Aren't they supposed to be really good?
They're actually incredible. Like, the best AA has ever been, definitely the pinnacles of the franchise. Everything about them is so good. The scripting and stories are engrossing. The story structure is flexible enough to allow for lots of slice-of-life moments to help make the setting and cast feel more like real people versus the rigid police procedural nature of the earlier games. The cases themselves are clever and have wonderful and delightful twists, even if you're intimately aware of the Sherlock Holmes stories a lot of them are based upon. The characters are colorful and delightful. The historical figures (both real and fictional) will make any history buff blush. (
Natsume Sōseki is absolutely inspired!) The game mechanics are about as involved and intricate as they've ever been, but the game is so expertly crafted that you both never feel stuck or cheated, and also never feel like you're playing something too easy and patronizing. The story itself is grand, playing with poignant and deep themes on socio-economic disparity and racial injustice that feels poignant and connected to the present. The animations and artwork are Elder God tier, and make the most out of the medium and more than fully justify the franchise's transition to 3D. The voice acting is delightful. (So glad they're keeping the original voice tracks in these ports.) And the music. Oh my god the music! Play these games with headphones on blast, because the music makes these games. Just listen to some of it, I'm ill-equipped to describe:
The game's theme song just evokes the imagery of a court argument, where you've got a Victorian orchestra arguing amongst itself accompanying by a timid Meiji imitation that's still using a Biwa or a Shamisen that wants to fit in so hard but isn't allowed to. And this discord manages to weave together in this weird way that makes its own striking harmony that just paints a wonderful mental picture. Every song helps establish the place, setting, and tone in ways that only the best media can by making the music its own character of equal importance with the rest of its cast. And that's
before you get to the music variations that occur when a shift in events happen, allowing the music to organically grow and evolve with the scenes. The "Joint Reasoning" music variations is like artwork. There are segments in the game where
Sherlock Holmes inspects a crime scene and does his deductive reasoning bit to solve a murder. But the game's MC comes in and corrects his judgment errors and realigns his reasonings so that they better reflect reality. And the music for these scenes are incredible. Because they start out quirky and fun, but then when it's your turn to fix things, the music shifts. A new layer of instruments gets put on top and it's like listening to the musical equivalent of one person going "um, actually!" and arguing with the other to create this crazy melody that's just absolutely brilliant.
I am so happy that everyone else finally gets to experience these. And because of the nature of the 3DS's base graphics, it'll look gorgeous with the res pumped up, instead of like weird vaseline smears that the original trilogy tends to look like.
Also, the series has been dormant for some time now, right? I hope that means that something new will happen, in the not-too-distant future. Would be a shame, if this series would die.
DGS2 (I suppose I should be saying GAA2 now) came out in 2017, so yeah. This is the longest stretch of time in the franchise's history without any new games being put out. The franchise has been in limbo for several years now, but in the big Capcom internal memos leak, they outlined how the recent Ace Attorney Trilogy ports on Steam/PS4/Switch did so unexpectedly well for them that they were now open to reviving things by bringing the Great Ace Attorney games out. I'm glad they're putting both games in the same package, because DGS1 ended on a cliffhanger that rubbed a lot of players the wrong way initially. (But is expertly followed up on in the sequel!) Capcom responds to money, so if enough people buy into these ports, they'll probably be eager to greenlight the production of more.
Somebody let me know when preorders go up, because I'll probably preorder several copies, lol.
This is pretty cool! I wonder if there will be iOS ports? Those were the best way to play AA5 and 6 IMO. Everything ran really nicely at super high resolution, it looked pretty dang good.
There are Android and iOS ports of both games in Japan, but the lack of announcements for NA here tells me that previous iOS/Android ports probably didn't do well enough for them to justify it just yet. That or they don't want to undercut console sales with phone ports and/or see phone ports as the thing you do once the legs for the console versions run out. If you just want super high res and smooth operations though, Steam/PS4/Switch ought to be good enough. If you just really want to play it on a tablet though, the fan translation patches exist for the Android version, as well as the 3DS one.