Samuel Prince Attorney at Law Chapter 2

Like Case 1, which I also reviewed, it's a more-or-less competently strung-together Ace Attorney-like, with not much in the way of ambitious or audacious decision-making but an overall solid, fluid set of trial segments that seem to understand some of the more granular points of Ace Attorney's appeal. Like the first case, there is also some surprisingly effectual character moments. Unfortunately, though, like the first case, this one shows a remarkably stark amateurishness with the mystery-plotting. While the first half of the case does something interesting with the reveal that the obvious culprit you're chasing down is actually innocent of the murder, and only committed a minor theft, it leads the way to a pretty disappointingly mundane solution surrounding the killer and their motive. A lot of the details of the case leading up to this, such as the fact the victim was a mystery writer, the theft of her trophy, and such all feel like they were sidelined and were entirely unnecessary complications in reaching this solution that kind of wastes a great deal of the legwork and better parts of the premise of the case. It's still a competently-realized courtroom battle game that has plenty of amusement and charm in it, but the incredibly lacking mystery writing really dragged this case down hard. There's clearly a great deal of thought and effort going into this game, and a familiarity with Ace Attorney's writing style that a lot of Ace Attorney-likes just don't understand, so I hope the later cases get more interesting and clever with their mystery stories.

As good, if not better than the first one.

Well well! As my playthrough on chapter 2 of this saga concludes... I find it's quite a lot more interesting with this game than the prior one. The first chapter did a good job setting the seeds and the formula, and this one uses those establishments and runs with them quite well! I really enjoyed the mystery this time, there were some twists I caught, some I didn't expect and some that had me thinking overnight, which is what a good mystery game is meant to do! I find that the characters were a lot more realized in this game than in the first, due to the lengthy runtime of this one. (I clocked in 7 hours but there was some AFK time) I definitely delighted in the investigation gameplay and found some secrets too, though the investigation gameplay mechanic of shattering will doesn't penalize you for wrong choices, I'd love to see that changed in the future to perhaps give Investigation gameplay more stakes? As right now I can understand if someone told me it were meandering. I found the logic on one particular part to be a little roundabout but otherwise, with that in mind the game is a great time. My only issue is the occasional visual bugs, some of Prosecutor Boomer's sprites changing size and some graphics not appearing for some time. Along with a bug that prevented me from clicking "Present" so I had to use the enter key. However as seen with my review of the last game - the developer does actively fix these games after launch so I'm almost 100% certain these issues will be fixed in the future. Ultimately I think for the content given, this game is well worth its asking price of $6.50 CAD. It also makes me more excited for Chapter 3, which has a certain character who I've been looking forward to get to know for a while!