Yakuza Kiwami 2 Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 12/23/2025)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Yakuza Kiwami 2

Developer: Ryu Ga Gotoku

Publisher: Sega

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

Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, PC

Release Date: December 7, 2017

Another avenue out of actually starting the canon Yakuza titles? Don’t mind if I do, I guess. Actually, Yakuza Kiwami, the modernized HD remake of Kiryu’s breakout (by release date) adventure through the corrupt streets of Kamurocho, left me quite jaded, unfortunately. Sure, I, like everyone else, adored Yakuza 0, and I could probably declare it as my favorite title I’ve freshly played since I started reviewing video games. In saying this, my adoration for Yakuza’s prequel does not translate into desiring for every subsequent Yakuza title to uncannily mimic it like Jennifer Jason Leigh matching Bridget Fonda’s pixie cut. Persisting with that formula is a surefire recipe for disappointment, grating on Yakuza 0’s ultra-polished and refined foundation for the franchise by proxy. Given that we’re to believe that the franchise cannot supersede Yakuza 0, why WOULDN’T the sequel to the remake of the original Yakuza game, Yakuza Kiwami 2, also follow suit in inadvertently reminding us how exceptional Yakuza 0 was with diminishing returns upon reentry? I’m in too deep to just reroute myself towards actually seeking out the original as the representative for Kiryu’s sophomore story, so I fully expected feeling the same kind of resentment towards Yakuza 0 as Zelda fans often express towards Ocarina of Time: the breakout hit whose glowing reputation was ruined by the developers using it as a creative crutch forevermore. However, full disclosure: Yakuza Kiwami 2 decides not to follow its fellow remake predecessor and instead shares the same engine as the then-recently released mainline Yakuza 6. I can’t attest to the specific comparisons between the two until four whole mainline entries from now, but at least reshaping the second Yakuza outing with this modern game engine will be fresh from my perspective. After Yakuza Kiwami 2 deviated from the pattern I had anticipated with growing disdain, the result is a mix of appreciating the changes and disliking them in an equal, admittedly wishy-washy measure.

The narrative resolution to the first Kiwami game sure was a doozy, eh? Half of Yakuza 0’s cast were slain within the span of thirteen chapters, and the majority of them were close companions to Kiryu in varying degrees of relation. When one friend or surrogate family member bit the dust, Kiryu would then be forced to restart from the denial point of the five stages of grief once another person he cherished perished due to the hectic fiasco surrounding the missing 10 billion yen. He’s had a whole year for time to heal his wounds since this barrage of emotional bricks kept piling on and on, and adopting Haruka has given him a newfound positive purpose in life in light of all he has lost. Still, I think Kiryu needs a longer period of respite than a single 360-degree earthly rotation around the sun because now, the overwhelming onus of preventing an all-out war between the Tojo Clan and Omi Alliance has been catapulted into his lap after members of the latter faction assassinate Kiryu-elected Tojo Clan chairman Terada. Several pernicious forces exist on the Omi opposition that are trying to upset the peace between the two rival regional Yakuza syndicates, but undoubtedly the biggest threat to the overall civil order is Ryuji Goda, the son of Omi Alliance chairman Jin Goda, who wants to wage war with Kamurocho to use as leverage to gain ultimate power within Kansai’s Yakuza ranks. Because the connotations of Majima acting as Kiryu’s rival have kind of ebbed after so many friendly interactions with one another, it’s thrilling to see a new character fulfilling that role who seems like Kiryu’s equal from the standpoint of pure power.

Also, because the Omi Alliance has such a prevalent thematic presence in Kiwami 2, Kiryu will spend as much time roaming around their territory as he does scouring the streets of Kamurocho. Yes, the second Yakuza title introduces the recurring setting of Sotenbori, Osaka’s Kamurocho equivalent known for its vibrant nightlife and overflow of thuggery. I’m already well-acquainted with this energetic district from spending an inordinate amount of time in it as a proto-Mad Dog Majima in Yakuza 0–and because Kiwami 2 is a remake released sequentially after the prequel, I don’t feel inclined to extrapolate the finer details of Osaka’s lively sector pretending as if I was a stranger in a strange land. The river still divides the district into two distinct sections, with the ritzier north illuminated like Times Square to the older, more modest business-oriented southern section–and two boardwalks beneath the two bridges standing parallel between the flowing water passage. It also remains far cleaner and far less congested than Kiryu’s home of Kamurocho, which goes without saying when your city planner opts for cogent symmetry instead of a mindless, byzantine urban sprawl and a sizeable portion of your city isn’t dedicated to an impoverished settlement. It might not be big enough to support an entire Yakuza adventure on its own, but Sotenbori still evokes the feeling of a vacation destination–in that I’m hesitant to return to Kamurocho once I’ve spent a substantial amount of time here. However, if one is feeling homesick, Kiryu can now travel back and forth from Sotenbori to Kamurocho with a fairly priced taxi fee.

Despite its relatively smaller size compared to Kamurocho, the developers have ensured to legitimize Sotenbori’s scope as a setting by basically offering most, if not all, of what Kamurocho features in regard to its auxiliary activities. Truth be told, despite their intended positions as optional larks to deviate from the story and broaden the player’s open-world immersion, Yakuza’s minigames tend to become the most enterprising factor of anyone’s several-hour playthrough across any title in the series. They make us laugh, make us cheer, and make us cry–and series veterans will attest that those tears are ones of frustration, not purely sadness. In Kiwami 2, besides the gambling and the native card/panel games like shogi and oicho-kabu that I’m still avoiding like the plague, the games that have persisted as series staples are the less objectionable ones. However, somehow, their iterations here seem to have raised their standard difficulty curves up to that patented Yakuza minigame pain-inducing notch. The batting cages have reverted back to the unreasonably steep conditions needed to pass the beginner’s course, and the karaoke scores seem to be graded on the same scale as the Japanese education system, where perfection will warrant an “A-.” For some odd reason, they stripped away the side view perspective during the vertical half of the crane games. What if, non-hypothetically, you have the same lack of depth perception as Majima, huh? How else am I intended to free the axolotls and Super Monkey Ball characters from captivity? While I’m on the subject of Sega’s other interactive properties, one feature from Yakuza 0 that does return from being inexcusably absent is the inclusion of two arcade machines: Sega’s answer to Street Fighter II in Virtua Fighter 2 and a more obscure fighting game starring various Gundam mechs called Virtual-On. Both of these Sega-brand coin consumers were over a decade old in 2006 when Kiwami 2 was set, but at least it’s sensible to have some semblance of video game representation in a 21st-century arcade as opposed to when the first Kiwami game omitted them completely. If Kiryu has to step away from the machines to relieve himself, “Toylets” is a new minigame that attempts to alleviate the tedium of this bi-hourly bodily function. When Kiryu stands at a urinal, an eye-level screen will entertain him with either a tug-of-war spitting match or acting as a sentient cloud using its inherent gust power to blow a woman’s skirt up like she’s Marilyn Monroe, with the outcome coinciding with the ferocity of Kiryu’s urine flow. The relatively effortless mechanics aside, what irks me about “Toylets” is not that it’s inherently the weirdest minigame the developers have conjured up across the series, but that it verges into a stereotypical weirdness associated with modern Japanese culture that I’m glad the Yakuza games have used sparingly up until this moment. If exposing the panties of some poor animated girl doesn’t display that patented Japanese perversity to your liking, then perhaps photographing skintily-clad gravure models as they traipse around in several sexy poses will prove titillating enough. The objective here is to string coherent sentences together for Kiryu while all the blood that usually hydrates his brain has collected into his throbbing erection, but knowing his country of origin, I’m surprised I’m not also forced to mash a button to prevent blood from jetting out of his nose.

The first Kiwami game also did away with what I’ve dubbed in my Yakuza 0 review as a “macro game,” an optional business-oriented venture whose content tends to be both meatier and lengthier than your average minigame (I’d hardly call chronically kicking Majima’s ass on the streets “optional.”) Conversely, the “macro games” return with a vengeance in Kiwami 2, with two separate enterprises that couldn’t be more dissimilar. Not only are these macro games divided by district like they were in Yakuza 0, but there also seems to be a clear gender dichotomy that exists between the two as well. Cabaret clubs are still thriving in Sotenbori as a cornerstone of the district’s nightlife culture, and now Kiryu is the one who must raise the underdog club of Four Shine up from its current state of pathetic mediocrity before it is trampled underfoot by the merciless top dogs of the scene. Kiryu’s climb to the top of Sotenbori’s cabaret circuit is also being assisted by the experience of Yuki, the primary hostess of Club Sunshine turned struggling manager of Four Shine. Sound familiar, Yakuza 0 returnees? Well, your overall mileage with this iteration of the cabaret club will be entirely contingent on how you perceived it in Yakuza 0, for the mechanics and progression are an EXACT, carbon copy replica of how they were in the previous entry. The only difference is that all of the rival cabaret club hostesses Kiryu competes against are all the subordinates of a twerpy, arrogant pimp named Kanzaki, who is also the current manager of the now-ultimate Sotenbori cabaret club of Club Sunshine. You really do either die or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Personally, I adored operating the cabaret club in Yakuza 0 to the extent where I almost felt inspired to buy a snazzy tuxedo and eyepatch combo and seek gainful employment in a real-life cabaret club circle, and my enthusiasm didn’t wane while ascending through the ranks again in Kiwami 2.

Still, I will concede that this copied-and-pasted clone of this magnificent macro game feels rather cheap, so it’s a relief that the one featured in Kamurocho is wholly fresh (provided you haven’t played Yakuza 6, apparently). In the never-ending list of Majima’s unanticipated eccentricities, you can now cross off serving as the founder of “Majima Construction” as one of his more productive impulse decisions. Majima would be the very last person in Kamurocho that I’d want handling hulking construction equipment, but evidently, he’s treating the potential danger of the project with absolute grave sincerity, if his refusal to remove his yellow safety helmet even outside of the construction site is any indication. The Majima family has banded together as a ragtag construction crew to repave the depressingly spacious homeless camp into another appealing area of Kamurocho’s already impressive span of urbanity. However, if you recall the insanity that ensued over the little slab of land that was less than a single acre in Yakuza 0, imagine how fierce the competition is when the entire northeast corner of Kamurocho is suddenly up for grabs. The covetous realtor sharks of Kamurocho will stop at nothing to seize the area of Majima’s construction operation, so Kiryu must cultivate all of Majima’s manpower to then orchestrate them in something that strongly resembles the tower defense genre of game. Kiryu will align up to eight units of varying battle classifications to prevent waves of realtor goons from pulverizing their construction equipment, and the volume of adversity in those waves tends to be multiples of ten in numbers that can peak at over a hundred. Every so often, a beefier executive will accompany the deluge of red shirt cronies, and eventually, like the cabaret clubs, the current foe of greater narrative significance will show themselves and test their might against Majima and his motley crew of almost every conceivable male character in the game. Whereas working with the ladies in Sotenbori is classy, sophisticated, and the competition is fairly cordial, this masculine undertaking sees a veritable bloodbath being spilled on the streets in the name of maintaining control and dominance. Puts classic gender roles into perspective, eh? Admittedly, I’m not too attuned to the realm of the tower defense genre, but then again, I didn’t sign up to simulate the steep, stressful tactical wizardry of a five-star general. Because commanding Majima’s construction crew is a purely optional escapade, I greatly appreciate that the gameplay mechanics from Kiryu’s omniscient perspective are accessible to a fault. In fact, it seems that even a marginal level of proactivity from Kiryu’s commander position will prove to put Majima at a disadvantage. Before the hordes storm towards Majima’s equipment, the player can position each member of Majima’s crew to secure a better vantage point. Even though this sounds like the most essential of tower defense tactics, somehow, inexplicably, performing this preemptive measure is detrimental because the character will interpret this position as an immutable post and will allow dozens of goons and bosses to waltz past them if not manually directed otherwise. Only by staying idle will the gameplay ironically become more fluid, which feels incredibly counterintuitive. Other than that glaring gameplay oversight, I was relatively amused and stimulated by Yakuza’s bare-bones attempt at a tower defense minigame. It’s definitely not as involved, inventive, or invigorating compared to the cabaret club, but perhaps rehashing it in a subsequent Yakuza game/remake will cure those gameplay hiccups with hindsight, provided Majima gets his hands on the schematics to erect another Smile Burger joint or something.

But in between all of the aforementioned optional exploits provided by any Yakuza game to flesh out its open world foundation, every Yakuza veteran knows full well that they’re all subsidiary to the series’ primary gameplay mechanic: beating the everloving snot out of the ceaseless torrent of vicious cretins that appear in packs all over Kamurocho and Sotenbori. If the sequential order of Yakuza titles is similar to mine and you’ve received a double dosage of Yakuza 0’s footing after playing the first Kiwami, you’ll notice immediately that Kiwami 2’s engine is the core component that separates the two remakes. However, the second Kiwami game cannot claim this reworking of Yakuza’s gameplay as its own patented piece of innovation. As mentioned before, Kiwami 2 adopts the “dragon engine” from Yakuza 6, the final chapter in the Kiryu saga before the series branched out considerably, which was still in recent memory. Since the engine that Yakuza 0 showcased is considered by and large the pinnacle of Yakuza’s beat ‘em up gameplay mechanic, are we to believe that this newfangled framework is a display of the developers surpassing perfection? Not exactly, and that’s the diplomatic answer. In short, I would classify the “dragon engine” as an experimental framework rather than an attempt to supplant Yakuza 0’s through pure objective technical superiority. The prime initiative with this engine seems to be broadening the open world expanse in a more literal, foundational way rather than offering gobs of activities. The tighter back alleyways, indoor environments, and other foreground setpieces that would typically be decorative have now been absorbed into the vast open world realm instead of being designated as a small hub separated from the exterior expanse it lies within. Besides mitigating the tedium of loading screens and the layer of spatial depth added to the locker key collection process, the bigger picture behind the seamless transitions is that it complements the, well, openness of the open-world genre. I’d argue that once seamlessness is a feasible facet of the open-world genre’s foundation, it should be indispensable, but Kiwami 2 raises a counterargument to this claim with its performance issues. Not only has the overall framerate been heavily degraded, but engaging the heat actions during combat sometimes causes the action to pause completely for a few seconds. It occurred so often that I stopped worrying that my game had frozen up until only the third chapter. If this is the compromise we have to make to erase all superficial barriers in an open-world map, then I’d rather wait another console generation or two to ensure a smooth performance standard.

The “dragon engine” also affects Kiryu’s combat mechanics in ways that extend beyond its unfortunate tendency to buffer like any online video on my 2000s-era dial-up internet connection. Apparently, the four flavors of fisticuffs that I was accustomed to Kiryu employing for specific battle conditions were a gameplay component contributed by Yakuza 0 and are restricted to its originator and its direct Kiwami impersonator. I’m merely speculating once again, but Kiwami 2’s sole battle stance for its protagonist is a reversion back to the series’ bog-standard combat style. One controller button engages a successive series of punches while another one delivers Kiryu’s feet up the asses of Kamurocho/Sotenbori’s most pugnacious civilians. The player can alternate between both ends of Kiryu’s bodily means of offense, but the resulting combo chain achieved is still underwhelmingly non-descript. Because boredom started to become a prevalent feeling when being bombarded by the various violent wastrels, the utilization of weapons became more commonplace as a means to expedite the battle and sprinkle some spice onto the fights.

While Kiryu’s combat is lacking the nuance of player choice accommodations and is missing that kick-ass exhibitional element, it doesn’t mean that the “Dragon of Dojima” has become a flabby dead fish as middle age encroaches even further. In fact, Kiwami 2’s iteration of Yakuza’s prime protagonist is arguably his most powerful thus far. Kiryu’s innate battle prowess may not be as mechanically impressive anymore, but the game does its damnedest to amplify the more minimal array of attacks to an unprecedented maximum. When all of Kiryu’s battle attributes such as health, heat, offense, and defense have been boosted to a point of noticeable improvement, he becomes a walking, talking juggernaut as physically imposing as a Japanese Terminator. Sure, Kiryu acts all downtrodden whenever an enemy delivers a haymaker his way, but the sliver of life energy lost from the red health bar suggests that he’s just acting overly dramatic to humor them. His heat gauge, in particular, is definitely the facet of Kiryu’s attributes that greatly promotes this unrivaled scale of strength. Not only will the heat actions shred entire layers of health off of bosses, but Kiryu only needs one of a potential five or six heat bars extended from the base to activate one of these potent automated maneuvers. When the heat gauge is at its fullest, Kiryu can engage in “extreme heat mode,” an ubercharged state that not only increases his offense, but makes him invulnerable to being vanquished as long as there is any amount of electric blue juice in the heat meter. Even when Kiryu has exhausted his heat energy, the game insists on continuing to use heat mode as a crutch by refilling it in a “feel the heat” sequence that prematurely ends a boss battle with an automated, flashy “fatality” stunt. I didn’t enjoy the artificial methods that the first Kiwami tacked onto Yakuza 0’s difficulty curve for the sake of discernability, but I never wished for a Yakuza game’s combat to be rendered practically effortless by the bevy of combat perks. Facilitating the facile combat is the fact that the EXP tokens needed to upgrade Kiryu’s monstrous might are arbitrarily dispensed for any and all activities listed on the completion sheet, no matter which color-coded symbol they coincide with. Kiryu even gains a fair sum of these EXP points by performing basic tasks like eating, whether it be formally sitting down at one of the myriad of restaurants or pulling a Poppo-brand bento box out of his pocket for quick, convenient revitalization. Is the abundant stream of EXP points the reason why Kiryu’s appetite now has to abide by a new stomach meter that limits how much food he can consume at once? I don’t care if Kiryu has a tummy ache; he’ll gorge on sushi and ramen until his health bar is 100% replenished.

The five EXP tokens can also be obtained in droves by completing the series staple substories. Unlike the previous Kiwami entry, I didn’t detect a prevalent pattern painting some thematic undertones across a sizable handful of these short stories. Then again, those same substories that illustrated the economic downturn of Kamurocho tended to belabor the point not only with the same extortion schemes being hatched, but reusing the same crooks performing the same schemes to pad the exorbitant substory roster, which became quite grating. Therefore, I’m glad that Kiwami 2’s happenings display the same kind of kooky creativity as Yakuza 0, also divided relatively equally between Kamurocho and Sotenbori, no less. Shall we? When Kiryu first encounters an elderly woman he nicknames “Granny White” as a term of endearment, he figures that he’ll be performing the gentlemanly duty of assisting a frail old lady through the rough and tumble city streets. To his and the player’s surprise, “Granny White” is the female equivalent of Kiryu and Majima’s sensei Komaki, kicking the asses of all of her would-be Triad assailants with only marginal assistance from Kiryu. While we’re on the subject of older women that possess uncharacteristic amounts of strength, one awkward walking traffic blunder with “The Obatarian” in Sotenbori confirms that she’s alive and well, plus up to her old tricks of disingenuously screaming sexual harassment and then brazenly committing it herself. Kiryu’s personal ethics are tested when he’s coerced into indulging the baby diaper fetish of a Yakuza boss, as well as performing an impromptu line reading for a yaoi smut game in development. A standout substory in Kamurocho sees Kiryu afflicted with the curse of being haunted by a creepy, pallid ghost girl after watching a cursed videotape. He seeks out the aid of an exorcist who, hilariously, reveals he’s a scam artist peddling fake exorcism stones after seeing the spirit himself and shitting his pants in fear. Essentially, it’s Ringu with a pinch of that cynical Yakuza flair, but being treated to horror content in an unexpected source is always a delight. The Amon Clan, the family of hyper-hard assassins whose fights are unlocked as the final substories in every Yakuza title, actually holds some narrative substance when clan leader Jo Amon roughs up Komaki and steals his fighting technique text he believes to be the missing piece in having sufficient fighting knowledge to beat Kiyru. I recommend going the distance to fight all of the Amon brothers for a taste of an authentic challenge this game is deprived of, but I will not suggest fighting all four of them in straight succession in the last bouncer mission (a macro game in Kamurocho I didn’t mention because it didn’t fit the contrasting relationship between the others) because it is diabolically difficult to an unprecedented degree. Also, be forewarned of the implementation of some minigames in a select few substories and the adequate proficiency needed to pass them. I can at least use the “peerless tile” as my unassailable mahjong trump card, and there are purchasable items to broaden the margin of error in the batting cages. However, to whoever on the development team decided that Kiryu should reach the high score on the advanced golf course to complete a substory, your mom’s a giant hoebag who gives backroom blowjobs to the poorest, most pathetic patrons of the lowest-earning cabaret club in Japan.

The simplicity of Yakuza substories is especially refreshing when the grander narrative surrounding the game is a convoluted clusterfuck. The immediate establishment of Tojo Clan versus Omi Alliance with Ryuji Goda leading the Omi opposition is a straightforward enough premise, but then that sound source of conflict then zigzags to countless betrayal twists that seem outright random, loads of expositional lore dumps from all angles without having one marinate in the player’s mind for even a second before darting to another one, and another antagonistic faction whose relevance to the overarching conflict isn’t revealed until far later in the story called the “Jingweon Mafia.”

At the center of all of this is Kaoru Sayama, a young, shrewd police woman who has gained the reputation in her native precinct of Sotenbori as the “Yakuza Hunter.” She’s propped up as a love interest for Kiryu to remind us that our beloved, sober bruiser still has needs like any other red-blooded male, under the guise of keeping Kiryu under “protective custody” that is so transparent that even she probably knows where her relationship with Kiryu is headed from the moment they meet. However, what isn’t obvious to us all is that this feisty breaker of law enforcement glass ceilings is the key in tidying up all of the loose ends of this jumbled mess of a plot. Sayama’s primary goal in collaborating with Kiryu is figuring out her origins as a lifelong orphan, and what she discovers is that her mother was a Korean woman with connections to the Jingweon Mafia. She became orphaned during a pivotal piece of lore that occurred in 1980, when thirty-something Jingweon members were slaughtered by Tojo Clan forces after their negotiation of peace was inadvertently compromised by a clueless, prepubescent Kiryu. Whoops. After the Jingweon’s contentious relationship with the Tojo Clan is explained, their relevance amidst the Omi Alliance struggle is deepened when we learn that Ryuji Goda was ADOPTED by Chairman Goda and shares the same familial half-Korean blood as Sayama, his biological half-sister. For someone who is outwardly status-obsessed and constantly bolsters his standing as the heir apparent to the expanding Omi Alliance empire as his source of arrogance, one would think this revelation would cause his head to explode. However, when Kiryu and Sayama confront Ryuji at the top of the Millennium Tower, he calmly comes to terms with his true origins in a flash. It seems obvious to me that Ryuji isn’t Kiwami 2’s true villain as he executes Patriarch Sengoku for his heinous crime of kidnapping Haruka to lure Kiryu into a trap. Still, he’s not the least bit shocked and stunned by Sayama spitting the truth to him? Did he know all along and was striving for unparalleled prestige to compensate? If so, I think mentioning it would strike a particularly sensitive insecurity he harbors, and he’d lash out as a result. Maybe after fighting Kiryu again after getting heated and hearing Takashima and a not-dead Terada reveal their treacherous plots to dismantle the Tojo Clan while knocked out, he’d realize the error of his ways and redeem himself as a result. Otherwise, the dynamic character arc they’re trying to accomplish feels uncharacteristically contrived.

I can’t really assess Yakuza Kiwami 2 on its narrative because it might be a sin of the father scenario in attempting to stay loyal to the source material. However, what I can parse is how Kiwami 2 succeeds the previous Kiwami remake, and it's still difficult to say if it’s an improvement on all fronts. On one hand, the Dragon Engine has turned the sleek, versatile combat into a compressed, one-dimensional bore with an inexcusably slow framerate to boot, so it’s not winning the same performance superlatives as its immediate predecessor. I can’t even honestly state that Kiwami 2 is at least carving out its own rendition of the Yakuza experience, unlike how Kiwami 1 shamelessly rode Yakuza 0’s coat tails, knowing full well that it’s as guilty of emulating another title in the series I likely won’t be playing for some time. For now, I suppose, at least Kiwami 2 feels fresher to me at this moment, and it is overall a smoother, less jarring experience than the original Kiwami title. The Yakuza series fatigue I anticipated has still yet to emerge.

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.