Master Magistrate

7.5/10

Honestly, an underrated that that not enough people know about.

It's similar to Ace Attorney, the plot surprisingly good with twist in the end. Romance option in the epilogue is also a plus. Yamanami route is the best. 8.5/10.

Master Magistrate is a good visual novel that feels a bit weird to me. It feels almost like three different visual novels. There's the somewhat serious adventure style investigating and trial sections, 2/5 heroine routes are dramatic, and 3/5 heroine routes are full of light slice of life stories. All the characters present here are pretty entertaining. There's nothing too outside the norm here, all fitting fairly well into some standard stereotypes, but they're done well. Music is pretty well done, but also nothing outstanding. Systems are straightforward, game ran fairly well for me, only minor complaint is that you can't skip the endings ever, and they have small epilogue sections after, so you have to sit through them every time. Onto the story. I really enjoyed the tone of the adventure sections with investigating and trial. It even started off fairly serious with a murder trial and continued to stay with a more serious tone throughout. I'm not sure how everyone would fare, but if you're paying attention throughout all the investigating sections you should be able to complete the trials without much trouble, I got 100% through all of them without using a guide - Chapter…

Basically Ace Attorney set in the shogun era, with similar gameplay and some similarities to the story. The story is surprisingly well-written and the characters are likeable. The court trials are just okay. Overall, I recommend this game if you liked the story in Ace Attorney. Maybe pass if you're only interested in the court trials. There's an optional R18+ patch available outside of Steam for additional character-focused routes after the main game. I did not play it, so no comment there. As an alternative, there are some YouTube playthroughs of these extra routes with the 18+ content cut out. The main game itself is fairly light in terms of sexual content, with some fanservice and a slightly icky scene in the last chapter. The court trials (my favorite part about Ace Attorney games) were a bit disappointing. There are some leaps of logic in the arguments, and it often felt like the trials were resolved with the perpetrator confessing, rather than with clear proof. Granted, considering the setting of the game, you're not going to have evidence like photographs, video footage, and fingerprint analysis. There were also times where the game isn't clear about what evidence you need…

Deeper than I thought it would be from the way it started. Good VN, slow intro but when it gets rolling its great. Free patch for the NSFW stuff (not necessary). Impressed