rise from the ashes is a study in great character writing, and it is also by far the most mediocre case in the entire game in terms of plot. the premise is fascinating (then again, it was heavily borrowed from turnabout goodbyes) and very shoddily executed. the denouement is full of holes and instead of leaving me with a sense of closure, left me unsatisfied and completely confused about every single event on the day of the murder of bruce goodman.

• how did gant get goodman's body into edgeworth's car without being seen by anyone at the police station? was literally everyone in the police station gone?
• how did edgeworth enter the evidence room to retrieve evidence while not noticing the bloodstains everywhere?
• whose locker did gant and edgeworth retrieve the trivial evidence from? edgeworth was never a detective, so the only possibility is gant's locker. meaning gant had to have gone in with edgeworth.
• how did gant get the body into edgeworth's trunk without edgeworth seeing him? edgeworth went to see gant in the evidence room to get the evidence, and at that point the body was either still in the evidence room or elsewhere. if the former, how did edgeworth not see it? if the latter, where was the body kept and how did it not get seen by anyone? and if the latter, once edgeworth took the evidence from gant, how did gant get the body into edgeworth's trunk?
• how did gant get the body into edgeworth's trunk without access to his car keys?
• why did gant collect all the evidence except the vase pieces, which he was so meticulous about during SL9 (writing ema's name on it using neil marshall's blood, breaking the vase, hiding the crucial piece in his safe)? it makes zero sense that he would forget the vase, which was crucial to him blackmailing lana skye
• is it not too convenient that the glove from SL9 was so conveniently wedged in the locker as to allow jake marshall to open it?

these go beyond mere plot holes - they're indicative of close-to-zero thought being put in. i'm wondering if the release of the case was rushed and the game makers didn't have time to write a plausible reminiscence sequence to explain the events of the day of the murder. instead we get gant saying "yep i did it. i'm not a great criminal huh? tee hee." which is just... lazy

making my way through a case that was well over twice the length of the average of the previous cases for an ending as rushed and incoherent as this felt really disappointing. it's a shame too, because the characters introduced in this case are all complex, lovable and interesting in many different ways.