Alright, so, it´s complicated to talk about Apollo Justice for many reasons, it´s been probably the Ace Attorney game I´ve liked the less, not a bad game by any means, but it´s the weakest one indeed. I´d like to elaborate so you can understand why I reached this line of thinking.
Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney is the fourth game on the franchise, it introduced many changes to the franchise, and for better or worse, said changes weren´t well received by the fanbase or comunitty, although, I think this game has a lot of cool things to share, despite everything. The game introduces a new protagonist: Apollo Justice. What happened to the old Phoenix we know? Basically he fucking died, okay, jokes asides, he stopped being a lawyer, it´s known that, since Phoenix lost his attorney badge, the whole legal system entered into a dark era, known as ¨the dark age of law¨, I don´t want to get into many details about the story or the plot but I think this change of pacing is really cool, Ace Attorney games are kind of silly, there are a few misadventures the characters go through and also many dark moments in the franchise, which is cool, but the whole franchise usually has this happy atmosphere which I don´t know how to explain. What I´m trying to say is that Apollo Justice is the first and only gane that preffers to have a darker tone and atmosphere through the entire game, not everything looks as happy as it used to be in the main trilogy, when they tell you that you are in the dark age of law, you can actually feel that and that´s something I apprecite, it feels as the franchise had matured alongside us.
Sadly, a darker setting is not enough to make a good game. I like Apollo as a character, he stands out and he´s not just a Phoenix Wright clone, he has his own personality and background, even his own gimmick which uses a bracalet of his in order to look when a character is hiding something or lying, just by noticing nervous tics that they do without even noticing, it´s a bi exaggerated sometimes but it´s fair enough. I said I liked him as a character, that´s true, but not as a protagonist, see the problem with him is that you expect him to do something really epic throughout the game and he does basically nothing, we expect to learn more from his past and stuff but at the end of the day, we just learn one thing about him, that´s it. This is an Apollo Justice game but feels more as a Phoenix game, because at the end of the game we are basically learning about Phoenix and why he left his job instead of, I don´t know, learning about our new main protagonist.
This is something that sadly happens in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, it feels as if the game is undercooked, like just a small tiny part of something even bigger, that would be Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney 2, and I say it because this game was thought as a first part of two games, but the first AJ didn´t sell well enough and even nowadays, Capcom likes to act like this game didn´t exist at all, which is understandable due to the bad reception it had at its time, see my problem? It´s not a game that knows how to stand by itself, it´s like, you are expecting to the whole game to do something really epic, and as I said before, it never hapens.
All of the turnabouts from this game are kinda mid not gonna lie, maybe excepting the first one which is pretty cool actually, just not that great. After that, the second turnabout is funny at best, but lacks sustance, it´s a filler turnabout but just because of that, it doesn´t mean you can´t make a good turnabout; the third turnabout is also mid and most of the times I just wanted to complete it as fast as I could. Alright, the last turnabout is...decent, I like how everything connects and makes sense but let´s be honest, if it wasn´t for Phoenix, this would be a pretty boring one, this is a shame really because as a concept and ideas, I think this could be a really AA game, sadly, that wasn´t the case, feels like they were holding the great things for the second game that never existed in the first place.
I know it sounds like this game sucks but that´s not the case, it just feels inferior when you compare it to the old trilogy. There are actually a few things I liked about the game, for example, the soundtrack rocks, nothing unusual about that, I mean, the soundtrack from Ace Attorney has always been pretty cool but gotta say this one is pretty great, as it manages to make you feel like you are indeed into a dark age. Previously, I said I didn´t like that is always the same for these games, I mean, lawyers good and prosecutors evil and this game does a big change of that, something that I appreciate a lot, this time, the prosecutor you deal agains´t with is a good guy -though I don´t like him- and the bad guys is actually a lawyer, first time that the franchise dares to do something like that and it feels as a fresh air.
In terms of gameplay it´s fine really, the same formula, you examine everything for clues that could help your client, then you defend them in court, it´s fine and it never gets old, you basically press the witnesses until you can find their lies, every court feels like a big puzzle you gotta solve by yourself. Now, I said that all the turnabouts here are pretty mid and I truly think that, but take into account that I don´t think something mid is bad, I just think that thing is mediocre at best, neither good nor bad, just mediocre and that´s exactly what happens in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, the turnabouts are neither good or bad, just mediocre, but they are fine really, they are entertaining enough so you don´t feel that bored. If you ask me, I think this is the AA game that looks the better, it´s the best looking one, I just think this is the game where the 2D sprites are at its peak.
All of the screenshots were taken by me