Ninja Gaiden Black: In the middle of Chapter 5.
Game is essentially what I've been looking for in an action game, which is to say it resembles DMC-style more than God of War style, and has actual fast paced, challenging combat with a lot of options you end up using one way or another. Nice to see something NOT spawned by Hideki Kamiya actually pull that off!
Phoenix Wright: Finally played 1-5. Not much to say other than they were really trying to make as convoluted and complex a trial as possible, and it was TOO FREAKING LONG. IT feels like "Aftergame Phoenix Wright" really, which I'm aware that's what it is, but this is even after playing 3-5.
Thing is, 3-5 is similarly complicated and similarly long, but its a lot more interesting. It has every right to be that long and complicated cause its one last big finale to the series, ending it with a trial that basically brings every series plot point together, leaving out only self contained trials that were meaningless (1-3, 2-3, and 2-4, though you could argue 2-4 matters for 3-5 on grounds that it had a significant role in Edgeworth and Fran's development, which are necessary for 3-5 to work, but as a CASE, it was self contained, for the most part.) It did some fun things like the first Trial, which had pretty much the best Defense/Prosecution/Witness combo ever.
Finally, it tried to end things in a way that showed the TRUE killer as actually sympathetic, and almost justified, and not a "HE'S TRULY GUILTY GET HIM!" Now, it didn't really work cause of the character in question they tried it with, but it was something new as just about all True Killers in the series are dickwads who you just want guilty and gone (Well, ok, 2-3 is an exception here, as while just about all the real killers break down into some emotional mess, the real killer just kind of goes "Well, I know when I've been beat, good job.")
LASTLY, 3-5 was also something the entirety of the 3rd game was building up too, so all the backstory and what not was there. Furthermore, playing off previous cases, the backstory just needed to bring up previous incidents as reminders, and with you knowing all the details, they worked themselves in.
1-5...felt like they were trying too hard. They had to establish a whole lot of backstory, starting from ground up. The usage of Ema over Maya was a nice change of pace, I won't deny, and I suppose it was nice to see a trial where Phoenix couldn't rely on Mia to bail him out at all, but honestly, that didn't do enough. The trial was too long, too many new faces out of the gate, and their quirks weren't really that great (one guy is a cowboy, the other is obsessed with Boxed Lunches!) Lana isn't a very intriguing character either; just one of those "Tough but actually very weak internally, thus easy to use."
Also, the case is so obviously made LAST in the series if you just look at it. introduces a bunch of gameplay elements that never appear, the opening Case depicting uses genuine exposition, has a few animation moments (The Blue Badger, and the Video), and relies on a lot of easter eggs from trials introduced later in the series (Edgeworth's 3-4 suit is sitting in his office, as one example)...
If you still can't tell what I mean, just start up any given case in the game, and watch its intro, at least in the first two games (3rd game generally altered its style of opening), then load up 1-5's intro.
The way the plot went...honestly, I felt it should have taken place AFTER 3-5. I won't get into details, but chronologically it would have fit better, and I feel the way Edgeworth acted, outside of his break down of "OH NO I USED FAULT EVIDENCE!" would have been more in character for him AFTER 2-4, not before.
1-5 wasn't intolerably bad like some one has made it out to be, but it definitely felt forced and like they were trying too hard to add another case to PW1 for the sake of "Hey, we have a new game called Apollo Justice, LETS BUILD UP HYPE FOR IT!" All I can say is thankfully the other 2 games didn't do that.
