Sequelling: A tale about turtles and burning birds

 A little while ago I finished Phoenix Wright - Ace Attorney: Justice For All which is the second game in the Phoenix-franchise, following a wonderful visual novel, and more recently I finished Runaway 2 which I blindly bought because I liked the first part. The first game wasn't awesome, it was merely good. But it's a click'n'point adventure so I liked to save this sagging old genre from extinction. Now ... was it worth it? [...]
(show me)(don't show me)

I'll start with "Phoenix 2". My expectations for this game were quite high because of its predecessor Phoenix Wright - Ace Attorney which I really liked. The link of my review is up there in my introduction. An astounding game. But how was the sequel?

The visuals were pretty much the same which isn't bad at all. The anime style did suit right from the beginning and so there's nothing to complain about. The music was a shock at first because my favourite gorgeous tune that always kicked in when the protagonist Phoenix got the upper hand in court seemed to be replaced by another, in comparison horrible unfitting piece of music. But I was quite relieved to hear my beloved track later on realizing that the old soundtrack was just enhanced a bit.

And talking about enhancements of old things: didn't I predict "material recycling" to occur? Let's have a look: "And I expect worse from the sequels of Phoenix, with which I mean that characters of the first game might occur in the sequels." There, didn't I? ;^p Although, I feared it would be worse: apart from one annoying old character only those who fit well into the universe around Phoenix made it to the sequel. And those were added by new wonderful opponents and fellows. So I can somewhat ignore the material recycling because I expteced it early on.

I've heard other players complain about the stories - apart from the last case - being worse than in the first game which I can't quite agree with. I actually enjoyed all of those cases, especially the very first one. Of course, it was smaller one, in comparison to the other cases. Just like in the first game. After all, it's thought to be a tutorial for those players who didn't play the first game. And I really liked the idea of letting the protagonist suffer from amnesia so that everything needs to be explained to him once more. It is a nice balance between satisfying the core players and new players, IMHO. And about the last case ... I can imagine how hardcore Phoenix fans liked that one. Without spoiling it, I must say that I, too, liked the twist of "rules" ;^)

Finally, I have to say a few things about a new feature of the game I haven't told about yet, although it was a rather big new feature: the "physical blockades". During the investigation sequences certain characters might be confronted with a secret they obviously don't want to talk about and which is denied even if Phoenix dug in their histories and found out about it - unless you can proof the connection. Actually that's nothing new to the old model of just talking to NPCs and occasionally showing them an item - but it seems more real this way, I think.

Oh, and before I forget it: in the first game there was one thing I was a little bit unhappy with and that was how easy the game was. You could accuse someone falsely in court or show the wrong proof when needed, thus losing a life. The next day all lives were returned, or renewed. But now this has changed a little bit, as the lives are replaced by a "health gauge" - which is rather untypical, or let's better say "unfitting" for a visual novel, in my humble opinion. This life gauge also depleats and is refilled but under other conditions which makes the game much harder. And sadly more frustrating but with this I know that's just me being dumb ;^)

Anyway, Phoenix Wright - Ace Attorney: Justice For All gets a 9.1 out of 1o from me. I was much more frustrated compared to the predecessor. Because of the harder difficulty which I actually asked for in my last review (>< )


Now, the other game I played, Runaway 2, ... I'm gonna say it straight: this game was a big disappointment. But let me explain why I think so.

The graphics style is not NextGen but if you consider that this is a C&P-adventure you might agree how comparably well it is. Its bright colors are all the more suitable in the beautiful environment of a jungle. The music did its part to guide the player through some more or less rich puzzling and dialogue digging. The atmosphere was nothing to complain about, really.

What did get on my nerves though was the - at times - horrible voice acting. Some voice actors never seem to get the intonation right, so that, for example, the character who's always high sounds as if his voice actor didn't know what "being high" actually means. Even the main character Brian was voiced badly, luckily not the whole time but here and there. Which can destroy everything in a game that is based so badly on story and voice acting. Although, in the earlier days of the genre I didn't miss the voices at all. Maybe I should have turned the voices off for this game. Well, there's always another time.

The story continued more or less where the first part ended, namely during the protagonist's vacation. The game sets the player in a crashed plane on a journey to find his lost girlfriend and lots of trouble accompanying her. I really liked the game so far. The first two, or let's say two and a half chapters of the game made me laugh in joy and anticipate the rest of the game. But then this game that focused so much on realism since the very first riddle of the very first game, this game turned into a fantasy novel which I could have never seen coming. And at some points - although that is rather typical for the genre itself - I just couldn't progress for crying out loud. Because I didn't do the correct dialog sequence! Uh, never mind ... I mean, I was stuck there for weeks. Literally for weeks. But as I said: never mind ...

It was nice how the developers kind of payed homage to Indiana Jones and even to the Monkey Island series late in the game but the way it was realized - which is rather bad - actually insulted "MI" in my eyes. The quality of the riddles was shattered and didn't make much sense to me, and this only to have a minor connection to Monkey Island - which I'm sure was not recognized by many who played the game. And the end ... well, of course I won't spoil anything but let's just say that I didn't like the end :^/

And because of all this Runaway 2 gets a 4.7 out of 1o from me. Believe me, it would have been a worse rating if it wasn't for the first two chapters ...
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