Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane Review

 

Tyrion Cuthbert Attorney of the Arcane borrows heavily from the Ace Attorney formula. The game’s gameplay mechanics are just like Ace Attorney, you have a spunky female aide, a female mentor, and 5 cases to go through among other references (I loved the step ladder reference). I primarily bought this game because I was a fan of the Ace Attorney series as well as a fan of Insaneintherain’s music (He composed a bunch of songs for this OST alongside two other composers). First off, the OST to this game is simply sublime and it’s worth buying on its own.

This game does a great job at difficulty. At first, I felt like this game was an easy version of the Ace Attorney games simply because the first 3 cases were easy. I was able to see where the first 4 cases were going just based off of the evidence provided. The fourth and fifth cases are where the difficulty really ramps up and I was definitely stumped a few times on the last case.

Despite a strong start, I found that the last two cases are where the game really falls apart. The stakes are raised even higher but the logic starts falling apart mainly due to the introduction of new lore. Since magic is an established entity in the game, it follows its own rules and logic thus making the cases still feel grounded (The Ace Attorney games themselves introduced way more supernatural elements with each game). There were definitely some strong logic holes in the last two cases which made them nowhere near as enjoyable as the first 3 cases. This is a darn shame as the game ultimately fails to end off on a strong note.

From here on, I want to mention big spoilers and plot points that didn’t sit well with me:

·       In case 4, a talking monkey is introduced due to the fact he possesses the armband of intelligence. The case goes out of its way to say that the Sword of Spell Eating and the anti magic fields pretty much negate magic. The whole case falls apart because none of these nullify the Armband of Intelligence. The “logic” is that when the armband of intelligence is not worn on the monkey, the monkey slowly loses his intelligence when the lore should be that he loses right away.

·       Eris is a character that is introduced in case 2. You can talk to her in the beginning and present items to her. When you do, an evil portrait of her is shown. This is a huge oversight as that immediately shows she is an antagonist character. I really think the developer should remove that evil pose during her interaction as to not give away the culprit right at the beginning of the trial. Additionally, I didn’t scroll during the case selection screen as I didn’t want to see spoilers but she is shown prominently as the character on the case 5 selection; I hope that case only shows up once case 4 is completed.

·       The last prosecutor was a lame choice. Thematically, it’s cool because it’s the father of Aria. Logically, her father has only been a prosecutor once and is thus a lame adversary. A person with that little experience should theoretically be crushed by Tyrion.

·       Case 4 introduces a deus ex machina which once again, makes the entire case fall apart. Tyrion is at his wits end. Instead of solving the case using logic and evidence, his mother beyond the grave suddenly teaches him how to solve the case immediately and the case is solved. This was an extremely lame ending.

·       In Case 5, there’s a big logic error in how one of the victims was killed. Sibyl was killed via suffocation because she fell into the lake with stoneskin on. The lore said that Hold Creature has to be channeled. This would imply that Aria has to channel the spell and stay on the balcony and continue to channel it to ensure that Sibyl drowns. But Aria immediately moves somewhere else once she throws Sibyl’s body into the lake. This means that Sibyl should’ve been able to remove her stoneskin spell and swim to safety. The only way this murder makes sense is if she can’t swim.

·       The whole ending doesn’t make sense either. The writer does a great job in showing the prince’s reasoning for why he murdered everyone. He gives very good logical claims that getting rid of him would just put the kingdom in a bad spot. Tyrion realizes that Aster purposefully created a power vacuum that is difficult to fill. However, Aster is killed anyway and they put a 19 year old with no experience in governance/politics on the throne. The dragon could’ve easily been the new king considering that a large majority of the nation already reveres and greatly respects him but the writer decided that the dragon just didn’t want to be a leader at all. There’s an epilogue and all the issues that Aster points out aren’t addressed at all in any of the epilogue scene. This is a huge plot drop.

·       The other plot hole is: how did Garrick even know that Celeste was a child of the dragon? This is never explained. In the epilogue, Celeste confronts her father but the dragon never reveals the mother and never explains why he abandoned her.

·       As if going to hell and beating the devil in an argument wasn’t extremely out-of-left-field, the epilogue also confirms that there is now a multiverse and other fantastical sci-fi elements. It also confirms that emails exist in the game. The game did a good job in introducing a medieval setting with magic elements but now it’s as if the genre is now shifting to modern sci fi. It just felt extremely jarring.

·       Amnesia in video games is generally a bad writing technique. The main antagonist Eris has the power to rewrite memories of every person she forms a contract with. It made case 5 quite hard to follow as introduction of demons into the game quite frankly adds an element of unknown to the game. Because the characters don’t know how demons work, random and extreme rules (such as amnesia, rewriting memories, demons being unable to lie, etc…) just get thrown in willy-nilly with no context. It made for a very boring read when the writer can just make anything up to suit all the over-the-top drama that happens in the last case.

·       Overall, the writer really could’ve benefited from having an editor point out all the inconsistencies and plot holes present in Case 4 and 5. The game was enjoyable up until that point.