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November has been quite the whirlwind month for me between being away on vacation for an extended amount of time and then hurrying to prepare for Thanksgiving with family and loved ones soon after I came back. As hectic as it has been, things are calming down a bit until the Christmas holidays start revving things back up again. With the month concluding and the year’s end on the horizon, it’s time I report on my progress with my ongoing video game challenge.

I may have been on vacation and out of the country for much of November, but it didn’t mean I’d slack off on putting more hours into Dual Destinies. At least when I’m not out sightseeing in the city or country my cruise ship is docked in. There were plenty of sea days in between and the perfect time to finish as many cases as I could.

I finished the last case I was in the middle of when I last wrote my report, The Monstrous Turnabout, and moved onto the DLC case Turnabout Reclaimed, which I have since completed as well. While I won’t go into detail about my thoughts on the cases, since I prefer to write about them when I finish the game in its entirety, I will say I always enjoy when the Ace Attorney games present new characters into the universe. The Monstrous Turnabout lets you play as Apollo Justice in this case, as you defend a mayor accused of murdering the alderman of Nine-Tails Vale village. The second case of the game introduces the player to a new prosecuting lawyer named Simon Blackquill, who is seen in court handcuffed and currently serving time for murder and is on death row, and a new detective named Bobby Fulbright, whose favorite catchphrase to yell is, “In justice we trust!” as he flashes his badge with a pearly white smile.

The best part about playing an Ace Attorney game is the characters. They’re colorful, weird, charming, and may be a bit annoying at times but they’re all memorable in their own ways. If you play every game in the series, you’re bound to come away with a favorite character and a better understanding of the key players of the series, such as Phoenix Wright and his newest lawyers to join his team. While I do miss the likes of Miles Edgeworth and Detective Gumshoe from the previous games, I do appreciate injecting the series with fresh faces to keep the games from ever feeling stale but also maintaining the familiar. I’m not sure what to make of Blackquill yet, as Edgeworth is among my personal favorite characters from the Ace Attorney series next to Phoenix Wright, but I’m sure there’s more to learn and understand about Blackquill as I get further along with Dual Destinies.

Turnabout Reclaimed may be a DLC case and not exactly necessary to add-on to the main game, but I can never say no to a little more Phoenix Wright. A little Googling mentioned it’s best to play the DLC case after finishing The Monstrous Turnabout and just before starting the third case Turnabout Academy, if playing the cases in some kind of chronological order is your thing. It is for me when I’m playing Dual Destinies a few years after this game’s release. Turnabout Reclaimed is a Phoenix Wright led case, which tells the story of Phoenix’s first case since being reinstated as a defending lawyer. It’s also one of the more off-the-wall cases I’ve ever played, which is saying a lot when most cases in Ace Attorney tend to be a bit out there. How many can say you get to defend an orca whale on the witness stand for murder? I bet you can’t. What’s a little surprising about Turnabout Reclaimed when I played through the whole case is how it became the most emotionally satisfying one I’ve played so far. It left me really teary eyed by the end of it, but again, I’ll go into the details when Dual Destinies is fully completed. That being said, I’m obviously not done with this game yet.

Dual Destinies is a bit longer than some of the other Ace Attorney games I’ve played, with the addition of a DLC case, but I’m not complaining. I’m currently on Turnabout Academy, which still gives me about two cases and a half to get through. Depending on how my December turns out, I’m aiming to wrap up Dual Destinies before the whole world rings in 2017. No promises, but I’ll do my best. Until then, catch my next report next month!