It’s not for nothing that the protagonist of the Ace Attorney series is called Phoenix. No matter how often he finds himself in a quandary, the experienced criminal defense attorney always manages to rise from the ashes and prove his clients’ innocence in court. The numerous games in the series also tend to return with renewed vigor. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy introduced the original titles to a new modern audience, while The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles ultimately brought two Japan-only spin-offs to the West. Now Capcom is back with Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy, giving a new lease of life to a series of games that never received the love they deserved.
The collection includes the fourth, fifth and sixth games in the series, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice. The trilogy introduces a ton of new characters and mechanics, but if you’ve played just one of the other chapters in the series you’ll feel right at home. All games build on the solid foundation of the original Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney for Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS. This means you’ll re-investigate crime scenes and interview witnesses, then use the evidence and testimony you’ve gathered in dramatic court battles where you’ll have to navigate increasingly complex webs of lies and deception.
The first thing new players want to know is whether the collection is a good place to start. The short answer is without a doubt: yes. In many ways, the trilogy sanitizes history, and although many of the fan-favorite characters are later reintroduced, their stories are always properly reported. In some ways, this new collection might even be a better starting point than the previous ones, as the tests are organized more logically than before. Don’t get us wrong: the individual characters are still deliciously crazy and the plots are as convoluted and implausible as ever. But the slightly more helpful script provides a better overview and there are lots of subtle hints about what evidence you should present and what statements you should insist on.
Advertising:
Whether you’re a new player or a long-time fan, the first title in the collection, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, introduces a new protagonist in the form of the newly licensed defender Apollo Justice. Although his clothes are red instead of blue and his hair stands on end instead of pointing backwards, he is in many ways quite similar to Phoenix – a bit naive and clueless, but with an incredibly keen eye for lies and contradictions once he figures it out . The court is assembled. In the game’s first case, Apollo comes into conflict with his former mentor, and much of the story revolves around how he learns to fend for himself.
The game was the first Ace Attorney to be developed from the ground up for the Nintendo DS, and this is evident in the many ways in which the game attempts to take advantage of the successful handheld console’s unique features. Of course, you no longer have to blow into the console and keep an eye on the stylus, but unfortunately that doesn’t change the fact that the forensic gameplay, where you have to search for fingerprints, analyze boot prints and find blood patterns, doesn’t change anything particularly demanding or even entertaining. At least Apollo’s unique ability to debunk witnesses’ lies through subtle observation of body language has some merit.
Advertising:
Overall, “Apollo Justice” cannot do justice to the final episodes. As with Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy, the vibrant 2D backgrounds look a bit flat and artificial when upscaled to 1080p, and the 20-hour story takes too long to really get going. It’s still a good game, but it’s clear that Capcom (like Apollo itself) needed to get back on its feet after the conclusion of the original trilogy.
Luckily, things improved significantly in the later games Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice, originally released for the Nintendo 3DS. The backgrounds are less busy and the lively characters have lost none of their luster in the transition from sprites to 3D models. Newer games also eliminate the mundane search for pixels in each scene as you explore, as you can now only explore select environments. This results in better pacing, despite the games being significantly longer than their predecessors, each containing five longer chapters and an additional DLC episode.
The fifth chapter, Dual Destinies, is in every way a return to the glory of yesteryear, symbolized by Wright’s return to the Defense Force, where he now shares his duties with Apollo. But it’s the new characters, including the charming and cheerful Fulbright detective and the artistic law student Robin Newman, who bring out the best in each other. You don’t need a 3D slider to notice that the cast of characters has a little more depth than before, so it’s only fitting that the game introduces a new helper in psychologist and lawyer Athena Cykes and her little AI companion Widget . By activating his so-called Mood Matrix, Cykes can analyze the emotions of witnesses and find contradictions in their statements. This mechanic adds variety to the trials and in many ways is the metaphorical icing on the cake that makes the fifth Ace Attorney an excellent experience from start to finish.
Spirit of Justice, the latest game in the collection, moves the action to a new setting, specifically the Kingdom of Khura’in, located somewhere between China and Nepal. Phoenix Wright visits the country as a tourist, but his professional duty soon calls upon him when his guide, Ahlbi Ur’gaid, is arrested for murder. Nothing should really surprise Wright, but the veteran lawyer gets an added surprise when he learns that trials in the Mountain Kingdom are a little different than what he’s used to, and are based on the most sophisticated supernatural intelligence. than in evidence and witness statements.
This creates a new game mechanic called Divination Session, which gives you access to the final memories of murder victims. The visions themselves are not usually wrong, but the prosecutor’s interpretations are. So it’s up to Wright and his now quite large team of colleagues to bring clarity to the fuzzy visions by – you guessed it – presenting evidence and pointing out contradictions. Even in this far-flung place, there’s nothing new under the sun, but as mentioned, it doesn’t matter much since the series needed a breath of fresh air at this point rather than a hurricane that would turn everything upside down. The narrative, involving ancient traditions, spiritualism, and a legal revolution, is (side effects aside) the most cohesive in the series’ history, and it’s really difficult to pinpoint any aspect of the game.
In short, the quality of the games included in this collection is top notch and you get a lot for your money, maybe even too much. Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy drags things out a bit at times, and while I personally don’t have a problem with that, some players might get a little impatient. Whatever your preference, it helps that the dialogue is consistently excellent – you could even compare it to a well-acted jam session, with new characters constantly contributing their own one-liners or quirky one-liners to the previous ones. There’s still no voice acting – aside from the iconic bursts during testing and animated cutscenes – but the way the text scrolls across the screen with pauses and varying speeds ensures you’re never lost given the sheer volume of text be let down. And veteran Noriyuki Iwadare’s music is, as expected, very atmospheric.
While it’s easy to recommend the collection to new players, those who have already played the trilogy on Nintendo phones or laptops will find it much harder to justify a new purchase. First, the extras are scarce. A music player and an art gallery are nice touches, but not much else, and the new animation studio is unfortunately a major disappointment. Here you can combine backgrounds, characters and sound effects, but you cannot write your own text or create your own tests. What could have been an excellent tool that with a few tweaks could have provided hundreds if not thousands of hours of entertainment ends up being a small distraction that you’ll tire of after a few minutes.
As I said, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy is pretty nice, but that’s more due to the original design than the new improvements. Many of the textures look raw and pixelated, and Wright doesn’t even need to have an eye for detail to notice that Capcom has been sloppy with the finishing touches. It’s also disappointing that games are limited to 30 fps, even on the PC and the latest consoles. For games that consist mostly of still images and text, you wouldn’t expect this to matter much, but the low frame rate sometimes results in a slightly choppy picture and causes the menus to drag a bit. Speaking of menus, navigating the game with a mouse and keyboard can be quite frustrating, as Capcom surprisingly chose to simulate a touchscreen instead of a real cursor. Fortunately, there is no problem if you use a controller.
In particular, the two 3DS games included in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy deserved a larger audience than when they were released as digital downloads in the West. We can only welcome the fact that they now have a second chance and that the entire series (except Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney and the Miles Edgeworth Investigations games) is available on modern platforms. And for 49.99 dollars, new players get a bargain. Unfortunately, long-time fans of the series only get a few small improvements that end up leaving a bad taste in their mouths. We hope that Capcom will remedy the situation with a new chapter soon, because despite its over 80 hours of content, this trilogy leaves you wanting more.
