You might not really believe in the power of Metacritic — a review aggregation site — to represent the opinions of many, but for those of you who love the Ace Attorney series and want to see it succeed, this will be good news nonetheless.
Here's the current top five Switch games on Metacritic for 2021, based on their average scores:
- The House In Fata Morgana: Dreams of the Revenants Edition (98)
- Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury (89)
- Fez (88)
- Monster Hunter Rise (88)
- The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles (88)
We can't help but notice that four out of five of these are re-releases or remasters of old games (Fata Morgana and Fez are from 2012, Super Mario 3D World is 2013, and The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles was first released in 2015) but that's not we're here to talk about — we're here to praise The Great Ace Attorney for being so... well, great.
We gave the double-feature game a 9/10 in our rather glowing review, and it seems that most other sites have agreed: 15 of the reviews are a nine or above, and Eurogamer (which doesn't do numbered scores any more) gave it a "Recommended".
The positive reviews have a lot in common, highlighting The Great Ace Attorney's high production value, new setting, and excellent writing; many of them praise the cultural and historical additions, too.
Down at the bottom of the list, as the only "mixed" review so far, is Siliconera, with a 7/10, which seems to be less impressed with the Ace Attorney style in general:
"If you like when jokes repeat and iterate upon themselves, congratulations! You’ve found a game for you. If you want a little more nuance and craft… maybe not. The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles’ humor, like its mystery, is written to be accessible to a younger audience. As such, it can be fun, but it’s not intellectually stimulating."
Siliconera's criticisms echo a few of the positive reviews' gripes, though: slow pacing, occasionally confusing progress gating, and the fact that Ryunosuke isn't as immediately likeable as good ol' Phoenix Wright. They do also have praise for the games, though, which largely agrees with the other reviews: it's great value for money, and absolutely flippin' gorgeous.
For the sake of comparison, the Ace Attorney Trilogy on Switch is currently sitting at an 81 on Metacritic, making it the 62nd best Switch game of 2019, and none of the other games in the series have ever achieved higher than that score — most are in the high 70s or very low 80s.
By quite a wide margin, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles is the best game of the bunch. At least, according to average scores... and for the time being. Several sites, including Kotaku, Polygon, IGN, and GameSpot haven't published their reviews at the time of writing. Everything could change — but for now, Ace Attorney fans can bask in the glory of being one of the best games of the year.
[source metacritic.com]
Comments 30
All I see is Fata Morgana got knocked to 98%
Who cares about metacritic top games? It’s not like their system is expected to be precise or fair…
@Khalic it’s not precise or fair….but it’s a good indicator of how good a game is.
@MarcusIsCool it really isn’t. Try playing fata morgana.
Yes, because Metacritic is the end-all definition of what's best and worst.
Not criticizing the author of the article because she states at the beginning that not everyone trusts metacritic, but the amount of people that take it seriously shows that they want an arbitrary number to decide what is considered good and that is very sad.
Also Ms Gray, you should state that this is only an opinion. Monster Hunter Rise was well received, sold very well and was acclaimed by a wide array of critics and players…
Gamespot always drags down the review average!
Fez.
This alone already tells me how slanted Metacritic usually is.
@Khalic The first sentence of the article states that these are opinions.
Which really goes without saying, as any rating is inherently an opinion. But it was said anyway.
I really love that vampiric prosecutor.
@Khalic
"Who cares about metacritic top games?"
lol
You seem to care a lot, actually.
Fata Morgana was 100 for 2 months and but Metacritic didn't put it on the all-time rankings till it got knocked, what's up with that? And I DON't care whether it's deserved or not. Surprised news sites weren't picking up on like the first ever 100-rated Metacritic game.
@MarcusIsCool It's definitely far from a perfect indicator, though. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Sky only has a 54, for example, vs a 9.0 user score
This list is a little deceptive because the number of reviews for Fata Morgana and Fez are very low and come from smaller news outlets. Doesn't mean they are great or bad games, but it would be interesting to see how that list would change if all the games got reviewed by the same number of news outlets and the same outlets. I think that would help to normalize the ranking system and make it more accurate.
I love Ace Attorney, but even I realise it’s a niche title. If an media outlet or journalist is reviewing it, chances are they love that sort of game. The Velvet Underground are loved by their fans but most people couldn’t name a single song of theirs and would probably hate them if they heard it.
It’s a lot harder to produce a general mass market product and be praised by the entire world. Think Bee Gees.
@thiz I don't think a highly regarded game deserves to be forgotten just because the developer is an obnoxious jerk.
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"the Ace Attorney Trilogy on Switch is currently sitting at an 81 on Metacritic, making it the 62nd best Switch game of 2019, and none of the other games in the series have ever achieved higher than that score — most are in the high 70s or very low 80s."
Really tells you all you need to know about the pointlessness of aggregate scores.
I love how people are pointing out Fez and Fata Morgana as reasons that Metacritic is wrong, despite both being massively critically acclaimed games.
Fata Morgana has such annoying music. It's hard to listen while playing
@Khalic I never once played a game like that in my life. I was hooked instantly on that game… wound up playing it nonstop. Definitely recommended.
If this is even half as good as Fata Morgana was I will be playing straight through it day one.
@Solomon_Rambling This would certainly improve the signal/noise ratio, but NLife does not allow one-word (or number) comments.
I imagine this will only change by the end of the day. It's incredibly early to have enough reviews in for metacritic to be helpful. I don't feel like this is really helpful reporting, it seems like it's just reporting to push a personal perspective. I'm glad the writer likes the game as games are meant to be enjoyed. But I don't think it's helpful for people who may or may not be interested to report on something that is likely to change in the next 24 hours.
Edit: seems like it's already dropped to 83 on metacritic in less than 12 hours since this was published. Not that 83 is bad by any means.
@Solomon_Rambling So on point lmao.
@MrGawain surely it's harder to impress people who love the series and have high expectations?
@MrGawain I dunno, The Velvet Underground are probably more mainstream than you realise. You’d be better picking something like Godspeed You! Black Emperor for that level of cult following with almost zero mainstream appeal. Or even My Bloody Valentine.
@KateGray
In my experience extreme fans of something only turn on something when it makes major changes they don’t like or they get less content than the last game. The rest of the time they’re happy for more of the thing they like and are comfortable with. Look at obsessive Picross fans: every year they get the same game loop perhaps with a few boards with a slightly different gimmick and continue to tell everyone else how fantastic it is. But I doubt the majority of general market if FIFA and COD players would understand what the big deal is.
I personally can’t wait to play Great Ace Attorney, but I’m 99% sure I know what I’m getting with it as it’s ‘the sort of game I like’.
@nessisonett
I was just using a comparison. In 45 years The Velvet Underground's Nico has sold less than 600,000 copies. The Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack has sold over 40 million. To me The Velvet Underground get far more media praise than their sales suggest they warrant.
@MrGawain I wouldn't be very good at my job if that were the case.
I like Ace Attorney and so far from what I've played this is a great game.
But I'd hardly consider it a top 5. Random opinions of 20-50 journalists has a wide margin of error for estimating the opinion of the majority. Sometimes it's within reason. Many times it's not.
Games like Monster Hunter Rise, Monster Hunter Stories 2, Zelda Skyward Sword, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1/2... these are some of the best games I've ever played. They're phenomenal. Games I would easily rank among the best on Switch. Yet, I don't think any of them managed to climb out of the 80s in the aggregate.
So ya. I don't put too much stock into "what's best" based on the average of the same 20-50 reviewers. I think aggregates are good for a birds eye view- whether a game falls in the "great" category where I should look into it further, or the "not great" category where a game would really have to pique my interest to warrant further investigation. Any aggregate between 7-10 tells me nothing is glaringly wrong and I should trust my judgment. 6 and below tells me it may not be worth the time. The resolution of the scale is really only good for those two categories.
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