My goodness, how long has it been since I played my last Ace Attorney game? I think the last one was The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures, which I know wasn’t a huge hit with fans of the series, but I thought it was interesting enough to fit just fine within the Ace Attorney family. Its departure from the present timeline and journey into the Ace Attorney past helped to keep the game a bit more interesting. Before that one, I played the original game on the first DS.
Yep, I might have skipped a few. Okay, I skipped a lot. No time like the present, though, right?
To help me fill in the missing pieces to my Phoenix Wright journey, Capcom released Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy this month on the PlayStation 5, a console that will not put my eyes to the test, unlike the Switch. Anyway, I have spent the last week and some change catching up on what I missed. This trilogy spans 2007 to 2016 and covers Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies, and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice. All three combined bring over-the-top characters and cases with some wonderful logic puzzles that keep it all interesting and engaging. There is enough content to keep your logical brain occupied while delivering new twists on old characters.
If there are no objections, let’s get this review going.
Plenty of good gameplay
When I first played Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney in the Capcom booth at E3 back in 2005 (maybe 2004 – I’m old, so forgive me), I knew the game would be a hit. It contained an oddity of a story with outlandish characters that lived within both a visual novel and a logical gameplay-driven experience. It might have been longwinded, which would have explained the Phoenix Wright coffee machine that you could freely hit up for caffeine near the booth, but the game was addictive, and fun, and I believe I missed about two appointments that day because of it. It was so good.
Anyway, the biggest concern I had after leaving the booth that day was about whether the long-term gameplay could keep players engaged for hours. I could see it working in short stints, but eventually, it would need to change up from reading, thinking, and guessing. That set of gameplay elements would have to eventually change to keep it from getting boring. If you had to depend on the story to drive it and present the same gameplay, you would run the risk at some point of boring your audience with the lack of gameplay variety. It was a valid concern and something I would wonder about with future playthroughs of the series.
Thankfully, boredom never entered the equation with this series. The reasons are two-fold.
Story is everything
The first is that somehow the visual novel portion of the game only got better over the years, and the Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy is proof of that. By introducing new characters with meaningful backgrounds and bringing back old faces from past titles to continue their narratives, the world of Phoenix Wright became thick with consistently good, well-written narratives. For example, the first game in this trilogy, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, brings back Phoenix Wright as a murderer and a disbarred lawyer who is seven years removed from his duties. This jumping-off point in the first Apollo game extends the story of Phoenix Wright and provides a different side of our broken hero that we haven’t seen before. Instead of an unsure lawyer who stumbles into success here in there, as he was portrayed in the previous titles, we have someone that is confident and borderline cocky, and who has found a different path in his life, thus, making room for Apollo to shine. Oh, the murder trial he is involved with also makes him more interesting.
This constant building and shift of character and backstory show that Capcom isn’t out of details and did/does want to add meaningful content to the visual novel side of this series. I have always crowed about the story needing to be the number one priority in good games, and Capcom went all in making that the strongest part of the series, and it shows in this trilogy. Honestly, if you had told me back in 2005 that this series would still be kicking and would have gathered as many fans as it has thanks to a massive ongoing narrative, I would have scoffed at the notion and thrown back another coffee. I’m happy to be wrong and I’m impressed that this series has garnered cross-generational interest. Growing up, my kids have found their way to this series thanks to word of mouth and the strong storyline the series carries with it. They have always told me how much fun the Apollo games are when I bring up Phoenix Wright. They are definitely right.
Puzzles that keep your interest
The second part of this gameplay that reinforces the longevity of this series is the logic puzzles, which get better and better as the series continues. This trilogy proves that the story can provide a nice path for good logic puzzles without feeling like they’re thrown in there for the sake of prolonging the experience. For example, the first case in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, where Wright is accused of murder, has multiple pieces and parts in it that fit perfectly with the storyline. The puzzles feel like they fit the journey of trying to get Phoenix acquitted and the real murderer found (and found guilty). The game doesn’t shoehorn anything unnecessary into the story and it doesn’t feel like the case will never end. It simply lays out the story and throws curveballs at you and requires you to figure out a poker game gone wrong, how a person (Shadi Smith) was murdered, and all the possibilities that could be built within that story’s boundaries. Going back to the first game, which felt at times that some cases were extended just to push some unnecessary drama, this trilogy didn’t feel that way at all.
What I also liked about the logic puzzles is how the gameplay in the trilogy started to get a bit more variety than just choosing a guess blindly for a logic problem presented and hoping for the best possible outcome to push the case forward. The inclusion of perceiving and investigating a crime scene helped to build out some of the logic puzzle capabilities and tools. For example, during the first game’s Phoenix Wright trial, at some point, you get to investigate the murder scene and answer questions about how the murder was committed by point-and-click methods. While it’s very linear in purpose, as it activates only with story progression, it’s still a departure from the original game and showed that the series was willing to try new things to make the gameplay fresh. Some of the new tools worked, and some didn’t, but giving credit where it is due, the devs at least tried to add more ways to solve crimes and court cases into an already solid experience.
The only part of the logic puzzles that felt like they were an uphill challenge was the progressive difficulty that accompanied them. Consistently within this trilogy, details of the courtroom drama were microscopic at times and pushed the player in directions that weren’t obvious, and sometimes teetered on downright frustrating. Regardless, the series, and especially this trilogy, upped the ante at a consistent and respectable rate that made figuring out a tough case difficult but nonetheless left the experience feeling accomplished. You always want to feel like you’ve done something right and that you’re making progress through problem-solving in this series. This trilogy, while easy at times, does have more than a good balance of difficulty progression than I remember in other titles.
Anyway, at the end of the day, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy shows a gameplay expansion to the series that mostly hits on the right notes. At the very least, the trilogy brings such a good set of stories to the table and some different gameplay that builds upon a great foundation that the previous games established. This trilogy has all the right progression with characters and pushes with new and fresh stories. It also does a great job of drumming up a new set of logic puzzles, and mostly well-thought-out tools to make solutions a bit more interesting than previously seen in the series. All three games are at the very least a fun experience.
More than just games
For those huge Phoenix Wright fans out there, you get more than just a trilogy of games with this set. The Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy also features a cool museum that offers a plethora of music pieces from each game, a huge art library, if you’re into that and a weird animation studio option. The latter of the bunch is just a bevy of animations that you can mix and match. There is also an accolades section, which is pretty much just in-game trophies for accomplishments. It’s a nice touch to include these and the music itself is worth the price of admission.
On that note, let’s wrap this review up.
Conclusion
The Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy from Capcom is an outstanding release that shows off some of the best games in the Phoenix Wright series, as well as some extra goodies that make the return journey worth your time. The trilogy also highlights the high points of new gameplay tools in relation to the logic puzzles that separate this trilogy from previous games in the series, while also showing some of the gameplay tools that didn’t work. Regardless, it’s still a solid trilogy.
