No spoilers in this review.
Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane, presents itself as "DnD rules lawyer meets Ace Attorney", and without wasting your time building up to the conclusion, I'll just say it. It accomplishes this goal very well, but takes a while to find the confidence to do so. This game is very much worth your time and has my recommendation.
To elaborate more on what I mean though. the story for Attorney of the Arcane takes time to build up, presenting you with a cast of characters that are likeable and cases that are interesting, but missing the spice that makes them distinct from the obvious game of inspiration, Ace Attorney. In fact, you could probably change one or two things about these early cases to fit right in the Ace Attorney universe, taking away the magic and replacing it with mundane explanations. The game, I believe, is at its best when you cannot do that. When the concept of magic is integral to the entire structure of the case, and trying to substitute it with anything else would be laughable. The later cases find the confidence to fully commit to this concept, and that's the game at its absolute best. (Also yes, I know Phoenix and Maya bust out magic every few minutes in the average Ace Attorney trial, but you know what I mean, the cases aren't exactly teleporting wizards throwing fireballs at each other)
Another thing the game does particularly well is making sure the lessons learned from prior events in the story, even if the case is no longer relevant, are still important to the protagonist and the story. Certain concepts are introduced early and brought back later in the game, making the world feel much more interesting than the stereotypical DnD inspired fantasy world it, well, pretty much is. I don't mean this as in "John Evil showed up in a hallway during case 1 before you knew he was the main villain" specifically, but when you're seeing spells that you've dealt with before and know how their limitations, or the protagonist is running into a moral dilemma they've questioned in the past, those moments do a lot to flesh out the story.
As for the characters, again, they take time to build up and present something to you that's generally interesting. This goes doubly for the suspects and witnesses, who have less time to flesh themselves out, yet (especially in the later cases) d managed to make themselves stand out in interesting ways. I'm mostly repeating what I've already said, so I'll just stop there.
Final mention to the music, its great. Not the best VN soundtrack, the competition is ridiculously fierce in this genre, but its solid. Ace Attorney does a thing where important songs are saved for the same moment in every case, pursuit themes as an obvious example being saved for when you're close to the truth and the witness is cracking under pressure. This game does that too, and it works just as well.
So overall, I hope my earlier conclusion makes sense. This game takes a bit to carve out its unique slice of the mystery VN pie, but when it does, I find myself wanting more of that pie, even after finishing the game. The game does a lot of stuff right, a few hurdles with the Ace Attorney formula of "Evidence A only works, despite Evidence B explaining things too" at times, but that's to be expected. Literal magic is involved, after all.
