something to be said about how kristoph's only known mentee is a loud young man who dresses flashily, is particular about music and so passionate about the truth that he forgets to take people's feelings into account sometimes and follows the thread of logic even when it's disadvantageous to his case or people he cares about/admires. and who also does vocal training. like. just admit you miss your brother and go visit him. freak.

☕️ Dual Destinies was not a good game (I don't really think this)

alright pal i’ve been simmering on this for the last five years so get ready for a ‘keep reading’ worthy post

as a person, i love athena, okay? like, if athena and i went to school together, i’d probably spend a good chunk of my day staring at her and wondering how i could get her to talk to me. i think she’s really cool and funny and quirky and she’s so fucking smart omg youngest lawyer in waa history!

as a character, however, i think athena’s story and entrance were deeply misplaced by the writers of ace attorney. so much so that when i finished playing dual destinies, i hated the game enough to refuse to play spirit of justice until a year after the game’s release. and a lot of people were really mad about athena’s place in soj, right? she deserved more than a case and a half followed by benching the last case, right? but here’s something to consider: athena didn’t really have a place in soj’s story anyways. 

apollo justice: ace attorney ended in a way that practically built it for a sequel. there was so much to explore: kristoph’s motives, the seven years arc, trucy’s performance rights, lamiroir’s return, the sibling thing. fans waited six years (albeit with investigations in between) to find out what was going to happen after apollo’s story began

and you know what they got?

a game that didn’t address a single loose end from apollo justice. not one. kristoph- a defining character who shaped everyone at the wright anything agency’s lives forever- didnt even get his name mentioned once. instead what we got was a half-assed backstory for apollo to create tension between the heroes in the last case and, like, five minutes with trucy (a character we had just spent an entire game getting to know and love).

and sure, i mean, it’s valid to say “there’d be a pretty big jump if the writers skipped dual destinies and just went straight from aj to soj”. but why is that? it’s almost as if dual destinies was a giant filler game they put between an old project with too much relevant story to abandon and a new game that would nudge apollo and all his complexities out of the way for a reason important enough for him not to come back until they’re ready to deal with all that stuff. and i’m probably being a bit too harsh when i say that, but even then, what really would have changed in soj if athena wasn’t there? not a single thing. not even the death of apollo’s supposed ‘best friend’ was worth being mentioned

i will throw capcom a bone here. while i have no idea why the hell spirit of justice got half as wild as it did as a game, i think it did do a really good job in fixing up the things that dual destinies missed. while nothing was resolved (and not even klavier made the cut this time), it did address some of the minor questions we had (like those pesky performance rights) AND they finally promised to bring back the whole sibling arc (tho lama-mama chose a really terrible time to decide to tell them about that. seriously. it’s been, like, two years. you had two years to deal with this.) 

but in fixing up the flops of dual destinies, capcom had to put athena on the sidelines. and frankly, if your character is so unimportant to the story that literally nothing would change if they weren’t there, you’ve written a bad character. 

like i said, i love athena (and simon and even bobby fulbright before, ah, yknow), but i definitely think i would’ve loved her more if she had been introduced in a way that either a) avoided completely derailing from apollo’s kind of super important to the timeline and everything story orb) was introduced after everything from aj was resolved and apollo was off doing whatever. it even makes sense that athena would be brought on to the team because they were down a member because apollo was in khura’in or something. 

as the old saying goes, coulda, shoulda, woulda. even if i did hate dual destinies, i dont so much anymore. i think the game could’ve been written a hell of a lot better, but complaining about it wont fix it. instead, i am going to cross every crossable appendage i have that capcom wont fluff up the damage control they did in spirit of justice. and i admit that i am really looking forward to seeing more of simon and athena and other dual destinies personalities in future games.