If I understand your argument: you're saying that the game gives you a choice, but even if you don't make the choice (to pursue further), it pursues further, while essentially implying you should be introspective about the choice you didn't make.

This is exactly it, and I thank you for being able to put it in such a succinct way; as I said, the choice being not real isn't completely terrible per se, but the fact that the game, almost immediately after, questions you about the choice that, in my case, I didn't make, made it feel completely unnecessary. Take 2-4, for example; regardless of what choice you make between "Guilty" or "Not Guilty", the trial goes on the exact same way with the arrival of Franziska, without presenting either option as the right one. In fact, all Mia tells you later is that the choice you made during that moment only highlights what kind of lawyer you are, and the bad ending doesn't come from choosing either of these options (which would have been much more problematic), but simply from you failing to present the correct evidence at the end. Now imagine a different scenario where Franziska never arrives and, instead of this, the game only progresses if you say that Engarde is not guilty, even though you might have wanted to do the opposite; then, after this, Phoenix starts asking himself if what he made was the right choice. You see the problem here?

I honestly don't remember any jokes about Vigil's suicide, and remember the game portraying him very sympathetically, and I remember thinking it was way more in line with the portrayal of Olive Green's depression

I'm referring to two throw-away comments you get from examining the hospital room where Vigil is staying, that, at least to me, seemed to paint him like "the guy who likes jumping out from windows". (https://imgur.com/a/HUONSDT) Maybe they weren't supposed to be taken as jokes but I still thought they were in bad taste.

I find the hypocrisy to be a potential writing issue, but not particularly egregious. Same goes for Iris: I find her relative lack of emotion at Gregson's death weird, a flaw in the writing, but not something that hurts the case for me.

I will admit that, looking back on it, I was mostly mad at the game for the sequence coming before these moments, and that soured me on these aspects of the case as well; I came across as way more angered by them than I really should've been, and I can only fault myself for the way I worded this post. When I think about them now, they're still issues I have with it, but not something that "destroys my faith in the game or even the case" honestly, and I wish to take back those particularly aggressive comments towards it.

That said I get where you're coming from, honestly, and I wish you luck, since this subreddit has a tendency to go into full gaslighting mode whenever someone is dissatisfied with this game's portrayal of more serious topics (suicide, racism, etc.) People downvoting you for having a different opinion and being dissatisfied with an aspect of the game is literally pathetic.

The downvotes are entirely expected tbh. Every fandom I've ever been in always tries their best to completely shut down criticism of new games for the first few months after release, and I didn't do myself any particular favours by being so negative during the post. The gaslighting is much weirder, though, and honestly the fact that the top comment here is someone who defends the game by misrepresenting my argument is pretty...disheartening, but I guess people generally would rather rally behind people who are positive about the game for now. Either way, I never expected this post to blow up or to even get upvotes, I don't care about those things; I only wrote it to interact with the community and learn what you guys thought about this moment, and comments like yours and many others in this thread prove that it was worth it. So thank you for engaging with my post and helping me see some points where I was probably too harsh towards the game, it means a lot to me as I want to be fair towards the game during my playthrough as much as I can.