Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane Reviews

Clocking in at about 15-20 hours based on gameplay and reading speed, a very faithful sendup toward the Ace Attorney series with a more fantastical focus, but with the same amount of insanity in the courtroom.

Overall, I quite enjoyed this game. It was clearly inspired by Ace Attorney but managed to set itself apart in interesting ways with the magic system and fantasy world. Although one didn't truly need to know them to play through the games, it would have been nice if there were clearer explanations of what each magic type was, as it was intriguing. There were some things that didn't quite feel like they fit the setting, like the futuristic sci-fi-looking screen pop-ups for the lawyers in court, which presumably are artificery but didn't quite jive with the genre. (Also the last-minute mention of email...) [spoiler]Honestly, it felt on the discourteous / invasive side to have the game go snooping for the player's name through their computer username, and it didn't even elicit the emotional response that I would guess was aimed for as my username isn't a real word so it just looked clumsy in the game text.[/spoiler] The cases were fun and I enjoyed playing through them. The ending to the last one was a little abrupt and a little dissatisfying but not enough to ruin the game. Most of the mystery is also to be logically figured out without having to resort to brute-force guessing, though there were some areas where Tyrion's words misled a player rather than pointing them toward the right testimony to nitpick. [spoiler]For example, in Celeste's testimony in the last case, one of the sections will have Tyrion comment that something is fundamentally wrong with what she just said, but it isn't actually the section you should Present to.[/spoiler] There are also some things that were clearly meant to be played out but never touched on and not the type that make sense to address in a sequel, such as [spoiler]the implication that Aria used Polymorph on Alaric but it was never a point for the player to figure out[/spoiler]. I liked that Celeste and Aria's platonic relationship was held up as very important at the end, though it would have been nice to see it develop rather than having Celeste mention that they had been meeting up outside of what the player / Tyrion witnesses. [spoiler]The romantic relationships, on the other hand, were kind of stale with both girls being stereotypical anime-girl omg-blush-I-can't-even types to different degrees. However, it was super refreshing to see that Celeste didn't mindlessly kill Pierce just to try and save Tyrion, and I applaud that character decision. It's great that both main girls were morally strong and not the type to sacrifice the world / morals / people for the one (1) person they like[/spoiler] The music for the intense in-court arguments with the health bars was very good. [spoiler]It was fairly easy to guess even close to the start of the game that Celeste was dragon-related, but it didn't ruin my enjoyment for the eventual reveal.[/spoiler] It would have been nice if the talk menu stayed open when you talk with characters, so that you don't have to keep hitting the button to see the list of topics again or to see if there's a new topic at all. Same for the present menu. Overall, it was fun, and I look forward to the sequel! And really a great job for a labor of love that had a far more limited budget than a big company like Capcom must have. (Also, nodding at the stepladder reference!)

Fantastic story, and an excellent setting. Very interesting cases with the use of magic in a detective/law genre. Although the sprite animations are a little generic compared to Ace Attorney. Overall a very fun visual novel detective game.

To compare it to Ace Attorney; I'd say it's not as good overall, there are some points where it's falling behind slightly, like the presenting of items. In AA I would present everything to everyone to get funny text, and you could show your badge to anyone and almost always get something. In this only really specific key items get a reply out of characters and it it's rarely needed to continue. But that aside. Some "turnabouts" are really unexpected, but a few you can see a mile away. That said, while it doesn't quite reach AA's heights it comes damn close, especially in terms of story and characters, so definitely a recommendation from me. I'll definitely be buying the sequel too as soon as it's released.

What an amazing Ace Attorney game. I love the element of magic in the cases. Hopefully the sequel will be just as good

Great game! Characters are charming and the court cases are interesting enough. Obviously inspired by Ace Attorney but has its own spin. I would recommend this game to anybody that likes the Ace Attorney series. I think its just as good as any of the other AA games.

Excellent game, I am glad I found it! It's basically Pheonix Wright meets D&D in the best possible ways. I loved everything, characters, writing, music and overall story. Rooting for a sequel!!

I'm a bit torn on this game. I think it's a more than worthy murder mystery, but with quite a few problems. The vast majority of these problems are all related to a single (but very broad) issue, that being the first 3 cases - or more specifically, case 2 and 3, but I'll be saying "first 3 cases" when I mean case 2 and 3. They just aren't the most interesting, and they're really simple to boot. But worse than that, they're dreadfully short, to the point of feeling rushed. The problem is that this has major knock-on effects for the rest of the game. Specifically, it causes the game-long narrative to fall a bit flat. Things like an emotional showdown with your mentor, the takedown of the big bad, or even the whole romance... none of it hits as hard as it should, because you're not yet invested enough into the characters or the story. It's a shame because, at the end of the game, in the little credit epilogue scenes, I was actually starting to care about what was happening to the characters, but at that point, it was kind of too late. You just don't get to spend enough time with all of the characters. There's too little fluff in the writing. Which does have the benefit of making sure no case - and especially no investigation - drags on too long. But considering the cost at which it came, it doesn't really feel worth it to me. The interesting thing about this is that this really is just a writing thing. Like, there are multiple characters who have sprites, even multiple distinct sprites, who have maybe 5 minutes of screentime, if even that. If they had had 6 times that amount, maybe I would have cared about them. But Street Thug 1 and Street Thug 2 - both of which have interesting and cool designs - are just there to provide one single piece of testimony basically. While they had the potential to be interesting gimmick characters. Meanwhile the gimmick characters that this game does have do their gimmick maybe once or twice, because they simply don't have enough screentime for more. Hell, even the 'major' characters for this game lack in screentime. Take the 'detective' for this game - your Dick Gumshoe - I'm pretty sure he gets like 8 minutes of screentime in every chapter at most. Which doesn't leave much opportunity for you to like him, despite the fact that I think he could have been a perfectly fine character if we just got to see more of him. Same with your mentor figure, you technically see her around a bunch, but you don't really get to learn what she'll all about that well. And I'm not talking about emotionally scarring backstories or whatever, in that regard, I think the game does [i]alright[/i] (but by no means amazing). I'm talking about the small things. The little injokes they might have, their thoughts on their surroundings, the way their personality works. Characters don't really react enough to what happens, they're mostly just there to advance the plot, with some exceptions. Seriously, that's by [b]far[/b] my biggest problem with the game, a lacking [i]amount[/i] of writing. The quality of the writing was fine, though not spectacular. It was enjoyable. I would say that this problem only really gets resolved halfway through the fourth (and penultimate) case. It's the first time that the game felt like it wasn't just going through the motions at a breakneck speed, and actually introduced some elements I didn't expect which allowed for the world and the characters to feel more alive. I do think the fourth case is the best the game gets, because it's the one that makes me actually really appreciate the spin they put on the Ace Attorney formula - that being the existence of magic. It's the one standard case (since the last case is tying together the entire story) that feels like it actually uses that premise to its full extent, doing things that wouldn't be possible in a non-magical murder mystery. Case 1, 2, and 3 all felt like, while they made sense in the world, they also could have happened in another game, with just a few simple changes. The fifth case meanwhile does put a nice bow on things, and feels like it's appropriately bringing together all the elements from previous cases in a mostly satisfying way. Unlike case 4, it didn't really veer off into an unexpected direction, I did generally see most of the twists coming, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. It was simply the logical conclusion of the narrative. I found case 5 to be a fitting end to the game, mostly brought down by the problems I've described before leading to the whole conclusion being less impactful since I just don't care as much about the characters or the world as I should. I think Case 4 and 5 do enough for me to say that this game has successfully justified its existence - to put it overly bluntly. That's something that I wasn't quite sure on before I got to the good part. I was kind of just going through the motions at that point, playing it because I'm obsessed with murder mysteries, not because I felt like the game itself was pulling me in. Now, other aspects of the game real quick: The visuals are good, though perhaps not entirely my cup of tea. A bit too smooth for my liking, but I can't deny the quality. The soundtrack has one banger that feels like it could come straight out of Ace Attorney, along with a bunch of very mediocre songs, and even some that I would say didn't fit the game all that well. Generally, I felt like the soundtrack struggled a bit with what to do during the quieter moments. But that's just my opinion. Finally to end it off, let me reiterate: Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane is a worthwhile experience, but it does struggle in some areas. While I never got the lows of Ace Attorney's worst cases, even those ones did advance characters' likeability, whereas here, I felt like you could summarise the first 3 cases in a paragraph each, without really losing much. Still, if you're like me, and you're just a fiend for murder mysteries, I would recommend you give this game a try. If, however, you're new to the genre, I would recommend starting off with Ace Attorney (or perhaps Danganronpa if that seems more of your style, though both of those series have their own kinds of special problems).

The rush I felt when I connected the dots was exhilarating. Amazing game, would strongly recommend

"dsfhkjsadlkfsjfdlksghdlkjsahfjsa" Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane does play very much like an Ace Attorney game, and I mean that in the best way. I found the story, writing, characters, and art all enjoyable. It also adds some nice quality-of-life features such as instant text speed, and you don't have a health bar for the majority of trial segments so we don't have to reload every time you present something and the music doesn't stop... The game also often gives you a hint whenever you've gotten everything in an area, which should lessen backtracking; such things could be seen as making the game seem easier, but I'd say they just reduce some frustrating segments without diluting the parts you're actually here for.