2023 is an incredible year for video games, but as I look ahead to 2024, there’s one thing I’m particularly excited about: Apollo Justice may finally get a chance to get the credit he deserves.
Apollo’s like…I don’t know, Rey? Just like inheriting Luke Skywalker as a leading character is nearly impossible, so is inheriting Phoenix Wright. Of the three text-heavy games, Phoenix steals the show. That meant that when Apollo returned in 2007, he still had a mountain to climb.
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I always felt like he never made it to the top either. Phoenix remains an important part of Apollo’s story – a more rugged and inactive, old protagonist, now a veteran, training the new ones. His adopted daughter became Apollo’s assistant, filling Mia’s role. Ultimately, the main mystery of the first Apollo game has to do with understanding what happened to Phoenix between the end of his trilogy and the beginning of the Apollo trilogy.
Crucially, at the end of the game, I remember most fans only had one question: So, Phoenix is coming back as a lawyer, right? And that’s exactly what happened: The next two games in the second trilogy, named after Apollo, split the caseload not only between him and Phoenix, but also between a third, up-and-coming lawyer, Athena Cy. Distribute the caseload among
I really love Athena, and as a huge fan of the original trilogy (the Star Wars comparisons are really apt, in these words), I obviously love Phoenix. But I always felt like Apollo was shortchanged in the end.
Capcom made the right moves against him, and I’d be willing to bet those decisions came from Takumi Shu, the creator of the Ace Attorney series. Shu wrote the script and supervised the first Apollo game, but not the two subsequent games. As a result, the first game felt more confident – willing to be different, willing to make unflinching commentary on Japan’s legal system, willing to stake out a protagonist with a very different attitude and approach to things.
The later games are still lovely, but without Takumi on the team they would definitely prefer to stick with the status quo established in the Phoenix Trilogy and go back to the famous protagonist from the DS era. They’re both great games, but I wish the focus could be on Apollo for a while. When Edgeworth and Maya returned, those games were to some extent just Phoenix’s old games.
But despite this, Apollo still performs well across all three games. So does Athena. Both are worthy full-time successors to Phoenix, though it’s unlikely the series will continue without its original protagonists. Now that it’s been over a decade since the first Apollo game was first released, I hope audiences will take a step back and re-evaluate Apollo not in Phoenix’s shadow, but as a brilliant lead in its own right.
Players will be able to evaluate it quickly. Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy will be released on January 25th on nearly all major platforms.
