Pokemon Black/White Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 12/18/2025)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Pokémon Black/White

Developer: Game Freak

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): JRPG

Platforms: DS

Release Date: September 18, 2010

“Hey, did you hear that there’s gonna be a new Pokémon game coming out soon?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you gonna get it?”

“...Nah”

That was a line of conversation that occurred between a friend and I during our freshman year of high school in early 2011, right before the North American release of Pokémon Black & White. As you can probably tell from the curt answers to his casual inquiries, I did not give half of one fuck about Pokemon’s fifth generational mainline entry. No, it wasn’t solely because retaining an interest in Pokémon during my adolescence would’ve severely deepened any social ostracization I might have been facing, but because I genuinely couldn’t have cared less about the franchise I once loved. Once that key hormonal shift occurred, horror films, heavy metal, and the swaying hips of my female classmates were my primary interests, while Nintendo kept trucking along with its money-making monster catcher. After my pituitary gland had calmed down and I was no longer situated in a stressful social environment, Pokémon once again had relevance in my life after experiencing a revitalized interest in gaming during college. Out of the three Pokémon generations (that existed circa 2014) that I had glossed over, the fifth one in particular piqued my interest during this renaissance period. Somehow, several iterations onward and a decade after Pokemania was deader than disco, apparently, Pokémon’s quality had managed not to peak. In fact, Pokémon’s fifth-generation entries, existing on opposite ends of the color spectrum, were rumored to be the series’ finest outing. This praise might have been since the Pokémon fanbase had been halved since the franchise's popularity peak, leaving the staunch enthusiasts and fresh-faced children as the sources of this laudation. Still, I’m practically one degree away from a “gen-wunner” who abandoned the series after it had gone stale in the greater pop culture zeitgeist while also entering double-digit ages, and I have to admit that the hype surrounding Pokémon Black/White is perfectly justified.

Hypothetically, if Pokémon Black/White had been released in the earlyish 2000s, say, as the franchise's third generational representative when I was still interested in the series, my fanaticism would’ve received a fatal blow, making me renounce the franchise forevermore. I was greatly disappointed when Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire chose a modest selection of pokemon from previous generations to transfer over to Hoenn’s subtropical chain of islands, but I imagine that Black/White’s decision to wipe the slate completely clean and only offer the 156 pokemon expressly created for the newest title would’ve made me inconsolably hysterical. Fortunately, the wisdom that comes with adulthood allows me to appreciate Game Freak’s integrity and its conviction to preserve the allure of its series with distinctiveness. Still, the Pokemon Black/White frontrunners in question display a few telltale signs of creativity fatigue, if their designs and conceptual inspirations are any indication.

This plague of unsavory aspects amongst this vast crop of creatures is prevalent throughout, but I’ll begin my bagging on them with the three that welcome the player’s adventure: the new trio of starter pokemon. As per the customs of the pokelab that prepares amateur trainers with their first pokemon, the contrasting elemental variances of grass, fire, and water remain as the prime choices for the player to consider. Personally, I say obscure your sights, point your finger, and catch a tiger by its toe, because there isn’t a single one out of the pack that stands out as the exemplary pick. Sure, Oshawott attempts to continue the streak of water-type supremacy that Mudkip and Piplup established, as I’m sure the developers were saving an adorable otter for a rainy day to be propped up in the starting selection and occupy that special spot in the player’s hearts, thus squelching the competition. Admittedly, Oshawott’s cuteness cannot be maintained as the player accrues experience with it, but its final form, Samurott, is a shocking, unsightly monstrosity that looks like the result of a horrific mutation rather than a natural metamorphosis. Not only does the addition of two hind legs contradict the concept of evolution, but the boring, bog-standard single-typing from its Oshawott origins persists. The grass-type Snivy also indicates that Game Freak should’ve boned up on Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, for the long-snouted leafy reptile sheds its limbs and becomes a fully-fledged serpent when it becomes Serperior. The only physical characteristic it keeps well into maturation is that smug, self-satisfied grin on its face. Given that Serperior is also a single-type third form like its blue, wet cohort, what makes it so confident that the professor won’t end up tossing it in the trash bin where many other grass starters end up? Tepig’s evolved forms of Pignite and Emboar are the only ones that feature dual typing, but that additional elemental attribute is ironically what makes this spicy swine the most offensive of them all. Would you like to wager a guess which typing is tacked onto the evolved incarnations of Tepig? Correctamundo: Pignite and Emboar are yet another fucking fire/fighting combination that Combusken and Blaziken debuted. If Monferno/Infernape were like compromising with Pepsi, then Black/White’s insanely derivative fire duo is like being offered RC Cola. If this is a restaurant’s only cola option, run like Hell, for there are rats in the kitchen and they’re trying to poison you. Never before has picking a starter pokemon evoked the displeasure of voting for a political party candidate during an election, choosing based on which is the least objectionable.

Considering that the number of new pokemon in Black/White exceeds that of any previous Pokemon generation, surely at least a handful of them aren’t wretch-worthy wastes of cartridge space. You’d be correct, but the exceptional ones are few and far between in this regional Pokedex. I suppose I should give my commendations to the choice cuts before I begin my encompassing rant. Immediately, I admire the plethora of commonly caught pokemon who evolve twice and can therefore retain their prized position in the player’s posse as the game’s challenges grow steeper. Stoutland, for example, is the third form of Lillipup, the Black/White equivalent of a Rattata or Sentret for its normal typing and early availability. Unlike the previous two mentioned, this scruffy hound is formidable enough to be a contender for challenging the Elite Four instead of simply being relegated to the job of disposing of obstructions found on the field. I’m sure Timburr’s strength matches that of the classic fighting family of Machop, considering the rectangular object they hold gets heavier and heavier as they evolve. Seismitoad may be a combination of Poliwag’s conceptual evolution and Wooper’s water/ground elemental typing in a far uglier package, but who am I to judge a book by its cover when catching and training Tympole is so convenient? Scolipede is swift and scary enough to bolster the sour reputation of bug-poison pokemon, and the red and black Krookodile looks as terrifyingly vicious as Sharpedo with the bipedal physical stature of a pseudo-legendary pokemon. By the way, the earliest form of every single second evolution pokemon I’ve mentioned is present in the wild grasses before the fourth gym leader, so the player’s first few pokemon pals could certainly be in consideration for the task of tackling the Elite Four. For those who only evolve once or haven’t the capacity for drastic transformative growth at all, there are still plenty of standout picks. I, for one, adore Drilbur, whose innate digging habits as a mole are enhanced when its evolved form, Excadrill, sprouts a metallic drill in its evolution to wade through the earth with the grace of an Olympic swimmer. It’s a good thing that karate black belts, Throh and Sawk, are separated as respective version exclusives because they’d receive constant comparisons to Sesame Street’s iconic platonic life partners if shown together. Scrafty showcases so much spunk with its baggy pants and mohawk combination; the high-voltage spider Galvantula is quite fetching with its yellow glow; Cubchoo and Beartic are Teddiursa and Ursaring if you put them in a freezer for a few hours; phantom stone giant Golurk is the Pokémonification of the “Der Golem” monster of Yiddish folklore, etc. In listing all of the new pokemon, I find myself surprised that I’m in a position where I have to limit the selections I mention for brevity’s sake. Sort of speaks to the overall quality of Black/White’s extensive roster, doesn’t it?

Still, the last pokemon mentioned in the previous paragraph does admittedly veer towards the prevalent issue that plagues as many pokemon in Black/White’s roster in equal number to the exemplary ones. To preface my point of contention, I need to ask a question: how many of you are familiar with The Brave Little Toaster? In this 1987 animated film, a group of sentient, commonplace household appliances embark on a quest to find their human child who has disappeared, worrying that this young boy has forsaken them because he hasn’t been showing them the attention that he formerly did. On a thematic level, this film richly conveys obsolescence, abandonment, and the atrophying of a long-term relationship. However, the prevailing, nagging aspect surrounding these heavy themes and what ultimately sullies them stems from this issue: why and how the hell would a child feel any sort of profound attachment towards household appliances, and ones that he wouldn’t be interested in interacting with like a vacuum cleaner anyway? No wonder Toy Story persisted as the household name for animated films involving cognizant objects, for toys are far more sensible for a child to harbor a sentimental connection towards. Pets are also non-human companions that a kid could sensibly form a bond with, which is a factor in Pokémon’s widespread success. This is why when pokemon start resembling inanimate objects and commodities like a candle (Litwick), a snowflake (Cryogonal), and a fucking double-scooped ice cream cone (Vanilluxe. Seriously, what the good goddamn have you been smoking, Game Freak?), it’s difficult to perceive them as companions. One could argue that the spirit inside Cofagrigus is the focal point of that pokemon’s essence, but why then does its name allude to the ceremonial encasement and not the kooky limbs protruding from it? Klink is just a twin set of gears with googly eyes attached, and the fact that more metallic pieces are simply added to it per evolutionary stage is so half-assed that it’s hilarious. One could also argue that Trubbish and Garbodor are repurposed variations of Grimer and Muk’s conceptual theme: toxic waste build-up becomes so unmanageable that it literally becomes a monster. However, the vacant, tortured look of these garbage (literally) pokemon piles is far more pathetic than Muk’s menace, in which they express that their existence is a stifling ordeal they want extinguished immediately. Speaking of Grimer and Muk, they, along with pokemon like Voltorb and Unown, could present the argument that non-humanoid or non-animaloid pokemon have had a presence in the Pokedex since the series’ glory days, and I should cut their successors some slack. Still, there was purpose and intent behind the inanimate natures of these few pokemon, an item capsule mimic to dupe unsuspecting players and the alphabet of a cryptic, archaic language that adds mystique to the ancient ruins of Johto, respectively. Without any applicable outlying context, it gives off the disillusioning impression that the developers are now compelled to tap into crafting creatures around things that they once swore to use sparingly when they still had that creative spark and integrity.

Maybe the reason why Black/White doesn’t carry over any of the previous Pokémon games is that the title’s setting is so far removed from the rest of the Pokémon world. Apparently, the remaining regions of Japan weren’t interesting enough to be reimagined into a Pokémon-centric society, so the developers decided to study abroad for international inspiration. I’d be intrigued initially just by that prospect alone, but my attention is especially piqued because Unova is Game Freak’s depiction of my home country: the United States of America. Pretend that the instrumental rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” started playing just now. Given that I should be well-versed in my homeland’s culture and iconography, it’ll be amusing to see how a foreign (to me) team illustrates it with the creative liberties they are allowed. I trusted that Japan shared a respect and appreciation for the USA’s culture as we tend to mutually do with theirs, so there are no depictions of mass obesity, religious and/or nationalistic fundamentalism, gun-toting ignoramuses, or any other stereotypical caricatures running rampant throughout Unova. Instead, Game Freak seems to hone in on the geographical/cultural diversity and architectural modernity that is pervasive across the collective of fifty states. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that there is a desert located in Unova’s southwestern section, as the blistering sandstorms could evoke the arid, unpopulated sections of Arizona or New Mexico. (American) Football, or at least the ubiquity of professional sports, is a prominent cultural force, and amusement parks are cultural centerpieces unseen in any urban Pokémon environment beforehand. Nacrene City is an artistically inclined city with a museum as its cultural piece de resistance, like Philadelphia or my beloved Baltimore. The rain pours on Mistralton City as harshly as a city like Seattle, and Driftveil is a rough-and-tumble port town like Houston. Although I might just be making that comparison because the city’s gym leader, Clay, is the spitting image of a grizzled Texan man, complete with an oversized cowboy hat. Castelia City is unmistakably Unova’s NYC, a winding urban sprawl where skyscrapers eclipse the view of anything in one’s peripheral vision. Its multiple pathways are frankly byzantine, with so many people congesting the streets that the player automatically fills in the blanks of a cacophonous city soundscape even if the game doesn’t outright provide it. Beyond the overwhelming spectacle of this area’s colossal, all-encompassing architecture, what is also equally impressive is the bridge the player travels on en route to Castelia. The three-dimensional angles used to display the suspended mass of architectural support really accentuate the sheer size of it, causing me genuine awe-stricken speechlessness like I was an immigrant docking at bay on Ellis Island. I couldn’t believe that this was rendered on the same handheld system as Diamond/Pearl, and the scene really dawned on me of how far the series has come since every building was but a pixelated blip on a top-down screen. It is absolutely magical.

Flaunting the highest, unprecedented graphical flair seen in a Pokémon title is certainly impressive, but Black/White also showcases a treasure trove of new features and quality-of-life enhancements in addition to its marvelous presentation. Immediately upon pressing Start, the game will ask the player if they’d like to access the “C-Gear,” which is an all-purpose device that rearranges the bottom half of the handheld’s screen to include easy access to all things connected to the World Wide Web. Since I’m strictly a lone wolf in all of my Pokémon endeavors, I always opted to silence this gadget even if I admired its niftiness. However, one thing I couldn’t possibly avoid was the weather, specifically the temperature and other environmental conditions that correlate with the four seasons. Besides the subtle aesthetic changes that occur, the time of year also shuffles the likelihood of specific pokemon appearing in the wild (and the appearance of the darling deer pokemon, Deerling) and the triggering of various events. While adding a seasonal spice to the foregrounds provides a deeper layer of immersion to the player’s journey, what puzzles me is that each season is cycled every month and resets every fourth month (ie., the pattern of January, May, September being “Spring,” while February, June, October being “Summer” and so forth). What is this bullshit, the metric system? The Pokecenters have converged with the Pokemarts for a one-stop shop convenience of full healing and preparing for mobile healing in increments on the road. A gym’s “host” (the guy who greets the player at the entrance) will grant the player a preliminary “fresh water” with the same healing properties as a “super potion.” Most importantly, the game’s RPG action is silky smooth like a dream, ironically so considering how Diamond/Pearl ran like a lung with emphysema on the same system. High performance power, experimentation, AND tons of streamlined amenities? Black/White is really treating the players to the life of luxury.

Still, despite its overall agreeability, Black/White still manages to be one of the more challenging titles in the Pokemon series. In saying that, I'm happy to report that the steeper duels of Black/White stem from meatier turn-based gameplay instead of the hiccups and poor decisions of Diamond/Pearl. Elemental properties are obviously still factored into the result of a victorious battle, but Black/White pauses that conceit for a brief moment during the earlier duration of the adventure. Depending on which starter pokemon the player chose, the corresponding gym leader of the trio will contrast their (poison) pick with their elemental weakness in the form of the simian siblings (Pansage, Pansear, Panpour). The following gym fight with Lenora in Nacrene City evokes particularly painful memories of being bulldozed by Whitney’s Miltank as a small child traveling throughout Johto, for the fighting type that I desperately needed to penetrate her Herdier and Watchog offenses was just enough out of reach to put me in a state of despair. When I could eventually diversify my team to cover all of the necessary offensive bases, my opponent’s pokemon tended to buff themselves with stat increases and inflict debilitations that still proved to be quite as damning as blunt, direct offensive force. Admittedly, this strategy has always been employable, but the methodical, subtle, and sneaky approach seems to be far more fashionable in Unova. Factor in that tons of new attacks, status manipulators, and secondary physical abilities are floating around in the mix with an entirely unfamiliar smorgasbord of pokemon, and Black/White becomes dangerously less and less predictable as the game progresses. However, in another instance of sweet irony, somehow, Unova’s Elite Four proved to be rather unremarkable. I’ll kiss Game Freak’s feet with complete gratitude for lowering the levels of their Pokémon to reduce the classic grinding regime that I’m absolutely sick and tired of putting an inordinate amount of time into. Still, the so-called “elite” of an entire region exuded a bush-league amateurism that barely stimulated my sweat glands in the slightest.

The probable reason why Unova’s Elite Four felt like a facile flash in the pan is that a gauntlet of esteemed pokemon trainers has now become a simple formality as opposed to a climactic rite of passage before the player can be ushered into Pokemon prestige. The Pokemon series has finally realized that the zero-to-hero conquest arc is no longer as gratifying a power fantasy as it was when Pokemon was lighting the world ablaze, or at least not at the forefront of the primary narrative. Between the classic ascension to regional league domination, Black/White is the first game to truly reverse the precedence of the content that is usually the lettuce and tomato of the Pokémon sandwich, added for texture to the juicy meat of the narrative burger. Specifically, the mission to defeat, disband, or dispose of Team Plasma, the latest cultish coalition spreading their noxious influence around the Pokeworld like a pestilence. However, whereas Team Rocket’s motives were driven by lowbrow gangster greed, and the three other syndicates by complete lunacy, the tenets of Team Plasma are surprisingly quite virtuous…technically. The grey-clad, hooded (and homogeneously ginger, weirdly enough) clan has banded together for the purpose of pokémon liberation, separating the creatures from their “oppressive” existences as organic weapons whose worth is evaluated by how they represent their ego-centered human masters in combat. Their initiative sounds perfectly noble and ethically righteous on paper, but their roles as antagonists are made crystal clear in how they attempt to enact their goals through mafioso harassment and violence towards common trainers. Blatant hypocrisy even bleeds through their morality mission when they themselves cause physical harm to a trainer’s pokemon in trying to seize them. Hmm, Team Plasma sure sounds similar to an organization in the real world that has been quite critical of Pokémon in the past, but I’ll leave it anonymous because this group tends to assault any and all dissenters with a crack team of lawyers. Unlike all previous problematic gangs that plagued the Pokeworld in series past, where the line of morality was definitely crossed, Team Plasma actually presents a genuine ethical dilemma: are we, the player, complicit in abusing innocent animals for sport? Pokémon are admittedly burned, poisoned, frozen, electrocuted, etc. in the name of the player’s reputation, and it’s difficult to say if they’d succumb to those severe wounds if PokéCenter’s healing technology wasn’t incredibly efficient. Still, while the player is obviously intended to side with the game’s argument that the bond between man and beast is reciprocal, I actually have some anecdotal evidence for their claim. My very first pokemon was Cyndaquil when I played Pokémon Silver as a seven-year-old child. When that little flaming anteater grew up to become a strapping volcano-backed Typhlosion, I experienced a sensation of pride and sentimentality for its younger form like a parent watching their child walk across the stage to receive their high school diploma. Yes, I became irrationally emotional over a digital blob of black and orange pixels because of the time we shared. If Team Plasma isn’t moved by my story, then they truly are just a bunch of sanctimonious assholes no better than the obnoxious evil teams that came before them. Yet, their self-righteousness is what makes them the most interesting of them all.

Team Plasma preserves its prominence in Black/White’s greater narrative through the player’s rival, a relationship trope in Pokémon that hasn’t been this strong since we were gritting our teeth at Blue’s arrogant ass back in Kanto. No, Cheren and Bianca might seem like they fit the respective role initially, considering they both procure the leftover starter pokemon and chronically challenge the player with said starter pokemon throughout their journey. However, I’d hardly describe the relationship between the two and the player as heated or contentious, as a rivalry should connote. Cheren comes close to fulfilling that classic rival role due to his frustrated feelings of inadequacy that stem from his inability to dominate the player in a duel, with his perfectionist, anal-retentive personality blinding him to the fact that it takes more than fancy book learnin’ to become an outstanding pokémon trainer. Meanwhile, Bianca is relatively similar to May from Hoenn, stumbling through the Pokémon League with a bubbly aloofness like Cher taking her driving test in Clueless. Eventually, Cheren realizes the nuance in Pokémon training while Bianca comes to terms with the fact that she’s a virgin who can’t duel and decides that her true calling is elsewhere. Why is it always the female “rival” who is the incompetent one? Anyways, while I’d say that neither of these two matches the player’s Pokémon training prowess nor exhibits the interpersonal tension of a rivalry, they’re still worth mentioning because the Pokémon series has never given any of its recurring secondary characters this amount of screen presence or this dynamic of a character arc.

Rather than the player’s hometown peers, the player’s true heated equal in the Pokémon League is the guy with green hair who is referred to only by the single letter “N.” One may wonder why I’ve prescribed N with the rival label, considering that he seems to fit the stark antagonist role as the supreme leader of Team Plasma commanding the crude Pokémon liberation operation. He certainly exhibits plenty of villainous character traits in his motives and demeanor. Conversing with him at the heights of Nimbasa’s Ferris wheel even evoked the chilling Harry Lime monologue from The Third Man, one of cinema’s most dastardly criminals. Still, while the writing on the wall greatly suggests that N is indeed one step beyond a rival into the realm of scum and villainy, the truth behind N’s real narrative purpose is revealed when Ghetsis is in the picture. Suddenly, with an older opposing force decorated in cartoonishly villainous garb like all of the primary Pokémon gang leaders before him, Ghetsis causes the player to realize that N is not the looming threat hanging over Unova. It’s revealed in the game’s climax in N’s sublime castle that Ghetsis was always pulling the strings of Team Plasma. Ghetsis has been manipulating N’s passion for the civil rights of Pokémon and thus creating a driven lieutenant to execute a revolution not based on the protection of Pokémon, but to render all of Unova’s civilians defenseless to become its ruthless, iron-fisted ruler. With Ghetsis in the spotlight as the sinister force of evil in Unova instead, it seems like N could be disposed of like a piece of tissue paper. However, I think that his relegation to a red herring in the greater narrative is more fitting and puts the rival role into better perspective. As much as our blood might boil at the spoiled cockiness of Blue or cringe at Silver’s harshness towards himself and his Pokémon, the rivals are never intended to be the prime instigators of the greater conflict surrounding a Pokémon adventure’s narrative, hence the new crop of criminal radicals per entry. Also, a worthy rival should act as a character foil that reflects a warped perspective of the player’s strongest qualities, which seem to have been lost since Red/Blue, with all of the scrubs constantly trying to catch up with the player. Everyone playing Pokémon is obviously different in personality, but the game often likes to assign the avatar they’re controlling the glowing traits of passion, compassion, integrity, courage, and every other exceptional adjective submitted to the Oxford English Dictionary. N is not only an exceptional trainer, if his fairly challenging duels are any indication, but he truly does exhibit all of the aforementioned qualities that all of the NPCs will compliment the player on to the point where it's borderline flirtatious. Given his unique history of being raised by Pokémon like Mowgli from The Jungle Book, it's easy to see why he’d express a deep ardor for ensuring the well-being of his close companions with the imbalanced relationship dynamic at play with their human partners. His fervor is corrupted by the manipulation tactics of Ghetsis, but by seeing the example of the player’s genuine (or so the game claims) mutual respect and adoration for Pokémon, it reorients his cynicism for humanity and reminds him of his true, unadulterated beliefs and aspirations. N is such an extraordinarily strong rival because of how starkly he mirrors the protagonist, with a character arc so fascinating that it usurps the standard eight gyms+Elite Four conquest arc the series has been using as a narrative crutch since day one.

This is when I bemoan it’s a shame that a Pokémon game of this caliber wasn’t released when I was of the age of owning various Pokémon merchandise and memorizing the Pokédex as if I was preparing for a test on the periodic table for chemistry class. However, I count myself as fortunate to have experienced this game as a less overzealous adult because I would not have appreciated it way back when. A game with zero returning Pokémon, and a good portion of them are goofy-looking doodads? Hopefully, someone in proximity would’ve had smelling salts to revive me after fainting at that news. While I admittedly still find fault with the uninspired designs of a handful of Unova’s native Pokémon and its lackluster starter selection, everything else regarding Pokémon’s fifth mainline iteration has swept me off my feet. I don’t know how any series veteran couldn't be absolutely floored by the polygonal presentation and how grandiose it makes the adventure feel after generations of pixelated minimalism. Besides the splendor of the game’s surface-level attributes, the simultaneous striving for both accessibility and more complex battle conditions is commendable on all fronts. Place a story of an intricate moral dilemma surrounding the series with a mystifying character at the forefront of it, and the Pokémon series seems to have matured with the audience who grew up with it, namely, myself and several others. Pokémon Black/White is a phoenix that burns all traces of tired series traditions and rises from the ashes with great ambitions galore. I wouldn't have been ready for their gumption as a child, but as an adult, I’m beaming with pride that Pokémon isn’t content with coasting on the comfort of nostalgia.

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 12/15/2025)

[Image from igdb.com]

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): Action-Adventure

Platforms: DS

Release Date: December 7, 2009

After gulping down the icky-tasting Phantom Hourglass, you’ll forgive me if I wasn’t hopping at the chance for another taste of the DS Zelda experience with The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. I’m not saying that the double-screened mobile console’s whack at Zelda’s iconic action-adventure formula resulted in a disaster of epic proportions that dug a six-foot hole in the dirt for the franchise to lie in after suffering wounds deep enough to prove fatal. Still, Phantom Hourglass was agonizing enough to the point where I felt inclined to apologize to a certain Wii-exclusive Zelda title that I had been lambasting and referring to as the nadir of the Zelda franchise for years. What exactly made Phantom Hourglass so horrendous that it supplanted Skyward Sword from its whipping post? Let’s put it this way: while the eccentricities of Skyward Sword’s motion controls presented a difficult hurdle to overcome, like sitting in traffic on the way to work, I’d go as far as to say that the touchpad and microphone-oriented kineticism of Phantom Hourglass oppressed the game like it was living under a ruthless, fascist dictatorship. Implementing the piece de resistance of the DS’ hardware into every conceivable facet of Phantom Hourglass' gameplay proved to be incredibly overbearing, a showcasing of the console’s capabilities with impractical ambitions that remained unchecked at the game’s release, much to our collective chagrin. Given that Spirit Tracks exists on the same system that housed Phantom Hourglass and is functioning on the same engine, we can assume that it shares the same habit of relying on its central control gimmick to an irritatingly excessive extent. While this remains to be the case, I did not find myself struggling through Spirit Tracks sip by sip like the revolting double IPA that was Phantom Hourglass. In fact, the tolerant reservations I had initially approached Spirits Tracks with had soon evolved into a genuine sense of engagement.

One might attribute Spirit Tracks’ favorability to its DS predecessor on the surface-level basis that it has reverted to traditions. Even though this iteration of Link is of the expressive, cel-shaded “Toon” variety, he evidently isn’t confined to the strikingly blue sea that drowned the series’ standard setting as I had presumed he was. No, the bulbous blonde boy (or at least another incarnation of him) now exists in the glorious kingdom of Hyrule without any water damage to speak of, like his fellow green-garbed doppelgangers with sharper physical features. Princess Zelda would probably glare at Link with confusion and concern for his mental well-being if he ever suggested that she had an alternate ego who sailed valiantly with a crew of salty seadogs and spewed sass with the elegant proficiency of a master swordsman. The same sense of befuddlement would probably translate to Link’s sensei Alfonzo, who is a dead ringer for Tetra’s first mate Gonzo. Link and his mentor travel to Hyrule’s capital, where the princess resides, so her majesty can bestow on Link the honor of graduating from his school of engineering, but something wicked will defer the celebration. In the most obvious tell of foreshadowing I’ve seen, when he smiles sinisterly, Spirit Tracks pulls a Chrono Trigger by having Cole, the chancellor in Hyrule’s cabinet, conspire in a murder plot against the princess. The only difference is that Cole succeeds in his nefarious plan with the aid of his equally villainous cohort, Byrne, reducing her to a ghostly, phantom form after one effective Avada Kedavra magic blast. Once the treacherous duo has done away with Her Highness, while also erasing the kingdom’s transportational tracks and seizing control over the Tower of Spirits, the next objective is to use Zelda’s lifeless, vacant body as a vessel for a malevolent demon lord they worship named Malladus. If their intentions aren’t to have Malladus establish a reign of darkness and terror over Hyrule, I’d be shocked. With the dread of their insidious plan potentially coming to fruition hanging over their heads, both Link and Zelda must travel across Hyrule’s vast jurisdiction and retrieve each district's respected sacred Macguffins as par for the Zelda course, which will restore the balance to the kingdom that was just brusquely upset. You read that right, Link AND Zelda will be teaming up on an adventure together for the very first time in over twenty years of the series existing (at the time). She doesn’t exactly provide the same humorous chemistry as Linebeck, but it’s about damn time that the titular series character received a more substantial role in the spotlight of a Zelda title. All it took was pulverizing the poor girl to an immaterial state of being in what is arguably the grimmest Zelda premise to date.

I feel as if I was a bit cagey in detailing certain bits of context behind the premise of Spirit Tracks because they reveal the grander scope of the game’s core gameplay concept that is certainly pervasive enough to warrant its own paragraph. What branch of engineering has our dear Link now reached a graduate level of proficiency in? Railway engineering, as becoming the conductor of a train, is quite a lucrative vocation in an incarnation of Hyrule where this steam-powered mode of transportation serves as the primary method of traversal. You can then imagine how removing the series of tracks would put the kingdom in a state of dysfunction and why it was a fraction of Cole and Byrne’s plans to disrupt order and stability. It goes without saying, but train travel or anything remotely resembling industrialized technology is a first for the series. It even caused contentious outcries from fans who expressed that the concept inappropriately smacked of modernity in a series that should ideally stick to its traditional realm of medieval fantasy. Personally, I fully embrace the idea. My very first fandom, for lack of a better term, between the infancy ages of 2-5 was Thomas the Tank Engine, a British children’s franchise mostly associated with its disturbingly expressive characters juxtaposed with the static movement of their models. Because I spent a great span of my childhood reading the books and watching the TV series, I recognize the quaint charm and whimsy of Thomas the Tank Engine, as the series intends to evoke the warm, wistful sensation of a world through the ubiquity of train travel that was lost in the industrial/digital ages. Wasn’t The Legend of Zelda initially conceptualized as a whimsical retreat back to a less sophisticated period of Miyamoto’s life? Trains certainly weren’t fathomable in the Middle Ages, provided that Zelda is indeed a product of the period’s fantasy tapestry. Still, trains are now antiquated enough to conjure up a yearning for simpler times that no longer exist as society has progressed, a mutual thematic undercurrent between the two aforementioned series. Hence, trains are a wonderful way to give Spirit Tracks some distinctiveness.

Surprisingly, train travel also solves the issue of restrained exploration that was prevalent in Phantom Hourglass. Sailing on the Great Sea in Wind Waker always proved to be a constrained affair, with Link being forced to cooperate with the directional blowing of the seabreeze lest his trajectory come to a sluggish crawl like pumping blood through a clogged artery. Wind was no longer a relevant condition to work around in Phantom Hourglass, but I’d rather pause for a few seconds to change the arrow’s placement than commit to a drawn line that moves Link from the line’s origin point to its destination with no room for deviation. Such rigidity really drove me up a wall throughout the entirety of playing Phantom Hourglass, making even the tiniest of trips grueling on what is possibly the smallest Zelda world map to date. Though the train that Link conducts is restricted even further by design, this does not inherently mean that the traveling process becomes even more suffocating. Link’s train comes with four different acceleration settings: the standard rate of speed and its quickened increase, a brake that slows it to a stop after a few seconds depending on the previous pace, and a reverse function that rolls backwards only at the train’s neutral speed. The player can control the train’s trajectory by tracing the destination route on the tracks like Phantom Hourglass, but the train will still chug along automatically provided the player has its controls set to any sort of acceleration. The player can even change their course by flipping the various track switches found in every fork in the road, even when the train’s trajectory has been laid out by the stylus. If the developers insist on limiting the player’s autonomy in traveling throughout the overworld, at least they’ve now crafted a transportational system around this snag that is sensible and strangely streamlined. As for the combat portion to keep the player entertained during their trips, Link’s train is fashioned with a cannon that shoots an unlimited supply of cannonballs whenever the player pokes the screen with the stylus. Just be careful to sound the whistle by pulling the train horn on the screen whenever an animal is on the tracks instead of an enemy, or else they’ll meet your accidental misdeed by ramming the train like a raging bull. Why is it that farm animals are the most tenacious creatures in the Zelda universe? Also, it’s important to note that the “dark trains” that roam around on the tracks are invulnerable to shelling, so it’s best to evade these mechanical monsters whenever you see them belching pitch-black smoke from their funnels in the distance. They present an opportunity for the player to flex their competency with the train controls, but it is rather annoying having to navigate around them to prevent a fatal collision.

As for the legitimate enemies that can actually be extinguished, their encounters ultimately depend on which district of Hyrule Link is choo-chooing away in at that given moment. Hyrule as depicted in Spirit Tracks really emphasizes the kingdom’s diverse range of ecological themes. Link will start shooting Skulltulas that swing pendulously above the tracks in the shaded groves of the neutral, grassy “Forest Realm.” After that, he’ll travel north, where sentient, hostile snowmen will attempt to pelt his prized train with their own rounded, anatomical pieces that regrow instantly because of the frigid climate that surrounds them. Enemies that resemble flying miniature elephants will dive bomb onto Link in the polar volcanic realm where the Gorons reside, and the aquatic, oceanside realm, where the cumulative sand is bisected to a small desert realm, borrows the floating squids from Phantom Hourglass for the player to beat rupees out of like a piñata. The “Ocean Realm” is also a highlight here because the tense precariousness of holding this hundred-ton train on narrow tracks over deep waters turns into a pure marvelous spectacle when the tracks are submerged underwater, and the train cuts through the drink like a dream. While the eclectic environments are a striking source of Hyrule’s diversity, one could lament that the expanse of this world is subdued by the lack of exploration facilitation caused by the linearity of the train tracks. I feel as if the developers recognized this likely feeling of disillusionment and implemented some unique collectibles to prolong their time in the overworld. Whenever Link docks his train at the assorted destinations alongside the main course, the player should be vigilant about the locations of a “stamp station.” Here, Link can chronicle the various locales around Hyrule for his elderly neighbor in Aboda Village so he can experience the fulfillment of adventure via a second-hand avenue. It’s quite sad, really. While traveling on the tracks, the player should keep the sight of rabbits in their peripheral, for an enthusiast would like to add as many bunnies to his sanctuary in the “Forest Realm” and compensate Link favorably for his troubles. The rabbits also tend to be slippery suckers during the net minigame that engages once Link blasts away the platform situated under it, so be prepared to take note of where their encounters occurred. I was always hesitant to pursue any extracurricular activities available in Phantom Hourglass, but I allotted much of the time between the obligatory sections to wrangle up rabbits and fill that empty journal with each area’s unique artwork for Niko’s pleasure.

Of course, the player can only revel in these interesting subsidiary tasks if they work towards Link’s primary goal of restoring the tracks that lead to each of these locales. I’m sorry if I trigger sensations of shellshock in players who were traumatized by The Temple of the Ocean King, but Spirit Tracks also implements a winding, multi-floored ancient construction that the player chronically revisits after completing a dungeon milestone in the Tower of Spirits. Before you write out a will thinking that a double dosage of a mega dungeon will kill you, know that this colossus is a gentler beast than its older brother. The tall exterior foyer where Link parks his train features a series of entrances that are unlocked with each progression milestone met, meaning that the player can actually continue from the highest floor they’ve unlocked as opposed to digging (or climbing in this case) from the surface and painstakingly retreading one’s steps ad nauseum. In addition, there also isn’t a timer breathing down the player's neck while they jump from floor to floor, mitigating the unnecessary tension and allowing the player to experience meatier puzzles that require more contemplation. Besides fixing everything about The Temple of the Ocean King that made me exclaim “what were they thinking?!” in a rhetorical fashion, Tower of Spirits also provides one of the game’s most distinctive mechanics. Everywhere else in Hyrule, Zelda is but a floating dialogue channeler for our silent protagonist, more in the vein of a windbag buddy like Daxter and less like the notorious series nagger Navi, who attempts to mandate the course of progress at every waking moment. In this lofty monolith, however, she genuinely collaborates with our hero. Spirit Tracks seems to subscribe to the mythical ghost phenomena that claims they can possess living bodies if they so choose, simply absorbing their earthly forms by flying into them. Once Link collects enough of the iridescent tears scattered about the dungeon’s floors, a full set will grant him the power to penetrate the armor of the phantom guards with his sword and allow the incorporeal princess to possess them. Once she’s in a solid, living substrate, Zelda will transmute the physical capabilities of guards for Link’s benefit. Depending on which guard Zelda is commandeering, she can either illuminate darker paths for Link with its flaming sword, teleport via connecting to those annoying phantom eye security drones, and crawl into a ball and roll destructively like a metallic Goron. Above all else, piloting a phantom guard provides a nifty source of camouflage to deflect the guard’s attention to Link’s presence. I don’t know how they aren’t tipped off that there might be a little girl in their midst from the constant wailing for Link to slow down or the high-pitched shrieking whenever a rat crawls around her feet, but I’ll accept their lack of vigilance if it means that Link won’t be forced to scurry away to a pool of imperceptibility at every moment. With Zelda’s distinct set of skills, revisiting the Tower of Spirits is neither a grueling slog nor is it a frantic, frustrating escort quest like Ico with touchpad controls. If anything, it’s the gender-reversed opposite.

Outside of the grandiose Tower of Spirits, Link is expected to carry the weight of heroic duty and Link alone. Fortunately, Spirit Tracks also offers the fabled savior of Hyrule a new slew of untested mechanics in the vein of his items. Before I detail the fresh tricks up the sleeves of Spirit Tracks, I suppose I should mention that the developers deemed either fun or functional enough to return from Phantom Hourglass. Long-distance offense seems to have been the deciding factor, for arrows and the boomerang are the only ones brave enough to show their faces again. You still wanted an item that gives you an excuse to draw on the touchpad, right? If you’re wondering what happened to the hookshot, it’s been replaced with a snaked-faced whip that ultimately functions the same, with the perk of quicker traversal when latching onto the beams. The “Sand Wand” is an especially exciting item, for it allows Link to command large banks of the dry granular material and elevate it at his convenience on the whim of the stylus. If directing sand isn’t stimulating enough, the “Whirlwind” is an item that implements the microphone, creating gusts of wind to forcefully propel enemies and extinguish flames by blowing into the bottom right corner of the DS. The kinetic novelty with this item is certainly nifty, as it feels as if the player’s real breaths are impacting the flow of gameplay. Still, the developers seem to express that picking a direction on a circular plane and exhaling once or twice isn’t challenging enough. Did anyone notice how Phantom Hourglass was an outlier in the Zelda series, as it did not include a musical instrument in any capacity? Well, Spirit Tracks rectifies that glaring omission with what is the most interactive instrument in the series to date, for better or for worse. Link’s musical outlet this time around is a pan flute, a wind instrument that coincides with the kinetic functionality of the DS’s microphone. Notes are symbolized by distinct colors and are scaled from lowest to highest from left to right of the instrument. Like the ocarina, specific bite-sized melodies will affect the environment upon being played and are saved in a journal for the player to use as a visual reference. However, unlike the ocarina, producing any melodious sound is far more enterprising than pressing a series of directional buttons on a controller. The finicky nature of administering air into the pan flute is most prevalent during the duet sequences with a sanctuary’s sage, a process needed to gain access to that area’s dungeon. Link’s practice sessions with the old farts are lengthy enough, but no amount of preparation can prevent the awkward, mismatched snags that come with this kind of kineticism. Thankfully, the sages seem to be understanding and do not angrily ask me if I was rushing or dragging if my pan flute playing wasn’t quite their tempo. Overall, playing the pan flute felt like Plankton running back and forth with a harmonica in “Band Geeks,” or my elementary school days when the staff placed a recorder in front of my face. Yes, notes were played, but with such strenuous conditions involved that I’d hardly call the final product music.

If the player manages to satisfy the sage’s duet requirements, the player should find themselves en route to that area’s dungeon to procure the sacred Macguffin that lies within its deepest layers. Normally, I’d be chomping at the bit to experience the series’ staple labyrinths, but the ones outside of the recurring Tower of Spirits megaplex are rather dull. I really can’t recall much of interest with the first three dungeons, other than that the “Ocean Temple” was unremarkably dry for a dungeon existing underwater. I guess the developers decided not to press their luck in designing a dreaded water level with the unorthodox stylus control scheme. The Fire Temple featured a nifty and complex mine cart segment, while the Sand Temple utilizes its item, the Sand Wand, to the fullest with a myriad of different puzzles and platforming segments. Then again, these types of Sand Wand-oriented instances reappear in droves during the final portion of the Tower of Spirits, which sort of diminishes the distinctiveness of the game’s last elemental palace. I’m thankful that these dungeons are at least competent, but their collective lack of memorable conceits really hurts their impact in the long run.

What salvages these dungeons from totally traveling in one ear and immediately out of the other are the boss battles at their climaxes. Like Phantom Hourglass, the bosses here also serve as examples of the game taking full advantage of the dungeon’s items with the unconventional control scheme at play. Plenty of these pinnacle foes also fully realize the novelty of expanding the scene with the dueling screens of the DS. Gigantic beetle Stagnox will fly upward to the higher portion of the system before trying to ram Link upon reentry, while the green, thorny tentacles of Phytops clog the bottom screen for Link to dodge while he attempts to target the monster’s veiled eyeball that resides in the upper half. Both Cragma and Skeldritch evoke the scope of Eox from Phantom Hourglass, bosses with a skyscraper stature that takes up the space of both screens with its immense verticality, situated in a circular arena where Link is intended to reduce it block by block from below. Above all of these outstanding bosses, the one that impresses me the most is the Demon Train, for it’s a meaty, multiphased foe conquered entirely using the train-conducting skills the player has honed leading up to it. Looking through a less mechanical lens, I’m also quite pleased by the tag team dynamic between Zelda and Link for some of these fights. Both the blonde boy and our dearly departed princess in phantom guard form knock some sense into Byrne at the Tower of Spirits’ peak, and aiming arrows at the backside of Malladus in his demonic physical presence with Zelda while Link distracts his hideousness proves to be a far more engaging collaborative effort than when we trusted NPC Zelda to shoot Ganondorf in Wind Waker. Even Mario and Luigi could learn a thing or two about teamwork from another Nintendo duo that is normally portrayed like Mario and Peach.

Like the kid from that ancient Life cereal commercial, I am in disbelief that I actually like The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. On the surface, it’s Phantom Hourglass's identical twin still confined to a control scheme that is amusing at best and painfully unintuitive at worst. Still, Spirit Tracks manages to find quality-of-life enhancements when I figured that the foundation was too resolute to work upon. Traversing the overworld is still a bounded excursion, but at least its limitations now make more sense when a railroad system is constructed around it. There still might be a multistoried dungeon with seven floors unlocked per visitation, but at least I no longer anticipate returning with great apprehension because the elements that made the previous mega dungeon insufferable have been omitted and/or reconsidered. Finally, it’s been proven to me that the stylus schematic is not a gimmicky deterrent and that it can foster a functional Zelda experience, but I’d still only recommend it for the series completionists because of its abstract nature. For those who have already seen everything the series has to offer, Spirit Tracks is sounding its deafening train horn to call your attention to it.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice for All Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 12/6/2025)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice for All

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

Genre(s): Graphic Adventure

Platforms: GBA, DS

Release Date: October 18, 2002

And here I thought that the gaming medium had managed to successfully hurdle over the hump of a sophomore slump ages ago. The trajectory of a video game series, provided the developers are limiting it to a well-rounded trilogy, is usually as follows: the first game establishes the franchise’s core gameplay components and characters, the direct sequel sands off the coarse bits dangling from the first game’s rough template to its near-perfect polished peak, and then the third and last entry retains the previous title’s quality-of-life enhancements while dialing up every conceivable aspect presented thus far to eleven as one last grand hurrah before the stage curtains close indefinitely. It’s a three-piece formula easier to commit to memory than fixing up a batch of refreshing Kool-Aid. We’re no longer in the 8-bit 1980s, when second releases from germinating gaming icons such as Mario, Zelda, and Castlevania perhaps jumped the gun too soon on experimenting with the series’ various elements before they could marinate, creating a chasm of quality between the exemplary first and third entries as a result. Capcom seems to have gotten the memo on how to structure a trilogy to the modern standard if the arc of their Resident Evil IP on the original PlayStation is any indication. Why then, one generation later, have they reverted to the sophomore slump practices of a primordial gaming era akin to an archaic bloodletting? Devil May Cry 2 is the more infamous, maligned example of Capcom whiffing the sophomore outing for one of their IPs during the 2000s, but any fan of their visual-novel-oriented crime investigation and courtroom procedure property Ace Attorney will tell you that the second entry in its initial Phoenix Wright trilogy, with the subtitle Justice for All, is almost equally as unremarkable. Given that I was floored by the character and case writing of the first game, plus the entertainment factor of the would-be dry material elevated by an exhilarating, over-the-top presentation, dissecting the unanimous disappointment behind Justice for All became a stimulating source of curiosity. Unfortunately, after gathering up the evidence needed to potentially defend Justice for All by playing it, I find myself in the prosecutor’s corner, stamping its condemnation to a lukewarm status like everyone else.

Right off the bat, Justice for All’s first case bombs like a guy playing the banjo with his feet at the Apollo Theater. Still, the core aspect of this case’s unprecedented appallingness opens up an interesting discussion on certain gaming consumer practices that I believe I’m broaching for the very first time. If someone is playing Justice for All before its predecessor due to the lack of availability of the first game or if they’re receiving it as a gift, it presents quite the awkward, discordant pickle. You see, during the first case of the previous Ace Attorney title, the eponymous Phoenix Wright was equally as clueless in suspecting deceit in a witness's testimony as the player would be when freshly booting up the game on their mobile Nintendo console. Because both the player and Phoenix are both stammering amateurs at the beginning, there is a concurrent growth relationship between them that blossoms organically with more experience gained as the game progresses. However, after Phoenix eventually starts hitting nothing but the defense lawyer equivalent of bullseyes and deplatforming formally undefeated prosecutors as a result of his newfound impeccable reasoning skills, any player launching into the series with Justice for All reasonably won’t be able to match his sharpened sagacity. How do the developers account for this likely scenario and keep the dreaded “LD” word from popping up like an ugly, ingrown weed? By implementing the most contrived plot device imaginable: amnesia. For reasons that will soon be discovered, Phoenix’s memory of his friends and, more importantly, his career skills are clouded by mental fatigue as thick as flu phlegm. Therefore, he experiences some issues recounting how to object to the total horseshit of some hoity-toity twat who is accusing a young lady of killing her boyfriend in a public park. Both Maya and the defendant are forced to give him some pointers from the sidelines, much to Phoenix’s embarrassment. C’mon, Capcom. Don’t tell me there aren’t any other narrative devices you could’ve used to work around the newbie player predicament that aren’t as sloppily shoehorned. As a returning player, the amnesia condition is patronizing, but it probably doesn’t aid newcomers all that much either because proving Maggey’s innocence is far less clear than saving Larry’s stupid ass. Tutorial case or not, you can do better than this, Capcom.

Even if someone is a fresh face to the Ace Attorney franchise here, they would still be receiving the complete series experience because every single aspect introduced in the first title is translated over with no complications. The warm, expressive comic art still renders Phoenix, Maya, and the colorful cast of returning secondary characters that I’m now convinced are the recurring series players. The windbag Oldbag is still yammering on so much that the game quickens and autoplays her dialogue, southern-belle Lotta is still looking for a juicy scoop to make ends meet, and Detective Gumshoe is still screwing up so many times at the precinct that they might have actually reduced his pay to literal peanuts. Phoenix (and Maya, sometimes) will scavenge a crime scene for pieces of evidence by either scrounging around for objects of interest or persuading the people of relevance to part with any vital information or incriminating trinkets they might possess. Once the scavenger hunt portion of the day is completed, Phoenix will stand in court and volley those OBJECTIONS to whoever is opposing him in the prosecutor’s stand, which will eventually substantiate a victory in favor of proven innocence. Besides the settings of the crime scenes and the narrative context behind them, the resemblance to the first game in terms of its presentation and gameplay formula is uncanny.

That is, until Phoenix chats with one of the screen-centered characters during an investigation, and suddenly, a series of metallic chains emerge and drape a newly blackened background. Upon receiving a green magatama from Fey Manor in the second episode, the presence of the curved, glowing bead will reveal hints of secrecy in whomever Phoenix converses with in the investigation process. To literally unlock the truth obscured within the chains, Phoenix must approach the process the exact same way he debunks falsities in the courtroom: by providing conclusive and concise evidence that combats anyone’s caginess. The appeal of these “psyche-locks” is that they transport the electrifying other half of Ace Attorney’s gameplay equation into the fetch quest portion that, admittedly, while essential, can be a tad dry and attention-numbing at times. I fully support the inclusion of these “psyche-locks” in concept, but there is something fundamentally flawed in their execution here. When Phoenix arrives at the courtroom after a day of diligently gathering evidence, it’s guaranteed that everything he’ll possibly need will be at his disposal, and failing to correlate a claim with said specific evidence is due to the player’s lack of wits or attentiveness. When the player is faced with a psych lock, the game never indicates whether or not they’re sufficiently stacked with enough evidence to unlock an NPC’s secrets. Never can the player dig into the psych lock process successfully upon its immediate availability, so the game expects the player to use the evidence they’ve scrounged up for the same purpose for what will occur in the courtroom the next day. Because some psych lock sequences include anywhere between two and five locks to bust open and therefore require multiple pieces of evidence, without any indication that Phoenix can finally force an NPC to spill their guts, the player can overthink things and start frantically searching through every nook and cranny to ensure their preparedness. Or maybe that’s just my obsessive-compulsive side speaking due to being flared up by the psyche-locks.

The first instance of chains interrupting the flow of conversation, as if Phoenix has just summoned The Cenobites, is when he finds a peculiar guest roaming the halls of the remote, old-world Fey Manor during the game’s second case. Given the demeanor of Miss Ini Miney, the guest on the compound, plus the circumstances surrounding the case, it dawned on me that the series has adopted a habit of recycling narrative assets from previous court cases. Once again, Maya is embroiled in a murder case where she is the prime culprit, ready to face trial with Phoenix as her defendant, and there’s a vapid young woman in the midst who knows far more about the crime’s intricacies than she leads on. While the initial comparisons may lead to returning players being dismayed by deja vu, the second case here presents a far more clever setup to implicate Maya. In a world where the practices of spirit channeling have been proven to be a tangible method of summoning the deceased, there’s reasonable doubt that Maya isn’t responsible for her client’s death because the vengeful spirit that was summoned has been controlling Maya’s consciousness. Then again, a spirit can’t leave its own fingerprints on the assorted murder weapons, so that should complicate proving Maya’s innocence during the court proceedings. While the contextual elements behind this case are fascinating and present an unorthodox ethical dilemma, this backbone of “Reunion and Turnabout” crumbles as the case continues. Once the supernatural elements of the murder are all proven to be nothing but a red herring, the outcome of the case is pretty straightforward and obvious. Only the Miney girl has any motive to kill her eccentric former boss at the hospital where she was fired for malpractice, and the fact that she sticks out like a sore thumb among the robe-garbed Fey ladies here makes her awfully suspicious. But then that begs the question: how did this airhead gain access to the private domain of the spirit channelers and learn the layout of the manor well enough to enact her revenge? Well, that leads us to the second case’s other glaring issue in that Morgan Fey’s, Maya’s aunt and main proprietor of the Fey Manor, role as the accomplice in this murder is treated as being fairly inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. One would think that a family member of Maya’s actively conspiring against her would call for a greater precedence in this case than simply being detained once the real killer is revealed. Phoenix even struggles to figure out a motive for Morgan inculpating Maya, even though anyone paying attention to NPC dialogue would know that she’s trying to keep her immediate bloodline as the governing force of Fey Manor after her sister proved to have stronger summoning powers than hers. Still nursing that nasty head wound from last case, eh, Phoenix?

Speaking of Morgan’s bloodline, once the Fey Manor’s matriarch is in custody, Phoenix and Maya adopt her young daughter Pearl the same way that Phoenix became Maya’s guardian when her older sister was taken from this Earth too soon. Since she’s still of a single-digit age, she can act as the series’ beacon of innocence now that Maya has reached adulthood. Also, Pearl can channel the soul of Mia if Maya is out of commission for whatever reason, even if seeing Mia in Pearl’s gown exposes her gigantic breasts so prominently that they become quite distracting. We’ve taken care of filling the void of purity becoming gradually corrupted by exposing it to the serious nature of crime and the courts that evaluate it, but who’s filling the role as Phoenix’s rival now that Edgeworth has gone off the grid? While investigating Fey Manor during the second case, Gumshoe informs Phoenix that the prosecutor will be Von Karma, which raises some eyebrows considering that he’s presumably behind bars now for his involvement in the murder of Edgeworth’s father all those years ago. No, this Von Karma is Franziska Von Karma, the former Von Karma’s pride and joy, who is known as a prosecutor prodigy who started this foul lawyer business at the precocious age of thirteen. Stating that she’s a chip off the old block is an understatement. Franziska has inherited not only her father’s icy, scornful sternness but his perfect prosector record as well. She’s also a bit vindictive like her dear old dad, for the reason why she’s practicing law outside of her native Germany is to defeat Phoenix (and Edgeworth, if she can find him) for smudging her father’s reputation and tarnishing his formally spotless, lengthy career. Franziska is certainly another formidable foe, sure to make Phoenix soil himself from the opposite side of the courtroom. However, she’s only an effective antagonist in a vacuum because she doesn’t quite have the rival chemistry as Edgeworth, and all of her personality traits are ripped right from the elder Von Karma. Her mileage as a prevalent force of oppression is dependent on how much a professional woman in uniform perturbs you, which is completely subjective. Her whip, her court “accessory,” for lack of a better term, is certainly a distinctive quirk she bestows. Still, the number of times she cracks it, plus WHO she unleashes its fury on to maintain control wherever she goes, is a smidge too far-fetched to swallow. Whip Phoenix and Gumshoe all you want, but no judge in the universe would ever tolerate lashing them, especially when they’re actively on their prestigious platform. Even with her father’s tenure, he couldn’t get away with doing that.

If Justice for All’s second case establishes some prominent secondary characters and places Maya on thin ice, then surely the third case should be a total deviation from whatever overarching plot might exist between the second and fourth cases. While there isn’t a cohesiveness between any of the cases in Justice for All, even though we should, by all means, pry into the whole Morgan Fey being a murder conspirator a little further, “Turnabout Big Top” makes me understand what Ace Attorney enthusiasts refer to as “third case syndrome.” Similar to the third case that wedged itself between the Phoenix and Edgeworth arc in the previous game, “Turnabout Big Top” revolves around a famous entertainer involved in the scandal of bumping off someone else in show business. This time, a magician has slain their ringmaster, which leads Phoenix and Maya to the circus and the colorful troupe at the center of it. Even though its inclusion between two of the more cohesive cases was a bit grating, I still enjoyed the cast of characters on and adjacent to the filming set of Steel Samurai and didn’t mind collaborating with them while procuring evidence. On the other hand, while I stated that the performers of the Berry Big Circus were colorful, they are about as collectively charming as the characters of a Todd Solondz film. The defendant, Max Galactica, is equally as arrogant as the snot-nosed culprit of the first case, with his diva-like pretentiousness masking his bumbling bumpkin roots that emerge whenever he’s under duress. He’s also prone to insouciant acts of violence against his coworkers, namely, the meek ventriloquist Ben, who can only stutter without his dummy Trilo by his side to pronounce some brash characteristics he harbors. He’d be the one sympathetic character here if his puppet also didn’t express his romantic interest in the sixteen-year-old animal tamer Regina, putting him in a love triangle with Max, whom she’s soon to be married to. Max being 21 is just slightly crossing a line of taste, but Ben having a crush on Regina at the age of 31 is downright disgusting. Methinks the perp should’ve directed his homicidal tendencies towards another member of this circus, if you know what I mean. On the subject of Regina, her total naivety to the world, thanks to her sheltered upbringing, makes her seem much younger than she actually is, making her lolita-like magnetism from those attracted to her far creepier. To anyone’s surprise, there is actually one member who elicits more contempt from fans than the perverts and their underage object of attraction, myself included. I realize that Moe the Clown was specifically manufactured to be a migraine-inducing character, but his excessive levity and his horrendous jokes are just the tip of the ire iceberg. Moe’s flagrant immaturity also extends to his decorum, or lack thereof, in court. If Phoenix inadvertently prompts Moe to perform his routine by pressing one of his statements, the judge will penalize Phoenix as a result. You can’t punish me just because the witness is annoying, Mr. Judge! How else am I supposed to suss out statements before I commit to presenting a piece of evidence? Lock your whip onto this afroed stooge and don’t stop until his backside resembles fried strips of bacon, Von Karma. Even when the pieces fall into place, I feel like Phoenix is two or three steps ahead of me because the reality of how the murder was executed is impossibly absurd. If “Turnabout Big Top” isn’t the main offender of the “third case syndrome”, I don’t know what future case could possibly epitomize the tedium and aggravation associated with the pattern more than this one. This case somehow felt longer than “Rise from the Ashes.”

If the player feels brutalized by the third case and thinks that the fourth and final one will be the finishing blow on their patience and appreciation for the franchise, trust me when I say that “Farewell, My Turnabout” will turn that frown upside down. In fact, many fans cite “Farewell, My Turnabout” not only as the unanimous pick for the best case in Justice for All, but also as one of the best cases throughout the entire series period. However, it might not initially seem to be so exemplary considering its premise shares some similarities with the previous one. We’re still entangled in the scandals of celebrities, with the Steel Samurai’s successor, Matt Engarde, killing his showbiz rival, Juan Corrida, by strangling him with a bandana and then stabbing him in a ritzy hotel room right before a press conference. All the while, Maya is held hostage by a mysterious man who will only release Phoenix’s assistant from his captivity if he manages to receive an acquittal for Matt Engarde. If you think ensuring Maya’s safety applies an alarming amount of pressure on Phoenix to win, wait until the layers of this case unravel. My particular fondness for the final case of Justice for All stems from how it snapped me out of an expectation that every other case leading up to it lulled me into. Phoenix has always been depicted as a valiant hero of the law who is always on the side of justice and integrity, but let’s face it: only Regina is naive enough not to realize that a defense lawyer exists on the opposite side of the same corrupt coin as a prosecutor. Swaying juries to their side, knowing full well that their client is totally guilty of the charges, is definitely a commonplace practice. Phoenix just hasn’t been in the game long enough to exercise his inner Johnnie Cochran, until now, that is. Matt Engarde initially seems like a shallow, insipid punk ass whose innocence is believed by Phoenix because a psyche-lock didn’t emerge when Phoenix bluntly asked him if he killed Juan. However, the sociopath retains his composure on the technicality that he didn’t actively kill Juan, but the master assassin he hired named Shelly de Killer did. Once he reveals the truth to Phoenix with lawyer-client confidentiality, Matt slicks his shaggy hair back to reveal a sinister Mr. Hyde persona complete with a scar and sharp-toothed grin. Twirling a glass of wine seems like villain overkill to me, but I suppose any bit of evil signifiers helps in signaling the complex quandary that Phoenix is faced with. To make matters worse, the aforementioned assassin is the one holding Maya hostage, so Phoenix can’t resign as Matt’s lawyer lest de Killer, well, kill Maya. Either Phoenix continues his virtuous streak and sacrifices Maya in the process, or continues to pile on the mud he had been slinging on Matt’s manager, Adrian Andrews, and she wrongfully ends up imprisoned to secure Maya’s freedom. The fact that either path will lead the player down two separate endings instead of a traditional “game over” will make the player’s brow sweat as profusely as Phoenix’s as they make a decision in Ace Attorney that has never been so urgent and crucial.

It’s also interesting to note that Franziska is not the prosecutor during the case that concludes Justice for All, even though she unknowingly pulls a deus ex machina at the very end and ironically saves Phoenix with a smattering of new evidence to win favor for the prosecution. No, the estranged Miles Edgeworth is the one rebutting Phoenix’s stalling Chewbacca defense to simultaneously save Maya and put Engarde behind bars where he belongs. Why has the primary rival from the first game suddenly emerged when he had been duly replaced? Honestly, to better understand Edgeworth by comparing and contrasting him to Franziska. I formerly believed that Phoenix and Edgeworth were character foils, but I’m seeing a clearer correlation between the two primary series prosecutors. Edgeworth and Franziska’s attitude towards their jobs as prosecutors was formally one and the same. They both unfortunately became blinded by their inflated egos, a byproduct of their impeccable legal acumen, which they bolstered, diving down to any depths of devious trickery to maintain their flawless track records. When humbled by Phoenix’s shrewdness and integrity, Edgeworth took the time to reflect upon his actions and realized that he’s not an athlete in a competition where winning and losing only affect him. Meanwhile, Franziska hyperfocuses on victory to the very end, where she fails to recognize the bigger picture while disparaging Phoenix’s “loss” in the Engarde case. Whereas Edgeworth is the dynamic prosecutor liable to change by Phoenix’s shining example, Franziska is the stubborn static character that Edgeworth no longer wishes to mirror. As a German, shouldn’t she already be accustomed to losing?

Is it worth digging through the dirt clouding Justice for All to experience the golden nugget that is “Farewell, My Turnabout” at the tale’s end? …Yes, but there’s a big asterisk next to that positive recommendation. Except for the second case, which is at least on par with the adequate ones from the first game, the other two leading up to Justice for All’s glorious finale grinded my gears to their nubs. If I find another work of fiction involving either amnesia or a circus soon, I might go ballistic. Despite its drastic unevenness, Justice for All still proves to be a worthy sequel that expands the growth arcs of its characters while exhibiting a couple of bona fide, nail-biting court cases. Fortunately, labeling something with the tag of a sophomore slump implies that the series will dig itself out of the clumsy hole it fell into, so I can confidently expect wonderful things from the Ace Attorney series moving forward since I know I’ve survived the worst of it.

NiGHTS into Dreams... Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 12/4/2025)

[Image from igdb.com]

NiGHTS into Dreams...

Developer: Sonic Team/Sega

Publisher: Sega

Genre(s): Action

Platforms: Saturn

Release Date: July 5, 1996

Raise your hand if you recognize the smirking purple figure on the cover of this title from that alternate pinball game in Sonic Adventure’s Casinopolis level. It’s certainly where my vague familiarity with this character stems from, and I’ll bet that plenty of other gamers would cite the same source as well. Whenever I replayed Sonic Adventure or was craving this individual level, I always opted for the pinball portion that featured this flamboyant jester instead of the more traditional Sonic slot machine. Not only did the various card hand combinations net more rings, but the mystical liveliness of this section was always mesmerizing. Considering the sheer length of the ring-gathering process to finish Casinopolis, the time spent here in this splendorous pinball scene was enough to put me in a trance. Exiting the level to either dump the rings or failing after too many asynchronous bumper swings never failed to elicit a “what the hell was that?!” from me, even after my one-hundredth time experiencing it. Still, my reaction was not one of offense, but similar to the come down from ending a hazy, euphoric dream. Years later, I discovered that this substitute pinball section was not inspired by the developers mixing a concoction of ecstasy and acid. It was an easter egg that referenced Nights into Dreams, a Sonic Team-developed Sega game released on the Sega Saturn. Oh, so that’s why we’re all familiar with this character from somewhere outside of his source material. We can all surmise that a reason why Sega’s debut 3D system was so short-lived is that their blue blur mascot took a circumstantial sabbatical (Sonic R doesn’t count), which is like Santa Claus neglecting his annual holiday duties on Christmas Eve. In light of Sega fumbling Sonic Jam to the point of premature extinction, perhaps Nights into Dreams retrospectively serves as the Saturn’s substitute Sonic title.

Interestingly enough, on a technicality, Nights, the eponymous, gender binary-defying purple jester, is not the game’s protagonist purely from a narrative standpoint. While they’re still technically the primary gameplay vehicle here, the story revolves around two middle-school-aged children named Elliot and Claris, who are not siblings as the surface-level impressions might indicate. Nights is merely a vessel for the boy and girl to enter his native domain of dreams, where the collective of immaterial, subconscious mental fabrications resides. Nights is a trickster with the kid-friendly whimsy and fun of the Cat in the Hat and the pariah status of Beelzebub amongst their fellow “Nightmaren.” However, Night’s rebellion against their kind is portrayed as a sign of courage and righteousness, for they’d rather not be an accomplice to the insidious plan to steal all the dream energy and somehow conquer reality as a result of achieving their goal. The mascot potential of Nights could arguably be undermined by their secondary support status, unlike Sonic, who demands the spotlight like the unapologetic diva he is. Still, the mystique of Nights proves to be far more beguiling because the player’s point of view is from the perspective of two ordinary adolescents existing in humdrum reality. Because we’re never fully stepping into Night's purple poulaines, the impersonal perception preserves the curiosity this character inherently exudes in spades.

Expositing every tidbit of information on the game’s plot premise still won’t demystify the gameplay conditions surrounding each of Night’s levels. Each dream scenario of either children’s campaign is orchestrated around a consistent gameplay loop. In saying that, deciphering said gameplay loop is a process bound to make the player’s brain short-circuit with intense confusion. The game’s first mistake in exhibiting the player’s objective clearly is setting the scene by having them control either Elliot or Claris. Being bushwacked by naughty flying creatures immediately in an automated introductory sequence also establishes a misleading impression that the player is struggling to acclimate themselves to the already-hazy gameplay conditions. It just sets a terrible and inappropriate precedent for the remaining duration of the level. Once either Elliot or Claris enters the mystical gazebo and tags Nights in, they are tasked to retrieve the four multicolored “Ideya Crystals” that were brusquely snatched from the hands of the human children. How does Nights go about reclaiming the four bits of stolen property? Well, that’s when things get tricky. Without any preemptive elucidation, Nights will start flying on a relatively restricted horizontal axis and soar through a series of rings while collecting a smattering of tokens before they travel full circle around again to his outdoor shelter from whence they started. Because the context is clouded in layers of ambiguity thicker than the condensation mist surrounding a large lake, I feel like it’s my due diligence to unveil the intended objective of each level as a favor to all who are about to delve into Nights into Dreams… While every collectible is worth colliding into on a lap around the level, most of them will have to be benched due to the greater precedence of the blue orbs. Twenty may seem like a steep ransom to reach in satisfying the clutches of the “Ideya Captures” claws, but they’ll respawn in the same places once the player makes a 360-degree turn back to the blue gazebo. Once the player returns to the origin point with their twinkling items recovered, they’ll repeat the process another three times, with the level layout shifting with each lap. You’re welcome. I can’t say that I’ve experienced a gameplay formula even remotely close to the one that Nights (literally) revolves around, much less in any previous title produced by Sega. If I had to drum up one comparison for the sake of argument, Night’s levels do foster a similarly swift energy as Sonic’s. Momentum can be quickened at the player’s volition to the point where it can be unmanageable like Sonic at his speediest, which evokes that thrilling rollercoaster aura that I thought the blue blur had trademarked for himself. Shave off the grounded terms and conditions of platforming that Sonic must abide by, and Night’s constant airborne velocity is arguably the next step in evolving this specific brand of Sega gameplay.

However, what does ring Sonic in my ears louder than the SEGA start-up jingle is the snazzy panache that oozes from the game’s presentational pores. They say in the intangible dreamscape that anything is possible, so Sega takes full advantage of the untethered nature of what occurs during REM sleep to unleash their patented bombastic flair to an unprecedented maximalism. Each level, no matter its thematic setting, is brimming with ethereal pizzazz. They’re all relatively organic and firmly recognizable in terms of what topographical environment they’re intended to resemble, but their abstractions lie in the askew properties of the foregrounds. As someone who has been known to dream on a regular basis, I can say from my extensive experience that this unconscious realm often places me in areas that I am particularly familiar with in reality and can’t discern any abnormalities until I awaken and regain my lucidity. What aids the Sonic comparisons is that each level in Nights seems like an unearthly, sublime version of the standard roulette of level themes present on a journey through Mobius. Spring Valley is as divine a grassy, mountainous field as one can get to introduce Nights without calling it “Green Hill Zone,” while “Mystic Forest” amplifies the presence of verdant greenery with some breakable lime mortar blocks from ancient ruins placed as asymmetrically as the tall rocks of Stonehenge. The beachy “Splash Garden” proves Night's superiority underwater compared to the non-swimmer Sonic, while “Frozen Bell” and “Stick Canyon” provide auxiliary vehicles like a snowmobile and gondola to diversify the gameplay in these level themes of polar climates that Sonic is constantly using. It’s a shame they didn’t have enough disc space to incorporate a casino level, for Nights potentially outshining Sonic in his glitziest level theming could constitute as a personal attack. The one level in Nights that sort of verges into more urban, industrialized territory is “Soft Museum,” a standout for possibly referencing an equally surreal novel from William S. Burroughs titled “The Soft Machine.” Sorry Sonic, but the purple jester’s interpretations of your common thematic foregrounds are just too dazzling while they’re operating without the restrictions of reality.

I also apologize that my review is reverting back to a quasi-walkthrough, but it compels me to expound on one prevalent aspect of the levels of Nights that screams Sonic surprisingly before the blue blur ever imagined making it one of his defining idiosyncrasies. In tandem with the score that increases with every sequence of chaining rings in addition to collecting blue orbs and those golden, fin-shaped thingies, the player will be given a letter grade that coincides with the player’s ability to gather the aforementioned whatchamacallits in a timely fashion. The player will likely notice that they aren’t earning acceptable marks by the standards of any education system once they return to the gazebo after rescuing the crystals from their captivity, which is another aspect of the gameplay loop lost in the fog of vagueness. To rack up enough points to pass any kind of class in school, the player must take Nights through the level as many times as the timer will allow after engaging the post-crystal-securing, bonus portion, which will multiply the amount of points received upon reobtaining all of the various collectibles. Essentially, if you’re not playing Nights in a fretful frenzy while a timer ticks down to single digits, you’re not doing it right. Once this obscured gameplay condition came into clarity, it seemed like all I could eke out with my best effort was an adequate “C.” Damn the strict Japanese grading curve! If you think your finishing letter rank is only arbitrary, I must inform you that your GPA must exceed a 2.0 average because the game will deem you unfit to play the “Twin Seeds” final level, where either Elliot or Claris adopts Nights’ aerial mobility to collect orbs over the skyline of their home city and continue to lock its access. As harsh as the conditions to receive an acceptable mark may be, I probably would’ve neglected playing Nights properly if not for the concurrent condition as something to consider.

Amongst all of the unorthodox gameplay elements, would you believe me that each level in Nights climaxes with a distinct boss battle? The Nightmaren appear to be an eclectic army of ghouls led by the enigmatic dark wizard Wizeman, and their design diversity definitely also translates to the unique specifications surrounding how to best them in battle. Because traditional combat in a game like Nights would be rather inappropriate, defeating them requires solving their specific weakness like a puzzle, with the addition of the drill dash maneuver to sprinkle some semblance of offense in these encounters. I’d list their unique weaknesses with the same amount of detail as how to excel in the levels that precede them, but the only way I’d be that charitable is if I were financially compensated. Still, I have to veer into spoiler territory to highlight the egregious aspects that unfortunately beleaguer these bosses. For instance, simply because you’ve discovered how to harm the boss doesn’t mean that you’ll be triumphantly teabagging them in seconds flat. I fully realize that destroying the mice springs is the key to trapping the demonic cat, Clawz, but why then do they tend to compose themselves back to their original states upon drill dashing them like punching a reflex bag? Just because I know that I must direct the rotund Puffy further into the stage doesn’t mean that the awkward, finicky controls will immediately facilitate this desired outcome. Even though each boss (except for the big baddie of Wizeman) isn’t as simplistic as advertised and exposes the slippery nature of the game’s controls, the player will be forced to conquer them as proficiently as any of the levels. Like a final test at the end of a school semester, the time it takes to defeat a boss will factor considerably into the player’s final grade for a level. Failing to vanquish the foe promptly might result in one’s grade dropping by a whole letter. Bollocks. Also, despite how masterfully the player might have run through a level, failing to figure out how to hit a boss's sensitive spot will result in having to repeat the entire level. Mega bollocks. Considering that the game’s levels and bosses exist on entirely different dimensions of gameplay and competency, I’d expressly keep the two separated in the evaluation process like church and state.

Don’t do drugs, kids, or you’ll end up headlining a console doomed to be decimated by Nintendo and the newcomer kid of Sony. While I’m sure the surreal Nights…into Dreams was not initially designed as supplementary material for Sonic, the onus of supporting Sega’s hardware was circumstantially placed on this odd gem, and it couldn’t handle the pressure on its own. Admittedly, one can experience somewhat of the exciting, momentum-based gameplay mostly associated with Sonic here, but in the most perplexing way possible, to the point where any Sonic fan would probably lose their appetite. Night's presentation effectively evokes the marriage of whimsical fantasy and acid-laced psychedelia like Mario, but is bogged down by seemingly emulating the reduced motor skills that come with imbibing the hallucinogen. Nights is just too fucking weird on all fronts not to be condemned to its cult classic status. I appreciate it for its glamor and unparalleled originality, but I’m a weirdo who gravitates towards stuff like this. When a game comes hard to recommend to the average gamer, it shouldn’t be leading the charge into the console wars.

Yakuza Kiwami Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 11/30/2025)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Yakuza Kiwami

Developer: Ryu Ga Gotoku

Publisher: Sega

Genre(s): Open-World, Beat 'em Up

Platforms: PS4, PS3, PC, Xbox One

Release Date: January 21, 2016

I think I’m exploiting a loophole here in “starting the series” by playing Yakuza Kiwami. Obviously, this is not the first game in Sega’s enduring series surrounding the decorated Japanese mafia syndicate, but a remake of the series’ 2005 PS2 debut one decade later and two whole gaming generations onward. When the series' prequel, Yakuza 0, exploded in the international gaming consciousness, gamers outside of Japan started foaming at the mouth at the prospect of continuing the saga of the morally complex Kazuma Kiryu. However, I can see why being forced to seek out obsolete gaming hardware, whether or not the sophomore iteration of the Sony console bloodline be festering in one’s attic or held ransom by some tweaker on eBay, would be a hindrance in the process of experiencing the proper introduction to the franchise. Hence, the impetus for refurbishing the original Yakuza outing on the same engine that Yakuza 0 was built upon, a tested toolkit of gaming modernity that has already proven to produce excellent results, if the franchise’s prequel is any indication. As for the reason why I chose to charge forward from my position of a common post-Yakuza 0 series introduction, even though I have a working PS2 that is still hooked up and ready to roll, housing potentially eight mainline titles for the series on one system (the PS4) was too convenient to pass up. That, and I try to use my cherished childhood console sparingly these days because the ol’ gal’s become a little crickety in its old age. Playing both Persona 3 and 4 successively in 2020 almost gave it the video game console equivalent of a pulmonary embolism. Was my decision to disregard posterity for once going to lead to an improper evaluation of this remake? No, because Yakuza Kiwami’s position in the franchise allows it to function as a sequel on equal measure to its role as a renovation. However, because I’m only familiar with Yakuza 0, I can only assess Yakuza Kiwami as a sequel, and unfortunately, it pales in comparison to its predecessor in every way imaginable.

I may be ignorant of the first Yakuza’s content, but I’m still completely aware of the fact that the starting event that catalyzes the series is Kiryu being sentenced to ten years in the stony lonesome. It’s such a seminal incident for the series that it eludes all spoiler warnings that would normally be deemed as necessary to keep the player’s interest intact. However, I’ve never been privy to the finer details of how and why Kiryu ended up serving hard time for a decade until Yakuza Kiwami’s first chapter unfolded the context behind it. A Japanese jury has found Kiryu guilty of homicide, specifically, the unspeakable crime of patricide against his Yakuza superior, Captain Sohei Dojima. Still, we know that Kiryu abides by the same relative moral code as Bruce Wayne, in which murder is strictly haram (or so he says), so this revelation conflicts with his principles. This is why revealing that he’s taking the rap for his Yakuza blood brother, Nishiki, who gunned down Dojima for sexually assaulting their mutual childhood friend, Yumi, comes as no surprise. After a decade of rotting away for his act of extreme altruism, Kiryu reemerges on the streets of Kamurocho, where things aren’t quite the same as he left them. After falsely believing that Kiryu was paying the price for doing something heinous, I’m relieved to discover that his period of incarceration was predicated upon an act of nobility–an on-brand decision that doesn’t alter the way we perceive Kiryu’s characteristics. He’s really a chump, if anything.

In the time that Kiryu spent gardening and batting off unfriendly inmates, time has teleported him well into the 21st century and all of its digital anxieties. Japanese society has certainly developed extensively since the mid-1990s, but from the player’s perspective, provided they’re continuing from Yakuza 0, we haven’t seen hide nor hair of Kamurocho since Michael Jackson’s skin still had melanin. Surely in seventeen years, the most dangerous sector of Tokyo has changed drastically, right? As it turns out, besides the ubiquity of the “flip” model of cellphones, not especially. I never expected the city to have been bulldozed and reconstructed as the spitting image of gentrification, but it’s perplexing how much of Kamurocho has been uncannily retained since the vacant lot debacle. The one notable discernible difference in Kamurocho’s architectural foundation since Kiryu’s heyday is the stratosphere-stabbing monolith of the Millennium Tower, the enterprise financed by the real estate purchase that concluded Yakuza 0’s overarching conflict. Other than this behemoth shadowing the perimeter of Kamurocho’s central area, the various returning shops, restaurants, arcades, bars, and other returning commercial establishments will strike the player with deja vu at its most underwhelming sensational point. It’s not as if these retreaded places will be a sight for sore eyes after spending a decade behind bars for the player. One exception that I don’t recall visiting in Yakuza 0 is “Purgatory,” a covert gambling and erotic female entertainer operation that exists in the watery catacombs beneath Kamurocho’s sizable homeless camp. As much as I appreciate being included in this Eyes Wide Shut society and am entranced by the literal vibrant glow of candlelight and the metaphorical glow of saucy entertainment, why would I go the distance to this location when there’s a hidden casino behind a ramen restaurant in a more convenient corner of the city that offers the same illicit activities? Coliseum fights hardly constitute a minigame!

Above all else, Kamurocho feels like it's been freeze-framed since the days of heavy hairspray because the array of side content has mostly remained the same. Even though technology has expanded and progressed exponentially beyond Kiryu’s mobile communication methods, this natural evolution is hardly exhibited across Kamurocho. Both Mahjong and Shogi persisted another century past their prime and continue to confuse me to no end, and I managed to burn as much yen on unfortunate roulette bets and terrible hands in blackjack as Kiryu did when he could still afford it. Kiryu can dust off his vocal chops during solo karaoke sessions after a decade of subduing his singing ability while in prison, and replay enough pool and darts at Vincent to hustle drunk suckers and recover the amount of money lost while gambling. Kiryu is almost in a state of total disbelief that the pocket racing circuit is still intact and that it remains as active almost twenty years onward. I would typically opt to knock over some pins at the bowling alley over swinging a bat at oncoming balls in the batting cages, for the amount of “homeruns” needed to pass matched with the lack of aiming capabilities to the precise spot on the board almost makes me seek out juicing as a solution to its steep conditions. Fortunately, this condensed version of “America’s favorite pastime” (and Japan’s, let’s be real) has been streamlined to the point where the player is given more autonomy in directing the ball to a selected few spots on a simplified screen. Thankfully, this means that Kiryu’s testicles will remain their natural size. The breath of relief I exhaled when I discovered that the wretched catfight club had been terminated jumped back into my throat in horror when I learned that the tasteless black hole of my hard-earned cash had been reprocessed as a card game where printed, 2.5 X 3.5 inch pictures of the scantily-clad women are traded amongst school children. Pokémon doesn’t seem so bad now, does it, fuddy-duddy conservative parents of the world? While I can plainly see that the catfights have been reimagined, given the tarty models and the rock, paper, scissors conceit that determines the outcome of battle, the ability to pick from a wider pool of ladies and customize their critical maneuvers by collecting the cards broadens the probability of success past what seemed like a zero-sum chance at success in Yakuza 0. That, and you’ve got to appreciate the presentational scope surrounding the catfight’s new reintegration. The girls dress up in bikini bug costumes and wrestle on a tree stump surrounded by cheering rhinoceros beetles, an absurd depiction of Japan’s most storied and barbaric childhood hobby. If glancing at the half-naked foxy boxers inspires Kiryu to seek out a flesh-and-blood woman after becoming all hot and bothered, know that the telephone club is the only minigame from Yakuza 0 that is such a product of its time that the developers couldn’t reintroduce it in good conscience. Instead, Kiryu will request two specific ladies working at two different cabaret club locations in Kamurocho and channel his inner Casanova to woo them in what is essentially the “special training” feature of Majima’s cabaret club business in Sotenbori. I wasn’t aware that the objective of visiting the cabaret clubs was to spark a mutual romantic fervor between the hostess and their clients, or maybe Kiryu’s serious scowl is too irresistible for the hostesses to abide by the rules and regulations. I don’t mind the remixing and repurposing effort made to give the various minigames from Yakuza 0 a hint of discernibility. However, what is rather disillusioning pertaining to Yakuza Kiwami’s side content is how the total amount is subtracted from the previous title. Kiryu can no longer shake what his mother gave him at the dance clubs, and the SEGA-branded arcades have eschewed all arcade games in favor of allowing a space for children to play their perverted card game, with the occasional patron attempting to earn a toy with the crane games. You’re telling me that the arcades here haven’t expanded past Space Harrier and OutRun in almost two decades and instead have declined entirely? Sounds like bullshit to me. We haven’t leapt to 2005; we’ve been transported to a warped, “Twilight Zone” version of 1988.

Even though much of Kamurocho seems to have been preserved like a wax figure, one colossal underlying difference that clues the player in on how drastically the district has changed is that people are much poorer now. One major reason to set Kiryu’s origin story in the late 1980s was to vicariously celebrate the country’s booming economy, an era referred to as “the bubble” that I’m sure Sega shares a nostalgic fondness for. Because it’s been ages since the bubble has metaphorically popped and frugality has reentered the Japanese lexicon, the liveliness of Kamurocho has been significantly subdued. The lack of extreme economic prosperity is probably why Yakuza Kiwami does not feature an optional business arc, for undertaking an enterprise with a farm animal as one’s constituents in a normal economic environment almost ensures immediate bankruptcy. I wouldn’t say that Japan is experiencing a recession, but you can imagine that in a district with a homeless camp that expands approximately a quarter of Kamurocho’s entire perimeter, any sort of economic regression is bound to impact its denizens more severely than in other areas of Tokyo. Highlighting the harder times in Kamurocho the most prominently are the game’s substories, the staple “side quests” of the Yakuza series that allow Kiryu to delve deeper into the domestic ongoings of Kamurocho. Mostly, the economically destitute and ethically empty will attempt to swindle Kiryu out of his comparatively meager earnings with a number of different extortion scams. Three thugs will pretend that Kiryu has accidentally battered one of them and demand financial compensation for his “injuries.” One woman screams sexual harassment and will only be silenced by a sum of money. One man poses as a cop, asking to be bribed when Kiryu doesn’t pass his ocular patdown, etc. One of the more amusing scams that Kiryu almost falls victim to is in a substory titled “The Price of an F-Cup,” where Kiryu is badgered by an extraordinarily busty woman to consume copious, unhealthy amounts of alcohol. To be fair, a Japanese woman equipped with cans of that magnitude is akin to spotting a unicorn. One particularly interesting aspect about that specific substory is that it seems to have a greater significance than the majority of the others, considering its lengthier duration and integration of cinematic cutscenes. Yakuza 0 certainly only reserved this type of presentation when progressing the primary story arc, so I guess the few substories treated to the higher presentational quality are intended to be elevated above the rest. Still, I could’ve suspected that without minimizing the screen space and incorporating voice acting, because encountering the same scammers in separate substories screams padding to me.

While I’m lamenting the fact that Kiryu can no longer afford to fling yen around to the citizens of Kamurocho like an elderly person throwing seeds to ducks, I can confidently say that the way the developers have reworked Kiryu’s experience points in lieu of existing in a less opulent economy is all for the better. Upgrading Kiryu’s various combat attributes in Yakuza 0 was quite literally financed by his exorbitant earnings. Even though I could spare to pay for the inordinate prices required to supercharge Kiryu to his maximum capabilities, I did admittedly wish to prioritize other purchases around Kamurocho that also cost a pretty penny. Because Kiryu can only hope to attain the wealth bracket of the upper middle class in 2005, the developers have created an alternate experience mechanic that is totally separate from his finances and is allocated entirely to increasing his combat attributes. “Soul,” “tech,” and “body” are all aligned in their designated skill trees, upgrading Kiryu’s heat actions, array of combat skills, and health and power, respectively. Each unit requires a range between 3 and 85 experience points to fulfill, and since this battle compensation currency seems to recharge quickly, there is no longer an excuse not to sculpt Kiryu to his fullest potential.

Lest we forget that between the sonic swiftness of the “Rush” style and the broad-shouldered, meaty “Beast” style, with the “Brawler” style in the balanced center, lies Kiryu’s deadliest, most distinctive fighting categorization. “Dragon Style” was unlocked in Yakuza 0 after Kiryu achieved resounding success in his real estate venture, the wild card form of martial artistry, and Kiryu’s signature style, considering it reflects his distinguished reputation as the “Dragon of Dojima.” In Yakuza Kiwami, this fourth fighting style is available from the start, but don’t think that you’ll be bulldozing bad guys with the flick of a finger for the entire duration of the game. The caveat behind the Dragon Style’s early availability is that it’s gone limp and rusty in Kiryu’s decade of imprisoned dormancy. A separate skill tree is designated towards rehabilitating Kiryu’s most potent set of skills, but the restoration process isn’t as simple as distributing points per ability. New maneuvers can be taught through a few rigorous training rounds by former pacifist fight coordinator, Komaki, but the majority of the style’s rejuvenation involves another familiar face of the franchise with longer pervasiveness.

Presuming that Kiryu’s fighting prowess is a tad flaccid after all that time spent confined behind prison walls, this presumption behooves Majima to test Kiryu’s mettle by engaging in fisticuffs whenever he encounters him on the streets of Kamurocho. Once Kiryu is in his sights, the franchise’s epitome of chaotic neutral will ambush Kiryu with the excitability of a dog and the feral hyperactivity of a cat. Or, perhaps I should be comparing him to a raccoon, considering his choices to conceal himself include the insides of trash cans and beneath manhole covers. After proving to Majima that Kiryu isn’t soft and frail by kicking his wacky ass enough times, Majima will continue to emphasize his unpredictability by making his encounters more interesting for Kiryu once the “Majima Meter” meets a milestone. Majima will stage a zombie apocalypse, flaunt his unsettling finesse with a stripper pole before using the erotic club as a battle arena, and channel the comedic transvestite bit of Bugs Bunny as his cabaret club hostess alter ego “Goromi.” No, this gender-swapped disguise does not deceive Kiryu in the slightest. Once the player completes this milestone Majima scenario, Kiryu will be rewarded with the unlocking of another Dragon Style maneuver. Supplying Kiryu’s striking battle stance at its most tepid presents a great incentive to reinvigorate it to its fullest extent, and including everyone’s favorite crazy cyclops in this optional process is a fantastic way to shine the spotlight on his Maddog persona for the uninitiated Yakuza 0 newcomers when he has little stake in the main story. However, I have to address the underlying issue with this auxiliary activity that muddies the status of its optional nature. Because Majima is constantly out on the prowl in a city district with such enclosed architectural parameters as Kamurocho, Kiryu will likely always get caught in his peripheral line of sight, which will immediately engage in a pugilistic bout on the pavement. Add to the fact that some encounters are intended to take the player by surprise, and they’re going to be consistently catapulted into a boss fight, whether they’re prepared to face such a formidable foe or not. Majima may not hit Kiryu with the astounding power akin to being smacked by a Mack truck like Mr. Shakedown could dole out, but at least one could detect the hulking bully's location easily and evade him. As much as I adore Majima, I became so annoyed with his presence that my newfound frustration with him was fueling the vigor needed to curbstomp him time and time again.

Besides the fact that another layer is added to Majima’s maximum health bar whenever the “Majima Everywhere” letter rank increases, that exhausting, prolonged feeling of fighting Majima extends to every boss in Yakuza Kiwami because of a prevalent condition the developers have incorporated. At either the boss's halfway point or when he’s on the ropes, he’ll start to hold a stance and ubercharge himself briefly. Once he’s in the boss equivalent of Kiryu’s “heat mode,” both his offense and defense will be enhanced for the remaining duration of the fight. I understand that “second phases” are a common boss trope that I usually embrace, but Kiwami’s execution of this tried-and-true boss trope is fundamentally flawed. While the amplified stats of a second phase are acceptably heightened conditions, I find that the boss regaining an entire bar of health during their Super Saiyan status crosses the line of perks that come with augmenting their attributes. All it does is negate the player’s work and extend the fight to an unnecessary length. Now that I think of it, boosting their overall physicality is also excessive because each boss is still rather daunting even without the extra layer of formidability. Somehow, the base conditions of combat seem to be stacked against the player, or at least compared to the “normal” difficulty of Yakuza 0. Enemies will block blows with swifter reflexes, and they’ll often dash behind Kiryu in a flash as if their bodies are being manipulated by Hong Kong action film choreography. Forget about avoiding the full onslaught of any combo chain of punches dished out by any enemy once they successfully position themselves behind Kiryu and go to town on his vulnerable occipital lobe. To combat their newfound nimbleness, Kiryu must return the favor and also smack them senseless from the rear, but the only way Kiryu can reach this vantage point is by taking advantage of the “Rush Style’s” rapidity. The style I found to be the least impactful in Yakuza 0 ended up being the only branch of Kiryu’s move set I became comfortable using when dealing with enemies that were consistently running circles around me. As much as I’d love to compliment the developers for cultivating this style into a contender for seriously tenacious boss encounters, all it does is expose the lopsidedness and tedium in the combat that both weren’t issues in Yakuza 0.

Speaking of lopsidedness, once the player decides they’ve grown tired of flirting with cabaret girls and knocking every tooth out of Majima’s mouth, they might discover that the story of Yakuza Kiwami consistently exhibits its fair share of uneven pacing. After the first chapter establishes some context behind Kiryu’s status, or lack thereof, within the Yakuza, it sets the stage for how he’s going to get himself involved with their latest money-oriented escapade. This time around, a whopping ten billion yen has somehow disappeared from the Tojo Clan’s grasp, and Nikkyo Consortium chairman, Masaru Sera, winds up murdered in the midst of the immense thievery. While investigating the conundrum on his own terms, while every swinging dick in the Yakuza is frantically searching for the money like It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, Kiryu becomes the guardian for a helpless girl named Haruka. Even though she’s an orphan, Haruka is somehow connected to both the money and the disappearance of Kiryu’s friend Yumi, his longtime friend and the woman connected to the ordeal that sent Kiryu away for so long. While the mystery behind the various vanishings is the plot vehicle from here on out, Kiwami has a habit of meandering from its focal point of the narrative. Did we really need a glimpse into the dysfunctional relationship between Kiryu’s police ally Date and his teenage daughter, and the lengths she goes to debase herself in the interest of earning some income? On top of becoming distracted once in a while, Kiwami has a tendency to disrupt the series’ relationship between the freedom of the sandbox world model and the obligation to further the plot. Yakuza 0 lets the player loose in Kamurocho to explore its plethora of minigames and substories immediately after the introductory chapter establishes the scene, but it takes Kiwami up until the fourth chapter to let the player go outside and play after doing their homework, in a manner of speaking. Some chapters are entirely dedicated to the main narrative and nothing more, with longer periods of linear content and extensive cutscenes detailing exposition. These include the chapter where Kiryu infiltrates Sera’s funeral service, rescues Haruka from a group of Chinese Triads, and engages in a rematch between Shimano and his goons on the docks bordering the Tokyo Bay. I’m going to put my foot down and state that every chapter after the first in any Yakuza game should allow for a limitless recreational period that is ended at the player’s discretion. Having the player commit to long swathes of rigidity multiple times compromises too heavily on the series’ gameplay dynamic.

I’m certain that players returning from Yakuza 0 will still enjoy the story presented in Yakuza Kiwami, even if they must dedicate more of their attention span whenever it unfolds on screen. Most likely, their engagement with Kiwami’s events will be grounded on the fact that many of 0’s returning characters will drop like flies throughout the narrative. Reina is whacked after it’s revealed that she’s been providing vital information to the wrong party, Shimano is gunned down by Kiryu’s ally, Terada, and Kazama, the man that Kiryu would take a bullet for if he could successfully manage to intercept one whizzing his way, takes his last breath after he sacrifices himself to protect Haruka. With Yakuza 0 allowing these characters, who I’m assuming all lived and died in the original Yakuza title, to bloom a bit more in the player’s minds with a longer screen presence, their demises prove to be more impactful and emotionally resonating.

This is especially the case with the person at the center of Kiwami’s overarching character conflict. Because Kiryu deemed Nishiki’s freedom to be of greater value than his because of his ambitions, allowing his goals to flourish has resulted in Nishiki metamorphosing into an unrecognizable monster. He’s become as soulless and calculating as any of the other Yakuza executives that constantly butt heads with Kiryu, willing to go to the unethical lengths to retrieve the ten billion yen and bolster his career in the Yakuza ranks as a result of succeeding in this endeavor. The obvious answer behind Nishiki’s negative transformation is that power corrupts. While that classic diagnosis is still a relevant factor in determining what caused Nishiki’s change in demeanor, it’s not as if Nishiki was that impressionable being unchecked by Kiryu for so long. You see, Nishiki has what I like to call a “Luigi complex,” an ineffectual individual associated with someone of higher repute and capabilities, making Kiryu Mario in this context. They may be the same age and were both raised to become fierce Tojo Clan soldiers by their hitman captain foster father, but Kiryu undoubtedly emerged from the Sunflower orphanage as the alpha dog between the two of them. Continuing the dog analogy, while Kiryu is being hunted by the surviving Dojima Clan lackeys like a rabid pitbull for mauling their master, Nishiki is a bichon frise who the Tojo Clan higher-ups do not take seriously as a threat, nor a contender in their ranks, in the slightest. Even though his future has been given the chance to thrive as opposed to Kiryu’s blacklisted scampering around jilted Yakuza members always gunning for his head, Nishiki would ironically trade his potential prosperity for his would-be fate if it meant that he’d be perceived as someone to fear and command a sense of seriousness from. Because Nishiki’s morals and goals no longer align with Kiryu’s, he renounces his blood brother and dukes it out with him mono y mono at the highest floor of the Millennium Tower at the game’s emotionally-charged climax. Kiryu seems to beat Nishiki hard enough to rewire the circuitry in his brain to a point of clarity, judging by how he chooses to sacrifice himself to halt the nefarious schemes of slimeball politician, Kyohei Jingu, the true perpetrator behind all of the various conspiracies that have been fueling the fire of Kiwami’s plot. Just from their former title alone and the privileges that Kiryu was willing to relinquish to ensure Nishiki’s well-being, anyone who hadn’t known either of these characters prior to the moment when Kiryu tossed his freedoms aside would still understand and empathize with the strained relationship between him and his lifelong friend. Because of Yakuza 0 granting us an entire adventure seeing Nishiki only as Kiryu’s loyal, rational buddy, we are as disappointed by his dive into the depths of scum and villainy on a personal level as the protagonist.

Yakuza 0 sure was a great game, wasn’t it? The developers obviously thought so because they used its phenomenal quality as a template to “improve” the franchise's original outing on the comparatively primitive PS2. And sure, Yakuza 0 might be the pinnacle of the series’ open-world, beat em’ up formula, but will its legacy remain as impactful when its heir apparents are wearing its skin as a safeguard against failure? Besides the most marginal of gameplay tweaks that range from admirable to downright unbearable, Yakuza Kiwami is practically a carbon copy of its prequel predecessor. Actually, Kiwami is like Yakuza 0 if the international hit received an amputation, considering that the game lacks a lot of Yakuza 0’s content while still resembling it in every shape and form. I’ll give Yakuza Kiwami the benefit of the doubt that its content couldn’t exceed Yakuza 0’s total to retain a sense of fidelity to the more modest original. Still, if Kiwami is already content on aping Yakuza 0 to this degree, where its story is the only substantial note of discernibility, why not include all of its minigames to put it on equal standing with the vast gameplay expanse that we’re already accustomed to? Otherwise, you’re deliberately releasing an inferior product, which is inexcusable. When Yakuza Kiwami is erasing all but the story of its source material while also making several compromises with the modernized framework it desperately wishes to emulate, it doesn’t really satisfy the traditional definition of a remake, nor is it worthy of carrying Yakuza 0’s mantle after it set such a high standard for the series. Still, I’m feeling charitable towards Yakuza Kiwami because I remain hooked to the stark series formula that Yakuza 0 introduced me to on a purely personal level of engagement. However, if every future Yakuza game remains as attached to Yakuza 0’s hip to diminishing returns, Houston, we’re going to have a bloody problem on our hands.