After the previously Japan-only The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles finally released worldwide this past summer, more people than ever have been able to sample the series' unique brand of judicial mayhem and what better time to share your own AA-inspired game with the world?
Unfortunately, the derivative defending of Tyrion Cuthbert : Attorney of the Arcane withers in the shadow of its inspiration.
From the basic structure of cases (court case - investigation - more court case) down to lifting the very same character poses and breakdowns when battling in court, there was a strong sense of deja vu throughout my time with TC:AA's demo.
Now, although it can be creatively bankrupt to simply file the serial numbers off of someone else's creation, there have been some great games in recent years to take strong inspiration from classic games (take upcoming Zelda and Souls-like Tunic, for example). Judging from the admittedly WIP demo, TC:AA is not set to be one of them.
Comprising the first case, the plot is farily by the numbers : it's up to fresh-faced lawyer Tyrion Cuthbert to defend a poor girl accused of killing her father with magic for his very first case.
In TC:AA's world, only the nobility can perform magic and typically only a few spells at that. The rules of magic will be familiar to players of D&D, with a detailed description of how the spell is performed and its school of magic, and are implemented as evidence in cases much like in Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright.
Why rookie lawyers always get assigned life-or-death cases, I don't know, but the prosecutor for this case is also green. Aria Steelwind is your musically-named rival for at least the first case and despite being roughly the same age, she looks down on Tyrion as an "amateur". It's these kinds of odd character beats and dialogue choices that plague TC:AA's demo.
At one point, your mentor (who's saddled with Edgeworth-esque allegations of falsifying evidence) refuses to let you look at the accused's spellbook to use as evidence for some kind of teaching moment - in the middle of a murder trial!
Flashbacks are used between scenes to flesh out backstory to the case, but end up being recounted to Tyrion through exposition just 10 minutes later, grinding the pace to a halt.
These little issues, along with the inconsistent artstyle that makes every character look like they're from a different game and just not at home with the backgrounds, add up over the course of the demo and made my time with TC:AA more frustrating than anything.
Outside of court, you get the chance to harass talk with witnesses at the crime scene, as well as presenting evidence with the hope of loosening their lips, though without the hilarious "bad reactions" if you show them something completely irrelevant like in AA.
Similar to the Psyche-Locks of AA: Justice for All, the persuasion system is perhaps TC:AA's most interesting wrinkle in the formula. About halfway through the investigation, Tyrion has to persuade the detective working on the case who hates his mentor to help out. The tutorial promises branching pathways in the full game based on how well you do with this, but funneled me to a "good" outcome despite how bad a job I did.
Beyond this - and a shallow deduction mechanic that just involves filling in the blanks through trial and error - it's a fairly beat-for-beat retread of Ace Attorney's mechanics, but less inspiring in execution.
Stats
Playtime - 2 hours (DEMO)
Genre - Visual novel; Adventure game; Fantasy
Developer - Diamondhenge Entertainment
Publisher - Diamondhenge Entertainment
Platforms - Steam; Android
Release - 30/12/2022 (Tentative)
In 5 words - It's a... kind of magic.
Set to feature music from YouTube stars Insaneintherain and Shady Cicada, TC:AA's IndiGoGo campaign fell 33% short of its £21,833 goal and has an uncertain future. I believe with a good editor, the game could be a good Ace Attorney clone, but hope that this setback leads to developer Stephen Charles to give Tyrion a bit of his own identity.
