[T][CE] Turnabout Retribution ☆

[Tilemaxosbra]

It's been a few years since I've played anything from here, but I wanted to say I'm very impressed by this as well. I did have to use a walkthrough liberally as I'm not quite smart enough to figure out everything here. This isn't much of a review and more of some general thoughts for the whole thing and some of the games in the series. There be spoilers for whoever is that far ahead in the thread.

Spoiler : More detailed thoughts/rambling :

I'll start by saying I'm not the biggest fan of Apollo Justice as a game for a variety of reasons, one of them being that Kristoph was kind of undercooked when it came to him as a character. I always thought of the guy as a shoddier version of Manfred without making him any deeper than he could possibly be. I mention this because that unintentionally creates a bit of a treasure trove for people to fill in the blanks as to what the guy is like deep down. Having Kristoph being this almost deranged, agitated loser was really amusing to see for that reason, lmao.

I can also see why you decided to make him and Phoenix be weirdly similar to each other, biggest difference being that Kristoph pretty much never shows people that he is on the verge of having a number 2. Not that Phoenix really shows that now himself, but I digress.

Speaking of, I love how you did Phoenix in this. Him being this epic sans undertale kinnie and not much else in Apollo Justice always rubbed me the wrong way. The idea of him actually thinking that Kristoph believed in him fits very well with how he usually is, especially when he was offering emotional support to the guy here. The part of him that goes "It's only natural for living creatures to fight to protect their own lives. But what makes us human is that we fight for others." is the part of him I always loved to see the most, especially in the more emotional moments. I think you nailed that on its head without veering into other directions too much. "Make a miracle happen." has no right to be as raw as it is.

I admit for a good chunk of the case I thought its ultimate conclusion would be to create a personal hell for Kristoph to go through, something specifically designed by The Devil just for the sole purpose of making him suffer, without him really being able to "win". A theory me and my friend had was that every character was specifically designed and placed to annoy Kristoph as much as possible and make this the worst god damn case of his life. I mention "ultimate conclusion" because I genuinely thought he would not really "win", at least in one of the routes.

That being said I'm glad for the direction this actually *did* take. You could have easily have this go full Bible Hell mode and I'd probably eat it up like the slime that I am, but this worked wonders too. I did not expect Larry of all people to be the culprit, and I was really curious as to why he would even do this to begin with. I honest to god thought that Libby was gonna be the culprit and she just came up with the whole crime on the spot because she's Satan and not really good at making mysteries. While one could argue that Larry is... not the brightest, I can accept that he more or less just mimicked what happened in the other cases his friends did, and just pulled the good old "make this crime really complicated for no reason" card that a lot of other AA cases do.

Speaking of like some others have said, the vending machine twist was absolutely hysterical to witness. It walks the fine line between "who the hell would even do something this stupid" and "this is absolutely on-brand for this series". NOT TO MENTION THAT IT'S KRISTOPH OF ALL PEOPLE COMING UP WITH IT, LIKE, WOW BUDDY YOU REALLY GOT ABSOLUTELY NO GOOD OPTIONS HERE HUH.

On that note, while this isn't fanart, I wanted to share with you an image my friend made in regards to the vending machine thing. I hope your enjoy it.

Spoiler : Big boy of an image :

What else, what else... Oh yeah, the music choices weren't anything that really bothered me or wowed me, aside from them being a bit bombastic. I do appreciate wanting the trial to feel like a race against time, lest Kristoph's soul be taken by Old Scratch. The only real issue I had with the case (aside from the vending machine twist being a bit obtuse to figure out) is that I don't really believe Edgeworth or whatever wouldn't have helped Phoenix out over the past 7 years. It goes unmentioned in Apollo Justice, sure, but I always saw that moreso as the game wanting to feel like a reboot/new era instead of relying on old faces.

and then it relied on old faces by having phoenix be a thing again

oops!

And yeah I guess there's the idea that if this didn't happen with Kristoph then Larry would have gotten away with murder, but it's not like this is an official product by Capcom or whatever, just fanfiction at the end of it lol. The above point in general is more of a nitpick than a huge issue, anyway.

As for logic problems, I'm not sure if I'm entirely the best person to give criticism on that, as I did liberal use of a walkthrough whilst playing this. I can say there weren't really any moments that felt particularly BS. The whole idea of writing mystery fiction always felt like a huge undertaking to me, so I must commend whoever successfully manages to do something like that. Much less something that is really complicated and crazy lol.

I very much enjoyed this, overall. It felt nice to play an AAO case again, a good one at that too. Cheers!

[The Fury Wraith]

It's been a few years since I've played anything from here, but I wanted to say I'm very impressed by this as well. I did have to use a walkthrough liberally as I'm not quite smart enough to figure out everything here. This isn't much of a review and more of some general thoughts for the whole thing and some of the games in the series. There be spoilers for whoever is that far ahead in the thread.

Thank you for playing and the detailed reply! I put some responses to it in red.

Spoiler : More detailed thoughts/rambling :

I'll start by saying I'm not the biggest fan of Apollo Justice as a game for a variety of reasons, one of them being that Kristoph was kind of undercooked when it came to him as a character. I always thought of the guy as a shoddier version of Manfred without making him any deeper than he could possibly be. I mention this because that unintentionally creates a bit of a treasure trove for people to fill in the blanks as to what the guy is like deep down. Having Kristoph being this almost deranged, agitated loser was really amusing to see for that reason, lmao.

I agree. Kristoph's character in AA4 went a bit too unexplored despite being rather interesting, which was a good opportunity to explore in a case, I found. Very early on, before I thought up this case's premise (and it was just the mystery idea), I actually just intended to have Apollo as the main character and things were a lot more generic/by the numbers. But then later on, I got the idea to use Kristoph when I was randomly contemplating a scenario where Kristoph would get the death penalty and ending up in hell. There aren't many cases out there where you play Kristoph to my knowledge, so that also added to the decision.

I can also see why you decided to make him and Phoenix be weirdly similar to each other, biggest difference being that Kristoph pretty much never shows people that he is on the verge of having a number 2. Not that Phoenix really shows that now himself, but I digress.

Yeah, I liked to play around with the idea that both Kristoph and Phoenix are ultimately very similar people with only a few stark differences being the reason they appear so different at first glance. Those differences mainly being Kristoph's low trust in others vs. Phoenix's high trust in others, their approaches when it comes to winning a case, and Kristoph very much caring about his appearances to others (to hide his true nature) whereas Phoenix does not.

Speaking of, I love how you did Phoenix in this. Him being this epic sans undertale kinnie and not much else in Apollo Justice always rubbed me the wrong way. The idea of him actually thinking that Kristoph believed in him fits very well with how he usually is, especially when he was offering emotional support to the guy here. The part of him that goes "It's only natural for living creatures to fight to protect their own lives. But what makes us human is that we fight for others." is the part of him I always loved to see the most, especially in the more emotional moments. I think you nailed that on its head without veering into other directions too much. "Make a miracle happen." has no right to be as raw as it is.

Thank you! All the character stuff in this case only started out as a footnote, come to think of it. (At first I mostly only focused on the mystery and the premise.) But it kinda came out naturally by consistently considering how these characters would act in the situations I put them in. (Which I mostly tried to base on what we know from the canon games.) The idea of Phoenix actually thinking Kristoph believed in him, and Kristoph's own interpretation on that in return, actually came from a few small lines from case 4-4, when Phoenix is talking to Kristoph in his cell. They're a bit left up to interpretation as to how much Phoenix is just saying it to get info out of Gavin, but some of the lines sound like Phoenix genuinely considered Kristoph a friend before the murder of Zak Gramarye cemented what kind of person Kristoph truly was. I kinda ended up expanding on those lines for the characterization a bit.

I admit for a good chunk of the case I thought its ultimate conclusion would be to create a personal hell for Kristoph to go through, something specifically designed by The Devil just for the sole purpose of making him suffer, without him really being able to "win". A theory me and my friend had was that every character was specifically designed and placed to annoy Kristoph as much as possible and make this the worst god damn case of his life. I mention "ultimate conclusion" because I genuinely thought he would not really "win", at least in one of the routes.

It's funny you mention this, since in an earlier version that's exactly what I planned to do. The ending would've been a bit more ambiguous where it was hinted that Kristoph was really dead all along and the events of this case which he went through was really just his punishment in hell fabricated by The Devil. (In other words, there was actually no time travel or Kristoph ever leaving hell in reality.) I ended up removing that aspect because I felt it wouldn't add too much and that some people might consider it a bit of a cop out, even if it was only an amiguous interpretation. I also considered making one of the endings (Ending B/Revenge Route, to be exact) one where Kristoph would fail The Devil's game and get send to hell, but I figured it would've been less interesting than also making him win. For starters, it would really just go exactly as one would expect. But more importantly, I think the choice between choosing to betray Phoenix or not is more meaningful when you'd also win by betraying him. That way, it's more a choice that reflects on the player as a person a tiny bit. (Even though most players would probably just try both endings anyway to see all the content, making it mostly moot, but there have been a few people who only decided to play for a single ending.) It's easy to go for the old ''Be good, you win. Be evil, you lose.'' approach, but then it doesn't really become a choice between good and evil anymore. It becomes one also of winning vs. losing, which cheapens the results, imo.

That being said I'm glad for the direction this actually *did* take. You could have easily have this go full Bible Hell mode and I'd probably eat it up like the slime that I am, but this worked wonders too. I did not expect Larry of all people to be the culprit, and I was really curious as to why he would even do this to begin with. I honest to god thought that Libby was gonna be the culprit and she just came up with the whole crime on the spot because she's Satan and not really good at making mysteries. While one could argue that Larry is... not the brightest, I can accept that he more or less just mimicked what happened in the other cases his friends did, and just pulled the good old "make this crime really complicated for no reason" card that a lot of other AA cases do.

Yeah, Larry being the culprit was the idea from the very beginning, but I did have my doubts at times at how convincing I could make that happen. But like you said, I figured he know a thing or two from what he's seen Phoenix and Miles do back in the day, and a thing about Larry's character in the games that goes a bit underappreciated by fans is that he's actually pretty creative. He was capable of designing and making The Thinker, at least.

Speaking of like some others have said, the vending machine twist was absolutely hysterical to witness. It walks the fine line between "who the hell would even do something this stupid" and "this is absolutely on-brand for this series". NOT TO MENTION THAT IT'S KRISTOPH OF ALL PEOPLE COMING UP WITH IT, LIKE, WOW BUDDY YOU REALLY GOT ABSOLUTELY NO GOOD OPTIONS HERE HUH.

Aye, that sequence is probably my personal favorite moment in the case, lol. I aimed to recreate those moments in the canon games that completely blew my mind when I played them for the first time, something that sounds completely insane but also an answer that makes the most sense when all the pieces are put together.

On that note, while this isn't fanart, I wanted to share with you an image my friend made in regards to the vending machine thing. I hope your enjoy it.

Spoiler : Big boy of an image :

Thank you! I'm honored this case left a good enough impression for you and your friend to make a meme image of sorts, lol!

What else, what else... Oh yeah, the music choices weren't anything that really bothered me or wowed me, aside from them being a bit bombastic. I do appreciate wanting the trial to feel like a race against time, lest Kristoph's soul be taken by Old Scratch. The only real issue I had with the case (aside from the vending machine twist being a bit obtuse to figure out) is that I don't really believe Edgeworth or whatever wouldn't have helped Phoenix out over the past 7 years. It goes unmentioned in Apollo Justice, sure, but I always saw that moreso as the game wanting to feel like a reboot/new era instead of relying on old faces.

Yeah, I can see what you mean. The ''Edgeworth and Larry not being there for Phoenix'' point stems more from the fan reaction AA4 got back in the day, before Dual Destinies was a thing. I remember back then some people found it weird Edgeworth and Larry were nowhere to be seen or heard from in AA4 and those people thought it's weird because it made it look like Phoenix's friends didn't care about Phoenix losing his badge, not so much taking into account that they weren't in AA4 for the reboot/new era reasons. This case takes that feeling and works it into the plot a bit. As for the music, the bombastic nature of some of these tracks can definitely be a bit of a hit or miss, but I did in fact pick them to envoke that ''race against time or it's the end for you'' feeling, so I'm glad to see that's something people picked up on!

and then it relied on old faces by having phoenix be a thing again

oops!

And yeah I guess there's the idea that if this didn't happen with Kristoph then Larry would have gotten away with murder, but it's not like this is an official product by Capcom or whatever, just fanfiction at the end of it lol. The above point in general is more of a nitpick than a huge issue, anyway.

As for logic problems, I'm not sure if I'm entirely the best person to give criticism on that, as I did liberal use of a walkthrough whilst playing this. I can say there weren't really any moments that felt particularly BS. The whole idea of writing mystery fiction always felt like a huge undertaking to me, so I must commend whoever successfully manages to do something like that. Much less something that is really complicated and crazy lol.

Yeah, as it is currently, there are a few points some people might get stuck on because there's some potential to get confused at times, I think. (Planning to fix that in the near future without changing the presents you need to do, preferably, but I'll admit I've also been working on some other projects in my free time as of late.) I tried to mimic Blackrune a bit when it came to difficulty, so I thought the case was (or would) probably be something that's above average in that regard. But to my surprise, I've seen wildly different player experiences in that what one person thought was a difficult present/moment, another thought was very easy. That makes it difficult for me to determine what needs to be fine-tuned or made more fair at times. It's funny, I actually didn't try to make the case as complex as it ended up being from the start, but that's just kinda where it ended up as in order to tie up all necessary loose ends and ideas in working order. (And it still wasn't perfect by the end, lol!)

I very much enjoyed this, overall. It felt nice to play an AAO case again, a good one at that too. Cheers!

Glad to hear that. Thanks again for writing this up! Was very interesting to hear your thoughts!