For my entry for this year’s 1-chapter hacking contest, SIGURD, I decided to combine two of my favorite game series: Ace Attorney, and Fire Emblem! Play as an up-and-coming defense attorney, as she takes the case of a brigand-turned-soldier accused of murdering a comrade. For those unfamiliar with Ace Attorney, they are essentially visual novels with logic and text based puzzles. In this hack you can expect more of the same, but with a bit of an FE twist to the setting!
Note: Although this is based on the Ace Attorney series, you do not need to have any prior knowledge of the AA games to enjoy this.
Features:
A non-traditional FE “chapter” with a completely different gameplay style based around comparing evidence details with testimony to find contradictions
One playable character: an attorney in way over her head
Several pieces of evidence, and also an attorney’s badge (present it at your own risk)
I absolutely love Ace Attorney so had to check this out the moment I saw it. It was epic!
Feedback (contains spoilers)
The Ace Attorney vibes were so good! From the menu SFX, to all the names, a Payne prosecutor, the music, an animal witness (sort of), even presenting that one piece of evidence after the trial ends… I loved every moment of! Seriously, had a huge smile on my face during so many parts of this, especially the ending!
The case itself was super cool too, especially the use of actual Fire Emblem mechanics & calculations in it. Felt really clever when I guessed reaver on the first try! Jeanrick was a great villain, Ben a likeable defendant, and the judge was actually reasonable and smart for a change. The prosecution did kind of disappear in the latter parts of the case, but that makes sense considering it’s a Payne and Jeanrick’s personality.
I did get really stumped on the last two cross-examinations, though. After getting everything else right at the first try, for these I had to resort to save-stating (ran out of life) & even the walkthrough for the last one. The solution to both was really clever though, just wish there was some sort of clearer hint in Analyse maybe (which is a cool mechanic I’m unfamiliar with, is it from the Great Ace Attorney or did you invent it yourself?). Although the final cross-examination was also masterful psychological manipulation from Jeanrick, he kept insisting on evidence so I didn’t even consider presenting a profile there. Speaking of presenting profiles, I’m glad you kept this mechanic despite it missing from the latter entries, it’s a cool one.
One final nitpick is that the dialogue was kind of missing all the little Ace Attorney effects in it, so it felt a bit lifeless. The shock SFX near the end and the screenshake as Jeanrick was screaming were awesome - I just wish earlier sections had something similar as well, especially when Payne or the judge were doing the Whhhh-WHAAAAT thing, which felt a bit ridiculous when they were completely motionless & there was no SFX.
Overall though, again, this was so amazing & I did, in face, enjoy this crossover as much as you did making it!
This is fair, it’s hard to tell how difficult a puzzle when you already know the answer, and when it relies on game knowledge like the Support thing. I did make the Analyze hints somewhat less clear for the last two to ramp up difficulty a bit (besides hinting that you should be looking at everything available to you), but I can see how it can leave you up a creek without a paddle.
Analyze itself was how I tried to port over the “assistant convos” that you have in AA testimonies if you select next on the last statement, where the attorney and their assistant will discuss the testimony and give hints about how to proceed, except Ava has no assistant (I considered having Ben here while drafting, but he kinda would just blow open contradictions like with Hilda’s, so it became necessary to keep him out ). AA puzzle writing has a lot of difficulties you don’t realize until you try it yourself!
Presenting profiles was similarly less of a deliberate choice and more a necessity with how I ended up writing (I struggled for a bit to come up with a way to prove Ava’s theory and then introducing the Archsage solved both that issue and closed off the possibility of Jeanrick leaving with the Axereaver, so it was two birds with one stone), but I do think it’s an interesting mechanic.
I’ll freely admit that just getting all the eventing that is there, was a big crunch with the deadline- I can definitely see about sprucing up earlier parts akin to those bits in the climax you mentioned. I do also want to get alternate emotion portraits for everyone, so that’s another stretch goal.
This is really cool. Ace Attorney is one of my favorite video game franchises, so I’ve always wanted to make a demo of some kind in FEGBA based on it, but I could never really wrap my head around getting the eventing to make it feel right. I think this does a pretty good job of capturing that Ace Attorney formula and I look forward to seeing it be updated in the future! Great job!
really great idea to combine 2 series i love.
was quite fun even if the weapon thing got me stucked for a bit.
I wonder any idea already on how the portraits would look like?
I didn’t know what to expect going into this, but I was really impressed with how you pulled the concept off!
Feedback (Spoilers)
The fact you got all of the Ace Attorney mechanics working within FE8 mechanics is impressive enough, and would be worthy of praise even if the story weren’t up to much. I especially loved the evidence being presented as weapons that you attack the statements with, even if it’s dictated by the existing mechanics it’s such a fun way of presenting them.
Thankfully the story ended up being very well done too, with both a compelling and well-thought out mystery and fun character writing throughout. The way it ties directly into FE mechanics is what really makes it special, the twist with the Peggy/Jeanrick Support was the kind of moment that could only exist in a game like this.
This rocks.
I was too stupid to solve that one question about the weapon, but banger hack with fun twists and incorporation of FE mechanics into mystery solving.
Ace Attorney and Fire Emblem are both extremely good games, and seeing them meshed together so well made for a very fun and unique experience, unlike any I’ve ever seen from an FE Hack.
I loved that you incorporated the mechanics of Fire Emblem into the mystery like stats and weaponry, even doing so for somewhat niche mechanics. Figuring everything out was really cool!
Additionally, Ace Attorney was mixed in really well too. From the wacky characters (and their names), animal witnesses, even the culprit breakdowns, kind of.
I doubt it’ll happen given how much it would take, but I would love to see this turned into a full hack, and I feel like it has plenty of potential if done right!
Glad you enjoyed it! I’ve thought about expanding this into a full game, but honestly the main problem (besides all the work it would take when I have other projects) is that I don’t think I can come up with enough FE-based puzzles for an entire game’s worth of cases
I spent a couple of hours really enjoying this. Great work.
I thought maybe the joke names were maybe a little on the nose, but I got a good chuckle out of them anyway. “Filda Payne” was a great pick.
I was also thinking that the chapter already covered a lot of FE mechanics, so you wouldn’t have much left for other cases. You’d have to go into actual mapping stuff:
“The fact that the victim took 14 damage means he must have moved from the fort to the nearby forest, which only gives 1 defense, not 2!”
That might involve switching from the courtroom map to a battle map and back mid-chapter. I don’t know if that’s even possible. I don’t think I’ve seen anything like that before.
Actually the hack already does do something like that (the way the gameplay for the “point to specific spot on the map” segment is done by changing to a map whose tileset is the yard diagram, and then changing back to the courtroom afterwards), but being able to check at any time would be more complicated.
This is actually not true (it’s 5 cases for most), but by puzzles I mean that even this case includes multiple ones. I’d have to see, one thing that’d make things easier is if I had custom weapons to do more stuff with properties, but then you can’t rely on existing knowledge…
yeh that is true damn but still 4 cases would be already pretty good for a first game of ava turr .
but yeah if you brought custom weapons into the mix no one could rely on existing knowledge
and you have the added thing of the player figuring out how that weapon would work to do the math.
This was an absolute delight of a mod! I admit to getting stuck one the “fill in the blank” since I got stuck on ‘how do I put in Lancereaver!!!’ and didn’t realize the victim was the only one capable of using Reaver weapons
For future puzzles I’m sure there’s plenty more neat mechanics based puzzles to have, but I’d say it’d be best to not overfocus on “funny mechanics math” and also include good ol character/speech based contradictions too.
This is most awesome, I’ve loved the use of in-game mechanics for a trial, and the way you managed to do it is very interesting and works beautifully. I’d wish to see further projects from you!
). AA puzzle writing has a lot of difficulties you don’t realize until you try it yourself!