TAKE THAT!

Medium: Video Game

Genre: Visual Novel

Rating: T

Console: DS/3DS/iPhone/Android

Seeing as how I'm currently on a weeklong vacation and away from my bigass stack of DVDs, I thought I'd take some time to finish up some games I never fully closed out- namely, Pokemon Moon, the final case of Phoenix Wright: Spirit of Justice, and the extra DLC case of Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies. Imagine my surprise at the revelation, somewhere between pondering what I'd watch for my Digger review and getting an orca off of murder charges, that for as long as the Digger has existed I have never once typed a word about the entire Ace Attorney franchise.

So let's fix that.

For the uninitiated, Ace Attorney is a series of genre-busting games on the Nintendo DS family of handhelds in which you play (mostly) as the honest defense lawyer Phoenix Wright, who specializes in unraveling the increasingly complex and mysterious murders for which your clients have been wrongfully accused of having committed. Gameplay takes place in two distinct 'phases'; the 'investigation phase' sees the player snooping around scenes relevant to the case at hand to collect clues and evidence, and the 'trial phase' sees them questioning witnesses and presenting evidence to debunk faulty testimony while the prosecution continually attempts to make the player look bad and paint their client as a bloodthirsty psychopath from Hell. There's also light sci-fi/fantasy elements; while Phoenix doesn't have any special abilities aside from almost supernaturally-awful luck, his partners and coworkers often do. Maya can channel the spirits of the dead (and later lends him a special gem that lets him tell when people are hiding a secret from him, and how guarded they are about said secret), Ema is a forensics nut and will gleefully take any opportunity to bust out the luminol spray and fingerprint powder, junior partner Apollo has a bracelet that lets him percieve even the tiniest, most unnoticeable tells when people are lying to him, budding stage magician Trucy can detect tension, and newbie Athena Sykes knows a thing or two about psychology and wears a special pendant that lets her analyze someone's true emotional state in real-time to pick out inconsistencies between what someone's saying and what they actually feel.

...Did I mention this series is Japanese? Because sometimes, it's really really Japanese.

First it was just Maya's character, and then the village she came from got introduced, and then everything sort of snowballed from there. By game 5 we've interrogated a kamikaze pilot, gotten the son of a yakuza family off the hook, solved a case revolving around a youkai-themed village, rubbed elbows with tokusatsu actors, and that's just a handful of examples from the main games. I kind of feel sorry for the localization team, who made the unfortunate mistake in the first game of claiming that the entire series takes place in California and then had to watch as that claim was beaten to death by a ninja, two samurai, and one cranky geisha who just happened to have been passing by.

You know... America!

Though I am generally loathe to use the term 'genre-busting', it's the only thing really applicable here. Ace Attorney games are more like interactive novels than conventional games, with the meat of the game being not its mechanics, but the blocks of dialogue the player must sift through for the most valuable tidbits of information. It also straddles the line between 'courtroom drama' and 'detective fiction' without ever feeling too dry or too smart for the reader. A lot of that has to do with the game's sense of humor- Phoenix's inner monologue (or Apollo's, or Athena's) is constantly playing straight man to the sheer absurdity of everybody around him, from the witnesses to the partner characters, to the prosecution and even the judge. Push enough evidence in the face of a lying witness and they'll undergo a melodramatic breakdown on the stand, doing everything from flinging their toupee at Phoenix, to undergoing a complete change of personality, to taking off like a rocket ship and careening uncontrollably around the room. It sounds mean-spirited, but it's usually played for laughs, and part of the appeal of the series is meeting all the goofy characters and witnessing their overblown theatrics. There's not-so-goofy characters too, and their overblown theatrics can be downright terrifying. In either case, though, it's a blast to watch.

Another part of the appeal is that these are, again, essentially interactive novels. The game moves at your pace, no faster or slower than you press buttons to make the text go. You can save and quit at any time you want, so if you only have enough time to press a few witness statements and casually throw some evidence at them, there's nothing stopping you from placing your bookmark there and picking it up another day. If you want to slam through an entire case in one sitting, well, you can do that too.

If you have never picked up an Ace Attorney game, do it. You don't even necessarily have to pick up at the first game, as each iteration runs you through a refresher course on the important stuff during the first case before loosing you on the lawyering world. The original trilogy (Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Justice for All, and Trials and Tribulations) can be found as separate cards for the DS or packaged together as one bundle for 3DS or iPhone, though I'd recommend playing them on an official Nintendo handheld so that you get the entire thing at once (instead of having to deal with the usual "first hit's free" microtransaction BS that plagues mobile apps... achievements be damned). Capcom has apparently thrown fourth game Apollo Justice (originally on DS) and fifth game Dual Destinies (Originally on 3DS) onto the Android market, and I wouldn't wonder if they can't be found on iPhone as well.

TL;DR Play as a lawyer-detective and solve murders to save your innocent client from going to jail, match wits with kooky witnesses and sneaky prosecutors, and read... a lot. Highly recommended for its clever writing, sense of humor, and accessibility for the casual crowd.

Virtues: Funny, well-written stories and characters, charm for miles, easy to pick up and put down, does an excellent job of reintroducing recurring characters so new players are never left trying to fill in the blanks, easy-to-understand gameplay makes it perfect for the casual crowd. 

Sins: Earlier titles have some clues that are easy to miss and the plot won't advance without them, Apollo Justice is super dark and gritty compared to the rest of the series and it's a little off-putting, newest titles are download-only, some spin-off titles are untranslated. Dammit Capcom, I wanted to stand in court with Sherlock Holmes!

Scores:

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney- 7/10

Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney: Justice for All- 8/10

Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations- 7/10

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney- 6/10

Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth- 6/10 (purely out of spite for Alba)

Ace Attorney Investigations 2 (fan translation)- Currently incomplete

Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies- 7/10

Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice- Currently incomplete, but not for long.

Final Verdict: