmond's behaviour.
The logic made sense to me. Sure, the motive given for the defendant didn't really strike me as that convincing, but those are rarely done well anyway. The pace was... well, standard trial pace. Not wasting any time works for me.
It's a shame the whole thing had to end exactly where things seemed to take a drastic turn, but what's there is solid in its execution so far.
Characters:
To sum it up, they were... entertaining. The sprites do their part. The characters fulfill their purpose.
Though I can't say I connect anything special with the majority of them. Desmond seems to be the one interesting case. Maybe the prosecutor as well, as I'm wondering just how he ended up like that. The rest of them did their job at being funny and each one having their gimmick. Now part of this is obviously because it doesn't make sense for the witness to tell us that much about themselves instead of the crime. Well, let's see.
Desmond: As I said, the most interesting one. Most of it only happened near the end. It gets even better with that last line in this part. I mean, before that it made sense for him to care already, but sometimes it just felt like he panicked a little too much. But now his entire behaviour suddenly makes sense as a struggle about whether to confess or not. If you've done well with any character here, it's the protagonist.
Holly: Well, I like how she puts a lot of faith in Desmond, adding to his dilemma. She plays her part well as defendant/co-council, I guess.
Mona: It's always nice to see a different judge. Though at the end of the day she's still just doing what the regular judge does so far. There's not really a memorable moment with her, but she's consistently entertaining.
Stella: Certainly a good witness. The moment she comes in you just know things are about to get over-the-top and awesome somehow. And that's about all you need to know.
Phoebe: I feel there'll be more about him later. For now he's doing the intimidating prosecutor part well. Though it's not like we've never seen one of these unbeaten prosecutor that hate all attorneys.
Overall I can call them solid. Not outstandingly developed, but good for a trial-only case like this. Though Desmond was still a pleasant surprise.
Presentation:
Excellent. Well, some of it might be v6 making it all seem fresh compared to other cases, but still... we have a different courtroom look and a lot of cool graphics. I didn't find many typos so that gets a pass as well. It seemed very polished overall. I didn't find any visual glitches when I played through it at first, though I then saw some in the easter egg conversations I checked out afterwards. You forgot to hide some sprites here and there, causing co-council and judge to overlap or something. v6 seems to work differently there.
Speaking of, something's not quite right with the password system. It doesn't seem to reveal all the profiles I should have at that point. I couldn't check out all the easter eggs because they didn't give me Desmond's and Stella's profile, for example.
But aside from that, presentation is perfect. The music was also well-chosen and enhanced the atmosphere.
Gameplay:
Actually pretty good. Well, I certainly had my fun, if for unusual reasons. I don't really get why this has multiple difficulty settings. I played on hard expecting a really frustrating experience, but... I made it through the whole case receiving only one penalty. One possible explanation is that because I couldn't save, I actually thought very carefully before attempting anything. All the contradictions seem pretty clear once you see them. The co-council doesn't even seem to shut down completely. Even on hard mode she still gave me a general direction to go for. And "try to think of the simplest possibility to get out of this" was really all I needed. Even the supra present I somehow got right on the first try, though that may have been a little more luck. (I started it without really thinking of what contradiction to go for, but deciding which statements were true or false then reminded me of what might be the problem, and that turned out to be it.)
So yeah, surprisingly enough not frustrating at all, even on hard more. And that's a good thing, because getting that right felt very rewarding. But it does make me question if the different difficulty settings are really needed. I mean, you aparently even get revived (though I get that's more because of v6's lacking save feature.).
I'd rather call this very friendly gameplay thanks to the reliable and concise logic of contradictions, but we'll see how others experience it. I doubt they'll have problems with the two CEs that are pretty much just "press-to-procced".
The second one seemed weirdly placed... I mean, press all to proceed at the very end of a part instead of something challenging? It did serve a good purpose in showing Desmond's slow breakdown with each press, but I still kind of expected a challenge there. Well, it works.
So overall gameplay was good and avoided being too frustrating. I might even say it could be too easy depending on the hints on the other difficulties, but I haven't checked those out... (and I guess "easy" would actually be supposed to be easy anyway.) And while there's nothing groundbreakingly new or innovative about it, there are also no gamebreaking bugs. Approved.
Despair Relevance:
Okay, so this is interesting. You fared fairly average for most of it. The stakes for the protagonist were slightly higher (it's his daughter) and it was always emphasized how hopeless the situation is. I guess Mona might sort of qualify as the obligatory despair-char, maybe it's the prosecutor too. There's a lot of internal struggling going on in Desmond, and that final CE was especially brilliant in how he tries to stay positive while slowly losing hope after each pressed statements. The final line though... Yeah, that suddenly made this so much more theme relevant. The despair before that seemed overdone at times but now it all makes sense. There we suddenly have our impossible dilemma. I like how when I looked back to see the game over conversation things actually seemed even worse than before. So apparently in those he couldn't resolve himself to confess and has to live with it. Yeah, this case was clearly focused on having a lot of theme relevance. Can't say you messed it up. It turned out being indeed incredibly theme relevant.
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Not sure what to add. This trial does an amazing amount of things right for basically still sticking to the standard trial-only case beginning. Maybe it's v6, maybe it's the backgrounds. Or the enhanced despair. It's probably a mix of all that plus the pretty much perfect presentation. I really want part 2 because that HAS to be where all the even more amazing stuff happens. Because dat ending.