He even gets his salary raised at the end!

The idea of this land where defense attorneys are persecuted and killed for defending people is ridiculous, but by the end the story gives it a somewhat believable justification.

If there's one thing that truly disappoints me in this, it's sadly the treatment of Maya. I'm sure I'm not the only one who felt like it was a big deal seeing her again. Unfortunately the writer's seem to have disagreed because she's only relevant to one case, where she's the defendant (of course!). She has a very tiny role in the last case, but of course, kidnapped. We don't really get any indication of her progress in training or even any feeling that she's matured as a character. While her being the same old Maya is kind of refreshing, I would have liked to see more shades of depth to her, some indication to show she's grown quite a bit in the nine years since we last saw her.

When I first heard that this strange new setting was going to be called "Kurain" or something similar, I was intrigued, and including Maya in the game pretty much confirmed the connection between her home setting and this strange country. But in the end we only get a few slight mentions here or there, and don't really get anything firmly connecting the tore, or delving into the backstory of Maya's ancestry. Heck, anything pertaining to the Fey Clan (like the sacred urn) is just treated as a cute little reference.

I like the idea of the game constantly switching back and forth between Japanifornia and Khura'in, between Apollo/Athena and Phoenix, but I wouldn't have minded if it stuck with the latter, to give us more time to explore and understand this new setting. Instead Phoenix is only the attorney for two cases in this game, while, proper to the final case, Apollo one investigation and trial phase-length case, and Athena gets only one trial phase-length case... and what an annoying case that was.

I do have to laugh, like everyone else does, about how the games are making more and more blatantly Japanese cases that the localization team has to jump through hoops to try to work into "Los Angeles".

Speaking of the final case, while I'm fine with Apollo getting another chance to shine, and actually be the hero of the story, I kinda feel like that shouldn't happen in a game where Phoenix was built up to be the main character. It's like they said "We made a huge mistake in the fourth game, let's fix it by doing the same mistake, but in reverse!" It's just kind of jarring to have the game be all about Phoenix and then say "Nope! Apollo's story." when all he got was a completely irrelevant case about magicians before.

After playing eight of these games, I can't help but notice tons of similarities to past cases in the ones here. Like the whole "Defense attorney wants to save their prosecutor childhood friend", now each of the three primary color punchlines has their own prosecutor partner. The last case in this game in particular has A LOT of Bridge to the Turnabout vibes to it, giving me a "series finale" kind of feeling like that one did.

On the plus side, the new characters introduced are almost all likable, particularly Albi, Rayfa and Prosecutor Sadmahdi. Rayfa in particular I was certain I would dislike given her initial demeanor and imposing appearance. The promos made it seem like she would be this all-knowing, superior, high and mighty antagonist you'd be constantly dealing with.

Then you meet her and she's hurling childish insults and calling Phoenix "Barbed head" and actually gets removed from the courtroom after throwing a tantrum. It's hilarious and cathartic. She's described as "moody" and is a mix of smug, childish and with a bit of tsundere mixed in. It's through her that we see the most of how this country's world view is skewed, and with that viewpoint changing we get the best character development in the game from her.

As for the prosecutor in this game, I have significantly less feelings toward him. He's your typical antagonist prosecutor, mocking the defense every few seconds, but with a holy monk gimmick. His particular character gimmick does make it interesting, having a prosecutor who is adamant about finding the defendant guilty because he believes it's what's right, rather than just being a corrupt prick who wants to win cases. His development isn't nearly as significant as Rayfa's but he still ends up being a nice, decently written character, though I wouldn't mind if he never showed up again.

I'm three quarters through the DLC bonus case and I could not be any more disinterested. It's a boring, blatant nostalgia trip that brings back the one character I didn't want to see again (Larry) and didn't even bring back ones I DID want to see (Gumshoe, Mia). Edgeworth is the prosecutor, Maya is the assistant, and while it's nice to have Maya get some screen-time that doesn't involve being arrested or kidnapped, she doesn't really do anything other than prove she hasn't matured at all.

Apollo, Athena, Trucy, and all of the characters introduced in this game have zero role in it. Not only that, but it seems remarkably minimal for a special bonus case, smaller and less significant than Rise from the Ashes or Turnabout Reclaimed, and the only remotely interesting character is the defendant. Not to mention that it uses one of my least favorite story gimmicks as a plot point, time resets.

Did I mention that I didn't want to see Larry again? Cause I'm really sick of him. Like I mentioned with Maya above, he hasn't changed AT ALL. He's still the same whiny, childish jerk who is so unbelievably stupid that he can be used to facilitate any conflict, no matter how poorly written. 

In the first game he had some likability and you felt like he was someone who, despite being a bit of a goober, could be depended on when it really counts. In later games he's completely awful and his only helpfulness is completely incidental, like he just happened to draw something.