Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice for All Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 12/6/2025)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice for All

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

Genre(s): Graphic Adventure

Platforms: GBA, DS

Release Date: October 18, 2002

And here I thought that the gaming medium had managed to successfully hurdle over the hump of a sophomore slump ages ago. The trajectory of a video game series, provided the developers are limiting it to a well-rounded trilogy, is usually as follows: the first game establishes the franchise’s core gameplay components and characters, the direct sequel sands off the coarse bits dangling from the first game’s rough template to its near-perfect polished peak, and then the third and last entry retains the previous title’s quality-of-life enhancements while dialing up every conceivable aspect presented thus far to eleven as one last grand hurrah before the stage curtains close indefinitely. It’s a three-piece formula easier to commit to memory than fixing up a batch of refreshing Kool-Aid. We’re no longer in the 8-bit 1980s, when second releases from germinating gaming icons such as Mario, Zelda, and Castlevania perhaps jumped the gun too soon on experimenting with the series’ various elements before they could marinate, creating a chasm of quality between the exemplary first and third entries as a result. Capcom seems to have gotten the memo on how to structure a trilogy to the modern standard if the arc of their Resident Evil IP on the original PlayStation is any indication. Why then, one generation later, have they reverted to the sophomore slump practices of a primordial gaming era akin to an archaic bloodletting? Devil May Cry 2 is the more infamous, maligned example of Capcom whiffing the sophomore outing for one of their IPs during the 2000s, but any fan of their visual-novel-oriented crime investigation and courtroom procedure property Ace Attorney will tell you that the second entry in its initial Phoenix Wright trilogy, with the subtitle Justice for All, is almost equally as unremarkable. Given that I was floored by the character and case writing of the first game, plus the entertainment factor of the would-be dry material elevated by an exhilarating, over-the-top presentation, dissecting the unanimous disappointment behind Justice for All became a stimulating source of curiosity. Unfortunately, after gathering up the evidence needed to potentially defend Justice for All by playing it, I find myself in the prosecutor’s corner, stamping its condemnation to a lukewarm status like everyone else.

Right off the bat, Justice for All’s first case bombs like a guy playing the banjo with his feet at the Apollo Theater. Still, the core aspect of this case’s unprecedented appallingness opens up an interesting discussion on certain gaming consumer practices that I believe I’m broaching for the very first time. If someone is playing Justice for All before its predecessor due to the lack of availability of the first game or if they’re receiving it as a gift, it presents quite the awkward, discordant pickle. You see, during the first case of the previous Ace Attorney title, the eponymous Phoenix Wright was equally as clueless in suspecting deceit in a witness's testimony as the player would be when freshly booting up the game on their mobile Nintendo console. Because both the player and Phoenix are both stammering amateurs at the beginning, there is a concurrent growth relationship between them that blossoms organically with more experience gained as the game progresses. However, after Phoenix eventually starts hitting nothing but the defense lawyer equivalent of bullseyes and deplatforming formally undefeated prosecutors as a result of his newfound impeccable reasoning skills, any player launching into the series with Justice for All reasonably won’t be able to match his sharpened sagacity. How do the developers account for this likely scenario and keep the dreaded “LD” word from popping up like an ugly, ingrown weed? By implementing the most contrived plot device imaginable: amnesia. For reasons that will soon be discovered, Phoenix’s memory of his friends and, more importantly, his career skills are clouded by mental fatigue as thick as flu phlegm. Therefore, he experiences some issues recounting how to object to the total horseshit of some hoity-toity twat who is accusing a young lady of killing her boyfriend in a public park. Both Maya and the defendant are forced to give him some pointers from the sidelines, much to Phoenix’s embarrassment. C’mon, Capcom. Don’t tell me there aren’t any other narrative devices you could’ve used to work around the newbie player predicament that aren’t as sloppily shoehorned. As a returning player, the amnesia condition is patronizing, but it probably doesn’t aid newcomers all that much either because proving Maggey’s innocence is far less clear than saving Larry’s stupid ass. Tutorial case or not, you can do better than this, Capcom.

Even if someone is a fresh face to the Ace Attorney franchise here, they would still be receiving the complete series experience because every single aspect introduced in the first title is translated over with no complications. The warm, expressive comic art still renders Phoenix, Maya, and the colorful cast of returning secondary characters that I’m now convinced are the recurring series players. The windbag Oldbag is still yammering on so much that the game quickens and autoplays her dialogue, southern-belle Lotta is still looking for a juicy scoop to make ends meet, and Detective Gumshoe is still screwing up so many times at the precinct that they might have actually reduced his pay to literal peanuts. Phoenix (and Maya, sometimes) will scavenge a crime scene for pieces of evidence by either scrounging around for objects of interest or persuading the people of relevance to part with any vital information or incriminating trinkets they might possess. Once the scavenger hunt portion of the day is completed, Phoenix will stand in court and volley those OBJECTIONS to whoever is opposing him in the prosecutor’s stand, which will eventually substantiate a victory in favor of proven innocence. Besides the settings of the crime scenes and the narrative context behind them, the resemblance to the first game in terms of its presentation and gameplay formula is uncanny.

That is, until Phoenix chats with one of the screen-centered characters during an investigation, and suddenly, a series of metallic chains emerge and drape a newly blackened background. Upon receiving a green magatama from Fey Manor in the second episode, the presence of the curved, glowing bead will reveal hints of secrecy in whomever Phoenix converses with in the investigation process. To literally unlock the truth obscured within the chains, Phoenix must approach the process the exact same way he debunks falsities in the courtroom: by providing conclusive and concise evidence that combats anyone’s caginess. The appeal of these “psyche-locks” is that they transport the electrifying other half of Ace Attorney’s gameplay equation into the fetch quest portion that, admittedly, while essential, can be a tad dry and attention-numbing at times. I fully support the inclusion of these “psyche-locks” in concept, but there is something fundamentally flawed in their execution here. When Phoenix arrives at the courtroom after a day of diligently gathering evidence, it’s guaranteed that everything he’ll possibly need will be at his disposal, and failing to correlate a claim with said specific evidence is due to the player’s lack of wits or attentiveness. When the player is faced with a psych lock, the game never indicates whether or not they’re sufficiently stacked with enough evidence to unlock an NPC’s secrets. Never can the player dig into the psych lock process successfully upon its immediate availability, so the game expects the player to use the evidence they’ve scrounged up for the same purpose for what will occur in the courtroom the next day. Because some psych lock sequences include anywhere between two and five locks to bust open and therefore require multiple pieces of evidence, without any indication that Phoenix can finally force an NPC to spill their guts, the player can overthink things and start frantically searching through every nook and cranny to ensure their preparedness. Or maybe that’s just my obsessive-compulsive side speaking due to being flared up by the psyche-locks.

The first instance of chains interrupting the flow of conversation, as if Phoenix has just summoned The Cenobites, is when he finds a peculiar guest roaming the halls of the remote, old-world Fey Manor during the game’s second case. Given the demeanor of Miss Ini Miney, the guest on the compound, plus the circumstances surrounding the case, it dawned on me that the series has adopted a habit of recycling narrative assets from previous court cases. Once again, Maya is embroiled in a murder case where she is the prime culprit, ready to face trial with Phoenix as her defendant, and there’s a vapid young woman in the midst who knows far more about the crime’s intricacies than she leads on. While the initial comparisons may lead to returning players being dismayed by deja vu, the second case here presents a far more clever setup to implicate Maya. In a world where the practices of spirit channeling have been proven to be a tangible method of summoning the deceased, there’s reasonable doubt that Maya isn’t responsible for her client’s death because the vengeful spirit that was summoned has been controlling Maya’s consciousness. Then again, a spirit can’t leave its own fingerprints on the assorted murder weapons, so that should complicate proving Maya’s innocence during the court proceedings. While the contextual elements behind this case are fascinating and present an unorthodox ethical dilemma, this backbone of “Reunion and Turnabout” crumbles as the case continues. Once the supernatural elements of the murder are all proven to be nothing but a red herring, the outcome of the case is pretty straightforward and obvious. Only the Miney girl has any motive to kill her eccentric former boss at the hospital where she was fired for malpractice, and the fact that she sticks out like a sore thumb among the robe-garbed Fey ladies here makes her awfully suspicious. But then that begs the question: how did this airhead gain access to the private domain of the spirit channelers and learn the layout of the manor well enough to enact her revenge? Well, that leads us to the second case’s other glaring issue in that Morgan Fey’s, Maya’s aunt and main proprietor of the Fey Manor, role as the accomplice in this murder is treated as being fairly inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. One would think that a family member of Maya’s actively conspiring against her would call for a greater precedence in this case than simply being detained once the real killer is revealed. Phoenix even struggles to figure out a motive for Morgan inculpating Maya, even though anyone paying attention to NPC dialogue would know that she’s trying to keep her immediate bloodline as the governing force of Fey Manor after her sister proved to have stronger summoning powers than hers. Still nursing that nasty head wound from last case, eh, Phoenix?

Speaking of Morgan’s bloodline, once the Fey Manor’s matriarch is in custody, Phoenix and Maya adopt her young daughter Pearl the same way that Phoenix became Maya’s guardian when her older sister was taken from this Earth too soon. Since she’s still of a single-digit age, she can act as the series’ beacon of innocence now that Maya has reached adulthood. Also, Pearl can channel the soul of Mia if Maya is out of commission for whatever reason, even if seeing Mia in Pearl’s gown exposes her gigantic breasts so prominently that they become quite distracting. We’ve taken care of filling the void of purity becoming gradually corrupted by exposing it to the serious nature of crime and the courts that evaluate it, but who’s filling the role as Phoenix’s rival now that Edgeworth has gone off the grid? While investigating Fey Manor during the second case, Gumshoe informs Phoenix that the prosecutor will be Von Karma, which raises some eyebrows considering that he’s presumably behind bars now for his involvement in the murder of Edgeworth’s father all those years ago. No, this Von Karma is Franziska Von Karma, the former Von Karma’s pride and joy, who is known as a prosecutor prodigy who started this foul lawyer business at the precocious age of thirteen. Stating that she’s a chip off the old block is an understatement. Franziska has inherited not only her father’s icy, scornful sternness but his perfect prosector record as well. She’s also a bit vindictive like her dear old dad, for the reason why she’s practicing law outside of her native Germany is to defeat Phoenix (and Edgeworth, if she can find him) for smudging her father’s reputation and tarnishing his formally spotless, lengthy career. Franziska is certainly another formidable foe, sure to make Phoenix soil himself from the opposite side of the courtroom. However, she’s only an effective antagonist in a vacuum because she doesn’t quite have the rival chemistry as Edgeworth, and all of her personality traits are ripped right from the elder Von Karma. Her mileage as a prevalent force of oppression is dependent on how much a professional woman in uniform perturbs you, which is completely subjective. Her whip, her court “accessory,” for lack of a better term, is certainly a distinctive quirk she bestows. Still, the number of times she cracks it, plus WHO she unleashes its fury on to maintain control wherever she goes, is a smidge too far-fetched to swallow. Whip Phoenix and Gumshoe all you want, but no judge in the universe would ever tolerate lashing them, especially when they’re actively on their prestigious platform. Even with her father’s tenure, he couldn’t get away with doing that.

If Justice for All’s second case establishes some prominent secondary characters and places Maya on thin ice, then surely the third case should be a total deviation from whatever overarching plot might exist between the second and fourth cases. While there isn’t a cohesiveness between any of the cases in Justice for All, even though we should, by all means, pry into the whole Morgan Fey being a murder conspirator a little further, “Turnabout Big Top” makes me understand what Ace Attorney enthusiasts refer to as “third case syndrome.” Similar to the third case that wedged itself between the Phoenix and Edgeworth arc in the previous game, “Turnabout Big Top” revolves around a famous entertainer involved in the scandal of bumping off someone else in show business. This time, a magician has slain their ringmaster, which leads Phoenix and Maya to the circus and the colorful troupe at the center of it. Even though its inclusion between two of the more cohesive cases was a bit grating, I still enjoyed the cast of characters on and adjacent to the filming set of Steel Samurai and didn’t mind collaborating with them while procuring evidence. On the other hand, while I stated that the performers of the Berry Big Circus were colorful, they are about as collectively charming as the characters of a Todd Solondz film. The defendant, Max Galactica, is equally as arrogant as the snot-nosed culprit of the first case, with his diva-like pretentiousness masking his bumbling bumpkin roots that emerge whenever he’s under duress. He’s also prone to insouciant acts of violence against his coworkers, namely, the meek ventriloquist Ben, who can only stutter without his dummy Trilo by his side to pronounce some brash characteristics he harbors. He’d be the one sympathetic character here if his puppet also didn’t express his romantic interest in the sixteen-year-old animal tamer Regina, putting him in a love triangle with Max, whom she’s soon to be married to. Max being 21 is just slightly crossing a line of taste, but Ben having a crush on Regina at the age of 31 is downright disgusting. Methinks the perp should’ve directed his homicidal tendencies towards another member of this circus, if you know what I mean. On the subject of Regina, her total naivety to the world, thanks to her sheltered upbringing, makes her seem much younger than she actually is, making her lolita-like magnetism from those attracted to her far creepier. To anyone’s surprise, there is actually one member who elicits more contempt from fans than the perverts and their underage object of attraction, myself included. I realize that Moe the Clown was specifically manufactured to be a migraine-inducing character, but his excessive levity and his horrendous jokes are just the tip of the ire iceberg. Moe’s flagrant immaturity also extends to his decorum, or lack thereof, in court. If Phoenix inadvertently prompts Moe to perform his routine by pressing one of his statements, the judge will penalize Phoenix as a result. You can’t punish me just because the witness is annoying, Mr. Judge! How else am I supposed to suss out statements before I commit to presenting a piece of evidence? Lock your whip onto this afroed stooge and don’t stop until his backside resembles fried strips of bacon, Von Karma. Even when the pieces fall into place, I feel like Phoenix is two or three steps ahead of me because the reality of how the murder was executed is impossibly absurd. If “Turnabout Big Top” isn’t the main offender of the “third case syndrome”, I don’t know what future case could possibly epitomize the tedium and aggravation associated with the pattern more than this one. This case somehow felt longer than “Rise from the Ashes.”

If the player feels brutalized by the third case and thinks that the fourth and final one will be the finishing blow on their patience and appreciation for the franchise, trust me when I say that “Farewell, My Turnabout” will turn that frown upside down. In fact, many fans cite “Farewell, My Turnabout” not only as the unanimous pick for the best case in Justice for All, but also as one of the best cases throughout the entire series period. However, it might not initially seem to be so exemplary considering its premise shares some similarities with the previous one. We’re still entangled in the scandals of celebrities, with the Steel Samurai’s successor, Matt Engarde, killing his showbiz rival, Juan Corrida, by strangling him with a bandana and then stabbing him in a ritzy hotel room right before a press conference. All the while, Maya is held hostage by a mysterious man who will only release Phoenix’s assistant from his captivity if he manages to receive an acquittal for Matt Engarde. If you think ensuring Maya’s safety applies an alarming amount of pressure on Phoenix to win, wait until the layers of this case unravel. My particular fondness for the final case of Justice for All stems from how it snapped me out of an expectation that every other case leading up to it lulled me into. Phoenix has always been depicted as a valiant hero of the law who is always on the side of justice and integrity, but let’s face it: only Regina is naive enough not to realize that a defense lawyer exists on the opposite side of the same corrupt coin as a prosecutor. Swaying juries to their side, knowing full well that their client is totally guilty of the charges, is definitely a commonplace practice. Phoenix just hasn’t been in the game long enough to exercise his inner Johnnie Cochran, until now, that is. Matt Engarde initially seems like a shallow, insipid punk ass whose innocence is believed by Phoenix because a psyche-lock didn’t emerge when Phoenix bluntly asked him if he killed Juan. However, the sociopath retains his composure on the technicality that he didn’t actively kill Juan, but the master assassin he hired named Shelly de Killer did. Once he reveals the truth to Phoenix with lawyer-client confidentiality, Matt slicks his shaggy hair back to reveal a sinister Mr. Hyde persona complete with a scar and sharp-toothed grin. Twirling a glass of wine seems like villain overkill to me, but I suppose any bit of evil signifiers helps in signaling the complex quandary that Phoenix is faced with. To make matters worse, the aforementioned assassin is the one holding Maya hostage, so Phoenix can’t resign as Matt’s lawyer lest de Killer, well, kill Maya. Either Phoenix continues his virtuous streak and sacrifices Maya in the process, or continues to pile on the mud he had been slinging on Matt’s manager, Adrian Andrews, and she wrongfully ends up imprisoned to secure Maya’s freedom. The fact that either path will lead the player down two separate endings instead of a traditional “game over” will make the player’s brow sweat as profusely as Phoenix’s as they make a decision in Ace Attorney that has never been so urgent and crucial.

It’s also interesting to note that Franziska is not the prosecutor during the case that concludes Justice for All, even though she unknowingly pulls a deus ex machina at the very end and ironically saves Phoenix with a smattering of new evidence to win favor for the prosecution. No, the estranged Miles Edgeworth is the one rebutting Phoenix’s stalling Chewbacca defense to simultaneously save Maya and put Engarde behind bars where he belongs. Why has the primary rival from the first game suddenly emerged when he had been duly replaced? Honestly, to better understand Edgeworth by comparing and contrasting him to Franziska. I formerly believed that Phoenix and Edgeworth were character foils, but I’m seeing a clearer correlation between the two primary series prosecutors. Edgeworth and Franziska’s attitude towards their jobs as prosecutors was formally one and the same. They both unfortunately became blinded by their inflated egos, a byproduct of their impeccable legal acumen, which they bolstered, diving down to any depths of devious trickery to maintain their flawless track records. When humbled by Phoenix’s shrewdness and integrity, Edgeworth took the time to reflect upon his actions and realized that he’s not an athlete in a competition where winning and losing only affect him. Meanwhile, Franziska hyperfocuses on victory to the very end, where she fails to recognize the bigger picture while disparaging Phoenix’s “loss” in the Engarde case. Whereas Edgeworth is the dynamic prosecutor liable to change by Phoenix’s shining example, Franziska is the stubborn static character that Edgeworth no longer wishes to mirror. As a German, shouldn’t she already be accustomed to losing?

Is it worth digging through the dirt clouding Justice for All to experience the golden nugget that is “Farewell, My Turnabout” at the tale’s end? …Yes, but there’s a big asterisk next to that positive recommendation. Except for the second case, which is at least on par with the adequate ones from the first game, the other two leading up to Justice for All’s glorious finale grinded my gears to their nubs. If I find another work of fiction involving either amnesia or a circus soon, I might go ballistic. Despite its drastic unevenness, Justice for All still proves to be a worthy sequel that expands the growth arcs of its characters while exhibiting a couple of bona fide, nail-biting court cases. Fortunately, labeling something with the tag of a sophomore slump implies that the series will dig itself out of the clumsy hole it fell into, so I can confidently expect wonderful things from the Ace Attorney series moving forward since I know I’ve survived the worst of it.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 5/5/2023)

[Image from igdb.com]

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

Genre(s): Graphic Adventure

Platforms: GBA, DS

Release Date: October 11, 2001

There’s an old joke about video games that mostly older generations make about the potential of what could be a video game. It’s not a wondrous speculation that stems from genuine interest. Rather, it’s to point out the ridiculous notion of gamifying anything under the sun and producing it as something to stimulate children (or adult gamers, but many of these people believe that video games are solely for children). An example of this that springs to my mind is the one from a season five episode of The Simpsons where chubby poindexter Martin Prince is playing an arcade adaptation of Louis Malle’s 1981 film My Dinner With Andre, and he’s so enamored by it that he vocalizes the “tell me more” option as he triggers it in response to the game’s dialogue. If you don’t get the joke, the entirety of the film is two urbane middle-aged men having a conversation without leaving their restaurant table, which would seem like a boring premise for a video game. I didn’t understand this joke as a kid, but it garners a fair chuckle from me as an adult. Still, the baby boomers on The Simpsons' writing staff thirty years ago pose an interesting question, even if their intention was to make a glib jab at the expense of the medium. Is there anything too mundane to mold into a video game? Shouldn’t they all have at least a modicum of physical activity to hold the player’s attention? Certainly, not all video games feature kooky adventures, platform-hopping, and buckets of blood gushing from the necks of monsters and aliens. In 2001, Nintendo gamified menial labor to great acclaim in Animal Crossing and in that same year, Capcom did the same for the court processions with Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.

What exactly is the appeal behind Ace Attorney? If C-SPAN is any indication, what goes on behind the giant swinging, ivory doors of a courtroom on a daily basis can serve as a makeshift substitute for Nyquil. Not every legal case is as electrifying as something like the OJ Simpson trial. Then again, simply prying into the machinations of a particular vocation might not be exhilarating in real life, but that doesn’t mean that our media hasn't embellished it to the point of sheer entertainment. Television legal dramas like Law and Order and Boston Legal have persisted on the airwaves because the writers have sensationalized a facet of court cases: the mystery behind the crime. Typically, the outcome of most court cases is fairly cut and dry. If they aren’t, the media will have a field day covering it on a national scale to distract us from our uneventful lives, and these usually come around once every five years. In the world of legal fiction, every case that bursts through the courtroom is rife with conspiracy and fraud, and the true culprit lurks in the shadows while the detectives try to unweave the web they’ve made that the innocent defendant is stuck in. Ace Attorney revels in dissecting the thick layers of a legal case seen on these television shows and the dramatic tension that permeates every scene, and the game is consistently engrossing because of it.

The first entry in the Ace Attorney series also introduces the former two words in the
title before the colon. The honorable Mr. Nick “Phoenix” Wright is the main protagonist of the first three Ace Attorney games, and his role as such in the series' debut title has made him the de facto central figure for the franchise, even if Capcom has shelved him in favor of giving other up-and-coming defense lawyers their time in the spotlight. For the time being, the player’s first time vicariously playing a lawyer is also Phoenix’s courtroom debut. Here, he’s a fresh-faced rookie straight out of law school’s birth canal, ready to show the legal world his capabilities. Behind that snazzy ocean-blue suit and his striking hairdo with enough gel coated in it to make it rival a porcupine's quills, he’s a ball of nerves with a dearth of self-confidence due to his lack of experience. Because of his amateurish proclivities, the first Ace Attorney title is somewhat of a coming-of-age story. It’s the origin of how this plucky, dedicated young man became a respected man of the law. Putting the game’s protagonist at the same beginner level as the player in finding those juicy contradictions in the court fosters a perfect growth curve.

This is precisely what the player will be doing from the start of Ace Attorney. It was a wise move from the developers not to have rookie lawyer Phoenix Wright slumming it in divorce court for his first trial and working his way up the ranks. The first case of the series starts Phoenix Wright on his legal career with a murder trial defending his idiotic, unfortunately-named childhood friend Larry Butz (I’m sure the correct pronunciation is Byootz) from the accusation that he bludgeoned his girlfriend with a clock modeled like a statue. The first case sets a precedent for the rest of the game as every case is a spicy murder mystery, something to hold the player’s attention as firmly as a legal drama show (sans any rape cases because the game isn’t allowed to be too graphic). However, the first murder case dials down its spice level to acclimate the player to the court process. The real murderer, the accuser Mr. Sahwit, is seen committing the crime before the court case to give the player a clearer perspective on how to engage the trial. Not to mention, Sahwit would look guilty of something even if you saw him walking around the block minding his own business, sweating profusely enough to melt the glue holding the toupee on his head. Mia, Phoenix’s sensei in the defense department, is also holding Phoenix’s hand throughout the entire trial to direct the player on the right path. The first case is essentially a glorified tutorial, easing the player into the game’s mechanics with a case easier to probe than a cow abducted from a crop circle.

What exactly is the key to success in proving the innocence of the accused? Evidence, and lots of it. The first case will provide all of the relevant pieces of interest pertaining to the case for your perusal. After that, Ace Attorney introduces the other half of its gameplay that has as much precedence as the court hearings: procuring the evidence. Every time a murder occurs, Phoenix Wright will spend the day walking on the town trying to find potential clues to gain an advantage in the next trial. Considering this job is usually the responsibility of a detective, is this legal scavenger hunt ethical for an attorney? There’s nothing explicitly stated in the rulebook that he can’t take it upon himself to scrounge up evidence, so being thorough is what gives Mr. Wright the edge over his opponent in court. Every day begins at his office, and the natural course of action afterward is to visit his current client down at the Detention Center for some questioning. Depending on the information given by the culprit in holding, Phoenix will head to the crime scene, and the player will use the “examine” option in the menu to summon a magnifying glass. Anytime the player skims over a relevant clue at the scene, the magnifying glass will turn gold to signify that the particular object might be important. If it is, Phoenix will store the object in his inventory and whip it out during the next trial if the opportunity strikes. Even when Phoenix has seemingly cleared out every possible trace of suspicion to use at his disposal, his job isn’t done after his meticulous effort. Evidence also has to be obtained by talking to suspects, supposed witnesses, and fellow legal peers through conversing with them. Sometimes, presenting evidence to them is the only method of making these various NPCs cooperate, so it’s important to pay attention to the sequence of events. However, as the day progresses, the evidence-gathering process gets a bit cumbersome. By the end of the day, Phoenix is probably a haggard mess, sprinting back and forth between ten to twenty different locations and speaking to a cast of NPCs to stringently progress through the day. To make the player seem like they are straining themselves by walking all over creation, the list of notable locations is not organized very conspicuously in the “move” menu. The correct destination will at times be buried in layers of another as each room gets its own designation. While adhering to a direct course of progression between all these jumbled areas can get hectic, I ultimately believe this is the best course of action because it ensures that the player will receive every last inch of evidence for the trial. The game will be fair to any unobservant mistakes the player might make by impeding the next step until everything before it is accounted for. This way, the player can be comfortable knowing that they’ll be fully prepared for anything the next day.

Ultimately, scrounging up evidence is a necessary evil in supporting the superior half that Ace Attorney is the trial portion. Like court proceedings in real life, the judge will introduce both Phoenix and the prosecuting lawyer on the opposing side and briefly summarize the stakes of the case. Once a witness or another person of significant relativity to the case is called to the stand, it’s the player’s time to prove how much they’ve been paying attention. Phoenix’s job as the defendant is to snipe out any contradictions in the witness's statement, dividing every sentence of their testimony with their own individual claim of the incident. Once the player finds a contradiction in one of the sentences, Phoenix will refute the witness's claim with hard facts from the evidence. Of course, these contradictions are never obvious. After the first case where the real culprit’s lies are so easy to trace that even Lionel Hutz could suss out, correlating a person’s testimony to a piece of evidence becomes quite tricky. Ace Attorney can even feel like playing Minesweeper during the later cases when multiple pieces of evidence pile up to fill two entire pages with up to five statements. Maybe I’ve drawn this comparison because a fifth of the meter in the top right corner of the screen explodes if Phoenix makes an incorrect correlation, with the judge disapprovingly shaking his head wondering how Phoenix passed the bar. If the entire meter explodes after five wrong accusations, the judge will pass a guilty sentence on Phoenix’s client and the player will get a “game over.” This thin margin of error is why everyone should press the witness on everything they say, even if it irritates the judge and the prosecutor. It’s better than having a faulty accusation literally blow up in your face. Oftentimes, the witness's testimony is so vague that pressing them on their minced words is the only way in forcing them to reveal their full account, and then their revised statement will be ripe for slamming with a contradiction. Because correlating someone’s lies and wishy-washy half-truths is never obvious and could fit a number of pieces of evidence as proof to the contrary, the player must make a concerted effort to pay close attention to every detail. As nerve-wracking as carefully peering over the evidence and how it coincides with a certain statement can be, making the connection successfully feels so gratifying. Phoenix pointing his finger and yelping one of his trademark “objections!” is a cathartic reward for being scrupulous. The tense process of matching evidence with a contradictory statement and watching everyone around Phoenix drop their jaws in utter shock as the revelations unravel more of the truth makes every step of the proceeding truly gripping. The game’s presentation also aids in achieving this effect, with an animated comic-book liveliness that makes every reaction pop.

Phoenix will also have to consider his choices in the courtroom carefully because his guardian angel on his right shoulder during the first trial literally becomes an angel after the first case. Mia’s position as Phoenix’s mentor gives the player the impression that she’ll be a central secondary character in the series. However, the developers interestingly pull a bait-and-switch tactic on the player by making Mia’s murder the subject of the second case. Mia’s poor, helpless little sister Maya is fingered as a suspect, so Phoenix is forced to leave the guiding light his superior used to provide to defend the life of an innocent girl who has obviously been set up to take the fall. Not only is the suspect far from being the real perpetrator for obvious reasons, but the game also allows the player to get a brief glimpse at the real perpetrator again while he’s in the act. Mia’s tragic absence has ousted Phoenix’s guiding light, yet he has not lost his sense of sight. The player will still know that the real culprit and his pink, bimbo witness transplant accomplice are scheming their way out of being delivered to justice for their heinous crime. The second case will make the player emotionally invested in bringing these two to justice because of how personal the case seems to Phoenix and because they’ve despicably put a girl’s life at stake. That, and the gaudy con-man behind the crime, Redd White, is the textbook definition of a douchebag, murdering women in cold blood withstanding. The player can’t wait to convince the judge to throw the book at this guy for his crimes against humanity and lack of general tastefulness, and the case swerves so far off the rails that it nearly careens off the track. When this case eventually seems hopelessly swayed in White’s favor due to his exercising his oppressive social status, the resolution to winning this case must be derived via supernatural means. The explanation for Maya’s purple hippy garb she wears is that it's uniform for her familial clan of spiritual mediums that conjure up the dead. When using her powers, the deceased Mia can return to the realm of the living by taking the space of Maya’s physical form, which is Mia in the revealing purple gown. Because Mia is present at the very end, she gives Phoenix a vital last piece of evidence that incriminates White, a buzzer-beater if there ever was one. I find the resolution of the second case to be a bit contrived. If the game is going to resort to using otherworldly elements in a game mostly confined to reality, they should’ve saved something like that for the climatic scope of the final case.

While the second case unceremoniously removes Mia as a central figure in the Ace Attorney series, it also introduces a slew of characters that will retain their status as series mainstays. Once Maya’s prosecution case is finished, Phoenix Wright takes her into his custody as his assistant, “adopting” her in lieu of no longer having a legal guardian. Maya will continue to offer her own insight while Phoenix looks for clues and deciphers those shoddy statements during the trials. I can’t definitively say that her presence is as useful as her sister’s, but following around Phoenix during the evidence-gathering process is made less tedious with their conversations. They have a brother-sister dynamic with one another if her pension of referring to Phoenix by his Christian name “Nick” wasn’t indicative of that. She makes him look like an old man by comparison. Also during the evidence process, district detective Dick Gumshoe will always be on the case to inspect the crime scene for the police department. This man is the reason why Phoenix cannot sit back and let the local authorities scrounge up the essential clues to fill the holes in people’s faulty statements. Gumshoe is passionate and well-meaning, yet I have the feeling that this big lug didn’t graduate among the top percentile in his class. His salary is constantly being deducted due to his constant carelessness and it’s a wonder how he isn’t trying to bum a dollar off of Phoenix at every encounter. Actually, the transactions between Gumshoe and Phoenix are in the favor of the latter as Gumshoe’s position allows him to access vital pieces of information like the victim’s autopsy reports. Of course, Gumshoe can’t be TOO helpful with this information due to his unrequited hard-on with the opposing prosecutor with the most consecutive appearances: Miles Edgeworth. Considering their contrasting attorney positions, their suit colors, and their general disposition, Edgeworth is Phoenix’s rival through and through. While Phoenix is optimistic, honest, and light-hearted, Edgeworth is cynical, intense, and willing to descend to any desperate lengths in order to twist the verdict in his favor. Penetrating through his cheap logical fabrications during the trials is especially satisfying just to see that smug grin of his disappear.

However, Edgeworth is not the game’s main antagonist, and that revelation becomes apparent near the end of the game. Unfortunately, another case is wedged between the meat of the game’s prevalent arc revolving around Edgeworth’s relationship with Phoenix. The game’s third case involves two actors who play the main hero and villain characters respectively on a popular children’s TV show, and the hero actor has slain his villainous television nemesis by impaling him with his prop katana. It’s like if Christian Bale murdered Heath Ledger on set. Many say that this is by far the weakest case of the game because it doesn’t congeal with the other cases in terms of any overarching themes or character relationships, and the first case gets a pass for having to serve as the game’s tutorial. While Edgeworth is the prosecutor in this case as always, the content of the case has nothing to do with his relationship with Phoenix. However, I’d argue that this case is a pivotal point in the game’s difficulty arc because it’s the first instance where the player doesn’t get a peek at who the true culprit is before the first trial. Even Phoenix is heavily doubting his client’s innocence with all of the circumventing evidence seemingly stacked against him. Because of that, the third case is still relevant, plus the studio crew is an entertaining bunch.

If this game’s substance stems from the growing dynamic between Phoenix and his foppish, blouse-wearing rival in red, then the fourth and final* case of this game certainly completes their symbiotic arc. What better way to make the two get along with one another than by putting Edgeworth in the hot seat with a murder charge and having to resort to swallowing his pride and hiring his career foil to defend his life? Like with the previous case, the game deems the player experienced enough to withhold information from them at the start, almost as if the game wants the player to fail and put the smarmy Edgeworth behind bars out of spite. However, Phoenix seems to be the only lawyer with an ounce of integrity in this district and the last case should’ve been a lesson that all of Phoenix’s clients could be innocent, even if they are smarmy fucks who usually scowl and smirk at Phoenix’s expense. Since Edgeworth is situated in the defendant's seat for now, who will Phoenix be swatting interjections back and forth at like a tennis match? Manfred von Karma will take the stand as the prosecutor, and he’s never lost a case in his forty-year career, so no pressure. The intimidating, draconian man who dresses as gallantly as Count Dracula from Castlevania liberally uses objections at the snap of his fingers, and the judge doesn’t even bat an eye. Is this due to his impressive, unparalleled tenure in the court system, or is he abusing the fact that the judge seems to be terrified of him? Either or, the man will constantly interrupt the witness and Phoenix as a tactical strategy to obscure information. Once Phoenix manages to get a word in, it’s revealed that the real culprit of the murder on a fateful foggy night out on the lake is tied to a fifteen-year conspiracy briefly mentioned in the second case called the “D-16 Incident.” Not only did this case involve the Fey family, but the circumstances of the case haunt Edgeworth because his father was supposedly murdered by the man who framed him in this present-day case. Edgeworth seems to believe that he was the one who murdered his father by accident and tries to confess his vague suspicion in court. However, after prodding into the nitty gritty of the evidence, it turns out that von Karma vindictively murdered Edgeworth’s father on that day after he put a blemish on von Karma’s spotless record. Once this juicy nugget of truth comes to light, the mighty von Karma falls from the heavens of his glory, and good riddance. Through this whole charade, Phoenix and Edgeworth reveal a mutual respect for each other and Edgeworth has a moment of clarity about his role as a prosecutor. His sense of honor and optimism was crushed in the D-16 incident and envies that Wright is what he originally strived to be. It’s beautiful, really. Also, a parrot takes the stand to testify against his owner. It’s certainly a highlight.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is quite a pleasant surprise for the video game medium. It turns out that a game with the premise of court case trials, presented in the visual novel format nonetheless, makes for an entertaining video game. In saying that, the extent of how entertaining Ace Attorney is can only be believed if you experience it. The game is brimming with style stemming from its presentation, and it's also substantial thanks to its impeccable character writing, the progression of each case, and the nail-biting process of picking a piece of evidence to match a statement during the trials. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is a unique entry in gaming that kept me consistently on the edge of my seat, waiting to reveal every revelation every step of the way like any court drama on television. I’d object to most high-octane war shooters with constant action in favor of this game any day.

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*” Turnabout Goodbyes” is the last case of the base game released in the 2001 Japan-exclusive version released in 2001, at least. Us Westerners are far more familiar with the DS remaster/port released in 2005. While the Western world would’ve been satisfied with simply shipping the game overseas, Capcom ostensibly needed to add some additional content for the native Japanese players, a dessert after several hearty helpings of the same court cases on an advanced console. The treat that capped off the first Ace Attorney game is “Rise from the Ashes,” the epic fifth case at the end of the game. While the case is entirely removed from the overarching “D-16” case from the base game, “Rise from the Ashes” is still a doozy. After the fourth case, Maya leaves on a train to hone her skills as a spirit medium after experiencing symptoms of imposter syndrome. In Maya’s absence, another quirky teenage girl named Ema requests that Phoenix defend her much older sister after she’s accused of the severe offense of murdering a detective (not Gumshoe). It doesn’t help her case that her sister is readily fessing up to her crime without impunity. The older sister, Lana, is also the leading prosecutor in the district, adding another layer of uncanniness to the Maya and Mia parallel. Phoenix has got his work cut out here as the final case is easily the most difficult. Evidence stacks up to filling three whole pages by the end, heavily increasing the likelihood of mismatching evidence in court. Because this extra court case is on an advanced piece of hardware, it adds new mechanics into the mix, which mostly involves putting a broken vase back together and pointing out a contradiction with video evidence. The duration of the fifth case is also as long as the entire base game, so let that factor into your decision to extend your playtime. Despite all of the excruciating elements of the case, I still recommend diving into it after the first set of credits ends the base game. Being patient with the hours of content on display here unveils an enthralling case that eventually overlaps with another old conspiracy that strikes at the heart of the police department. If you thought that von Karma was the final boss of imposing legal figures, he’s got no sway compared to the irredeemable scumbag at the core of this case. He’s such a seemingly impenetrable force that Phoenix and Edgeworth end up double-teaming him with an onslaught of objections to take him down. Whether or not “Rise from the Ashes” is compensation for those Japanese players buying the game again or a pre-DLC addendum for amateur Westerners, this goliath of an Ace Attorney chapter still comes highly recommended, even if it is almost totally removed from the base game.