A few years ago, I binged a bunch of Ace Attorney fancases, hoping to pick out some good ones to review. Ultimately, I didn’t go through with that until recently. Part of it was me feeling that some of the cases were too reliant on AA knowledge to be really satisfying. Some weren’t that good. And then there were some that were good, but I thought would be frustrating to someone who wasn’t a hardcore AA fan. One of those fancases was Turnabout of Courage.
Courage is one of the most infamous fancases in Ace Attorney history. It’s a brutal, difficult case that delights in messing with you, the player, personally. After playing it, I decided that, while the mystery was good, the case as a whole was too irritating to recommend. But I kept it in mind. And I knew there was an “independent sequel” that I wanted to play. That brings us to Turnabout Pairs, by Bad Player and Blackrune.
I should note that while Pairs doesn’t explicitly spoil Courage, there are some key twists that would be very clear if you played Pairs first. So keep that in mind.
I should also note that this was the winner of a competition dedicated to troll cases. So keep that in mind too.
Pairs opens with attorney Mia Fey heading to Embassy Hotel to meet with a client, prosecutor Klavier Gavin. Klavier is in a legal dispute with his brother, Kristoph, over their father’s inheritance. Mia arrives and joins a maid, Maria, bringing room service, but finds that Klavier’s door has been locked, the key still inside. Mia and Maria manage to get the door open, where they find Klavier’s body, with a bloody knife on the floor! And yet, Klavier has been shot to death…
A suspect is soon arrested. Ron DeLite, a shy, retiring man staying in the room next door. Not that the prosecution is explaining how he’s supposed to have committed the crime. Mia investigates for his trial when she learns that Kristoph is staying at the same hotel, on the opposite side of his brother. Mia goes there with another employee, but this door is locked too. No surprise what they find on the other side. Except for the twist that Kristoph has been stabbed to death, even though the gun that killed Klavier is lying on the floor next to him...“It’s just like Kristoph killed Klavier. But it’s also almost as if Klavier killed Kristoph.”
And so, Mia heads off to court to defend Ron on the double murder, little realizing the disaster she’s about to walk into…
To be clear, Pairs is very much a hard case too. It’s just less aggressive with its trolling than Courage. Courage was willing to pull the rug out from under you at a moment’s notice, constantly shifting the “facts” of the case whenever you got a handle on them. It was happy to waste your time, as a joke. Here, the difficulty comes from the case genuinely being very complex, and you having to fight for every little contradiction…that seems to make no impact on the case against your client. There’s nothing like the nightmare of Luna von Doppelbohringen here. (Although one testimony is clearly a callback, it is, in my view, easier and less inclined to mess with you when you make a mistake.) One infamous instance of trolling from Courage gets reused as more of a plot twist here, for example, making it feel less like the case playing games with you and more an obstacle you’ve overcome.
The locked rooms are pretty good. If someone wanted to quibble with them, they could point out how there’s no grand trick here, but a serious of smaller ones linked together. I don’t mind that too much, and the central mystery is still a meaty one to ponder, with plenty of moving parts. The only real issue I have is that the clue that tips Mia off as to what really happened is A. something she only discovers through a massive coincidence and B. a really minor bit that she blows up for all its worth. Sure, the best Ace Attorney cases hinge on the implications of small details, but this feels like a lot to base your case-winning theory on.
And yet, I enjoyed this case. In fairness, I made heavy use of the provided walkthrough, or “Invisiclues,” which do a good job at guiding the player’s logic and making clear what the developers were thinking with the puzzles and contradictions. Most of them made sense. There were a couple where you’re presenting an alternative theory or a possibility, instead of pointing out a contradiction, and I found these a little more frustrating since it wasn’t always clear when that was intended. But if you can put up with the rest of this case, you can put up with that.
So all in all, I do think that Turnabout Pairs is worth a shot. If you have no Ace Attorney experience, then, unlike the previous fancases I’ve reviewed, maybe you shouldn’t dive right into it, but if you do and want a challenge, this is worth your time. Recommended. But you probably should play Turnabout of Courage first. Just have a walkthrough open. Keep that in mind too.
You can find the case here.
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