In a lawless land, only one man (with a distinctly avian name) stands between hapless defendants and ineffectual policeman, corrupt prosecutors, and indifferent judges, fighting for truth and justice against insurmountable odds.
Aviary Attorney wears its inspiration on its sleeve, and, even though it was a neat idea to use classical illustrations and music and Aviary Attorney nails the witty banter of its namesake, the game falls short in nearly every other respect. I doubt Ace Attorney fans will be able to resist the temptation of such an obvious tribute, but just make sure to purchase Aviary Attorney on sale and temper your expectations.
You play as Jayjay Falcon, a run-of-the-mill defense attorney in 1840's France. Or at least, a version of 1840's France where everyone is an anthropomorphic animal. While Jayjay has mostly just scrapped by until now, he quickly gets wrapped up in a series of murder cases.
First, the good. I want to address these, because the things Aviary Attorney does well, it does very well.
The core conceit of the art direction is that all graphics are taken from the illustrations of J. J. Grandville and all music from the works of Camille Saint-Saëns. These men were masters of their craft, and lend themselves to a strong, cohesive aesthetic. Grandville's art is detailed and whimsical, and the sepia color scheme creates a distinctly antiquarian atmosphere.
Aviary Attorney's humor is absolutely spot-on. As you investigate the various crime-scenes, Jayjay will exchange hilarious quips with his assistant Sparrowson. Many dialogue options often have an obviously silly option that leads to an even sillier result that still fits within the overall flow of the scene. The writer has achieved a nearly perfect balance of timing, characterization and flow with his banter.
Unfortunately, on almost every other front—most notably plot—Aviary Attorney is severely lacking. If you go in expecting anything approaching the level of Ace Attorney, you will be sorely disappointed. The only Ace Attorney case that I think you could even argue is comparable to Aviary Attorney is The First Turnabout—the very first case of the very first game. And even then I find The First Turnabout has an elegant simplicity that Aviary Attorney lacks.
In Ace Attorney, the mysteries are carefully crafted so that you systematically dissemble the prosecutor's case while building your own by unraveling the myriad lies within the witness' testimony. Every contradiction has a reason for its existence within the greater mystery, and forms a logical thread leading to the next testimony and stage of argument. In Aviary Attorney, you point out a couple of weird points in the case and then pressure the culprit into making a damning exclamation.
There's no craft or charm to the cases. Every case is short and straightforward. Witnesses never get more than one testimony. Unlike Ace Attorney, there also are no contradictions directly within the testimonies (although this might be an intentional design choice). In Ace Attorney, every statement is broken into statements, each of which can be individually pressed or objected to. In Aviary Attorney, the entire testimony is presented at once, and four keywords will be highlighted. Each keyword can be pressed, but rather than getting a set conversation a la Ace Attorney, you get to choose between two questions (or you can back off). Ask the right question, and an opening will present itself for you to make a counterattack. If you ask the witnesses about unimportant details you will be penalized. Penalties for pressing is the bane of every Ace Attorney player's existence, but since you can actually see the question you'll be asking I never felt like I didn't have fair warning.
Investigations also function a bit differently than in Ace Attorney. In Ace Attorney, investigations are mostly linear, allowing you to freely move around but refusing to allow you to proceed until you trigger certain plot flags. Aviary Attorney has a much more hands-off approach. You only have a certain number of days to conduct your investigation, and visiting a location takes up a day. While it starts off simple (three days for three locations), the number of locales will quickly bloom. I assume it's possible for the trial to be unwinnable because you didn't obtain the proper evidence (the game might cleverly force you to obtain the minimum required evidence through mandatory scenes), but the game gives enough leeway and hints that I never "failed" an investigation.
One thing I will give Aviary Attorney credit for is that in this particular instance, its shortcomings complement each other. In a game with the scope of Ace Attorney, the Aviary Attorney investigation system would have great potential for catastrophe. It would feel absolutely awful to go through hours of investigation and trial only to hit a roadblock because you screwed up the investigation phase hours ago, and be forced to play through everything all over again. Since Aviary Attorney cases are so short, replaying a case is only a minor inconvenience.
The investigation segments do involve searching hotspots, and there's no mechanic to highlight them, so there is some pixel hunting. But a frame will appear whenever you hover over a hotspot, and each item can only be investigated once (meaning the frame will no longer appear), making it fairly straightforward to systematically search an area. Pixel hunting is never great, but this is probably the least obnoxious way possible to do it.
While I praised the banter and aesthetic earlier, they end up clashing with each other. The issue is that J. J. Grandville made illustrations, not sprite sets. While every character in Ace Attorney has a multitude of expressive poses, most Aviary Attorney characters have a single, static sprite; a lucky few have a single, simple animation. While the characters are enjoyably quirky, this graphical limitation on sprites (along with the simplistic cases) prevents them from having depth or coming to life.
Aviary Attorney has a unique approach to its finale and I enjoyed the historic allusions in its overarching plot, but it ultimately fell short for me. The neat part is that Aviary Attorney actually has three final cases; the final case you get depends on your choices in the penultimate case. Unfortunately, none of the finales are wholly satisfying, and some of them feel tonally inconsistent with the rest of the game. There's no "true end," resulting in a lack of closure, and the sudden dark atmosphere feels out of place and out of the blue. You'll finish the last of the three finales, and... that just happens to be the end of the game's content, even if it doesn't really feel like the end of the story.
And yet, I have no delusions. I know Ace Attorney fans, suffering from withdrawal from the longest drought in the franchise's history, won't be able to resist the temptation of Aviary Attorney. Sure, I found it fully underwhelming (albeit with a few charming points), but maybe it was just me. No matter how mediocre I say the cases are, can they really be that bad? At the very least, Aviary Attorney will be better than nothing when it comes to getting an Ace Attorney-type fix, right? I mean, look at the aesthetic! Look at the Steam reviews! Look at the name! Surely it will be worth it!
Just do me a favor: don't pay full price, and make sure you savor the game's banter.
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