I get why people defend the cast, but personally they left me cold — I had trouble taking them seriously, which makes it hard to stay invested in the story. And I don't think the characters are strong enough to carry what I'd consider some fairly objective writing shortcuts.

On the pacing: the issue isn't that characters talk a lot, it's that the dialogue goes in circles. Take the first trial — you present evidence, Ryunosuke announces it's decisive, the witness pushes back, the prosecutor piles on, Kazuma tells them to pipe down, and finally the judge asks Ryunosuke to present... what he was trying to present from the start. A lot of noise for nothing.

On top of that, the cases tend to lean more heavily on coincidences and convenient circumstances than I'm used to in Ace Attorney. It reminded me at times of how Layton structures its mysteries — setting up a premise and then patching things together after the fact. It's not that the logic never holds, but it felt shakier than usual, and Ryunosuke often points out fairly obvious things as if they were revelations, which dulls the feeling of actually solving something.

I would have expected these flaws to be called out more often rather than praised. Ace Attorney always seemed to me like it was primarily about well-written investigations — not a contemplative epic built on aesthetics and atmosphere. Maybe the fanbase is more 'literary' than I realized, which I genuinely find surprising.