Thoughts on Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (Nintendo Switch)

I´ve got one mission, to consume all Ace Attorney material such as possible, why you ask? The Apollo Justice is coming ouy soon in a few days I think, I wasn´t able to play the 3ds games at its time, now that I´ll have the whole franchise in the palm of my hands, I´m bound to play all of the games since I have no excuses. I´ll just talk for myself but I doubt that being in a justice court is fun, defending your clients or being a prossecutor and trying to get that ¨guilty¨ veredict is any fun, I pretty much doubt is fun to be in a situation like that, even eso, Ace Attorney manages to make what would be a tedious experience into an unforgettable and exciting one.

The player plays as Phoenix Wright, a lawyer who just graduated, a rookie basically, it seems to me that it´s a good entry point, it´s way easy to empathize with him since he´s just as rookie as us. As you have guessed already, the game is all about solving cases, said cases we´ll have a client who we´ll have to probe their innocence in the course of two-three days. The game consists of five chapters, one case per chapter, we´ll normally see the AA is divided in two segmens: the investigation and the defense in the tribunals. The genre that defines these games is visual novel, it fits perfectly for what we are supposed to do in the game.

Investigation is that kind of stuff we do out of the tribunals and as the name suggests it, we need to find some evidence that may help our client, that said, being a visual novel and all, the gameplay is pretty restricted, we are only allowed to do like four actions at investigating. If we have a NPC in front of us, we could talk to them to see if there is any information we could dig up, if that´s not the case, we are allowed to present evidence as well, this is done to see how they react and maybe they´ll slip something out of their mouth.

We are allowed to examine our surroundings as much as the game let us, as you can see, talking to other is not the only way to get evidence and when it´s about examination, it´s not hard to find what we are supposed to examine, there are some objects that could highlight in the scenario way too much and that´s a way of the game of telling you to examine it. Well, you may move through a location to other, but there are certain locations that can only be reachable if we get the correct evidence.

Investigation in Ace Attorney is fine and at some point even gratifying, but you see, it feels very outdated, don´t get me wrong, I know it´s a 2001 videogame from the gameboy advance, of course it´s going to feel outdated, it´s been more than twenty years, still, facts are facts, the investigation is kind of lacking, I´m not gonna say it´s drags the experience, nothing like that, but what can I say, time is a harsh master I guess. What I´m saying about the Investigation segment in Ace Attorney can be appreciated in the third turnabout, the Steel Samurai.

This is funny because there is like a big agreement in the fanbase that the steel samurai case is the worst of the game and not because is bad, I mean, sure, whenever I remembered that I had to play that case, I can tell you, I felt everything except happiness, but once I got into the case, you know, it wasn´t as bad as I remembered it, I even have a better opinion about it, but the investigation gets pretty chaotic. In this turnabout case, we investigate through a studio, the problem is that said studio has like...I don´t know, maybe nine or ten locations, maybe more, the second day in the investigation be like ¨Go to point B, now go to point D and return to point A, now get to point F and return to point C, once there, get to point F, reach point H and get to point E¨.

The whole investigation is like a big puzzle, and it doesn´t feel epic at all, because NPC´s will ask you for things so they can lend you evidence, evidence you actually need to save your clients, there´s a moment when you even have to talk to a little kid and exchange some steel samurai cards but he asks for the premium card and then you have to get to someone who has them and then exchanging them and what the heeeell. I know I said this doesn´t drag the game, but for this certain turnabout case, yes, it does, it ruins the pacing like pretty bad. Still, good case overall.

Alright, now we got all of the evidence we need, the trial will begin and now it´s our duty to defend our client. These are easily the most fun parts of Ace Attorney because it becomes a battle of intilect between you and the prossecutor, it can get pretty intense. Through the trial, many witnesses will have to talk their testimony about the events, the game does a big emphasis in pressing them doing a lot of questions until they lose it and tell one lie or contradiction, that´s what Ace Attorney is all about, to find contradictions and lie within the testimonies, it´s important to press the witnesses because the contradiction won´t come out sometimes.

Once we got the contradiction, all we have to do is to present the necessary evidence, good thing about it is that it´s way gratifying to do this, and you actually feel smart for getting closer the truth. I´d like to say something like is outdated but nothing like that, it´s a great system and still works like a charm after all these years. Well, take into consideration that it won´t be that easy, the game is not hard at all but some cases can get tricky, so it´s not like the contradiction will stay there for you to get objectioned, that´s something I appreciate actually, Ace Attorney has a really good difficulty balance, you literally start from a tutorial case, then, things get complicated little by little, I´m not trying to be mean but, if you get stucked, most probably it will be your fault, because this Ace Attorney is not unfair by any means.

Ace Attorney presents a quite linear narrative, there are no multiple endings or something, you can´t even get to the trials with all of the evidence that the game makes you to have, you have one straight line to follow and you follow it, nothing else, not that I complain about it. Something that I felt it could be better how everything here is like black or white, I mean, lawyers are good : ) and prossecutor are evil >: ( like seriously, I´d even say that this game is a big criticism to the prossecutors and the police and how they don´t care if your client is innocent or guilty, only they care is about winning the case, even if that means falsify evidence which is obviously illegal, I don´t know man I just want to see evil lawyer too.

My favorite turnabout from Ace Attorney is the last one and probably my favorite one from the franchise, they did talk about corruption within the police and the prossecutors but this case takes it to another level, we can see from the inside how corrupted and ugly the whole judicial system is, we are exposed to the lives of the prosecutors, more than in other case, and how this corruption had ruined their lives, almost every character in this turnabout case has a motive and a development through the story, character development is something we won´t see lacking, even in important characters such as our client. This is the hardest case of the game actually, this is where all the meat is put on the grill, not only that, it´s the longest turnabout of game as well, it also has the one of the best antagonist of the franchise but I don´t know, everything about this turnabout case is brilliant to me.

All of the screenshots were taken by me