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Usually you have a good bit of point and click adventure gameplay and a lot of deduction ability to figure out what happened and why your client is innocent.
Words really can't do justice to how good it feels when the music stops. Nor to how good it feels when it starts again.
In court, you're constantly given testimony to dissect, looking over every little statement, and comparing against evidence you have to find contradictions. Your brain and attention to detail can certainly be tested, although it can be a while before any question or testimony will stump you. And when you DO get stumped, it can be frustrating. In one of the later games in the franchise, for example, I tried pointing out on a map that the killer could only escape through the hallway, but the game would keep penalizing me until I pointed to the hallway DOOR. And there's probably gonna be at least 1 part per case where you'll just give up and use a walkthrough.
Honestly, this game is mostly about the story, but the joy comes from unraveling that story with your own hand.
As others pointed out, this game is mostly linear and about the story. You will need to be attentive to the details and you might (or might not) solve the case by yourself, but you will be taken by the hand through the whole journey.
You can't "miss" any clues in investigation phase (point & click), as the story won't progress until you find everything there is to find. Missing something will just end up with you turning in circles, talking the the same NPCs again and checking every place until you figure out what you missed (it's never overly complicated like what you might find in some old point & click though).
The trials can be summarized as "read lots of dialogues, press every sentence you can to force witnesses to give more details and show the proof which contradicts their claim on the right sentence" with some multiple choice questions from time to time. It's not especially hard if you pay attention to what's going on, and being wrong will just give you a "penalty" (if you get too much, you loose, reload and go through the same dialogues again, although unless you skip dialogues, it shouldn't happen too often). As a player, you will have to pay attention to details, but story remains the main focus at all time.
The games are especially popular for their cases with multiple twists (similar to what you might find in Case Closed/Detective Conan) and a fun cast of characters. Each game provides 4-5 cases to solve (between 1-3 hours per case) pretty independent from each others (allowing a good pace) with the last case of each game being a little longer and "connecting" these short stories together into one big narrative. Worth mentioning that even though the games have anime tropes and character development, no harem/romance/fanservice is really involved and it remains mostly focused on the cases. Although if you go through it expecting more "gameplay" than following a story or leading the actual investigation yourself, you might end up disappointed.
It's often labeled as one, I guess it's because the game involves alot of reading.
A case usually takes two or three days to solve, so you alternate between investigation sequences and trial sequences. Speedy trial laws require the judge to issue his verdict within three trial days, so at the most you get three of each segment, although some cases are shorter than that, largely dependent on which game in the collection you are playing.
You are meant to figure out what to do and when, but you have an unlimited amount of time to select your choices and there is normally only one proper course of action to take in each case, so you do not even get branching paths like you might in other visual novels. If you are also having trouble, you can brute force all of the options.
The game is linear, save for a couple of non-standard game overs. Cases ultimately play out the same way each and every time the game is played. You can brute-force the solutions if need be. There is zero replay value.
I would ultimately rate this as being more story than game as such, and thus not what you want. It is a very good story if you ever do change your mind, but if you are not looking for a satirical introspection of the Japanese legal system, then this game is not for you.
It does give the impression of being quite gamy during that initial play through though, especially with the animations of the characters during trial.
The second game is harder because it's more clever. A few times it doesn't give you all the information and just expects you are able to make the jump. Also, it has a somewhat unfair... mmm... feature? of giving you more than one clue that could solve the situation... but the game only accepts one of them as valid. It means that making mistakes is not an error, it's part of the game even if you completely understand what's happening in a case. Sometimes it's a matter of luck, to know what the developers wanted you to use. It's done in such a way that it doesn't particularly hurts the experience, it won't make you fail too often, it will just keep you on your toes a few times.
The third one to me, it's the best of them. The cases are even more interesting and it has one of the best villains I have seen.
Keep in mind that most (or all?) tags for games on steam are user-defined. They may not always be completely accurate and aren't set by the developer when they publish a game onto the steam store.
That's my understanding at least
This more like a graphic adventure, what some people call point and click adventures. Like Monkey island and stuff like that.
In hindsight, there's probably not an obvious line that separates both types of games, it's probably a matter of opinion.
But being someone who loves classic visual novels, it's hard for me to consider this as the same. It's closer than, let's say, danganronpa (or maybe not) but still it's not there.