Ace Attorney is a lot more than a video game at this point. It is among the most memed and referenced games ever made. This trilogy pack takes the first three games in the series, originally released on GBA in Japan and then DS elsewhere, and remasters them in HD for modern consoles and PC. The Asian Nintendo Switch version with all of the games on the cart was played for this review.
Is It a Video Game?
These earliest titles in the Ace Attorney series are almost not video games at all. You could refer to them as visual novels, or maybe puzzle games if you are being generous. Although making this a video game wasn’t necessary, it does make it much more convenient to get through than it would have been otherwise. It also allowed them to come up with the popular courtroom presentation style that makes the story a lot more engaging so it’s hard to complain.
Being a Defense Attorney
The games are made up of two distinct parts that you switch between as each game’s story progresses:
The worst part unfortunately takes quite a bit of time to get through. In most cases you have to do an investigation before the trial starts. This involves traveling between a bunch of areas, talking to people who happen to be there, finding clues in the background art, and presenting evidence to people. To get through this part you need to find all of the relevant information, which will progress the story and cause different stuff to appear when you switch to other areas.
The best and most well known parts of these games are the trials. During these trials you listen to testimony from witnesses and try to find contradictions by pressing their statements and eventually presenting contradictory evidence when you find the right statement and evidence. If you present evidence that doesn’t show a contradiction the judge will give you a penalty. Too many penalties results in a game over and going back to where you last saved. In this game you can save almost everywhere besides in the menus where you present evidence, so there is almost no penalty for mistakes if you don’t want there to be one. This mode is a lot more fun than the investigations, but it can be a bit annoying having to figure out how the developers want you to prove something, rather than just being able to prove it in whatever way you want.
There are a few other modes you will do for a few minutes but none of them are that good or noteworthy.
Why You Play It
As somewhat of a surprise coming from Capcom, the writing carries this whole game. Its writing style is similar to that of text based JRPGs like Pokémon and Earthbound, but instead of talking to random NPCs you are talking to a few characters that are much more fleshed out. The characters themselves are pretty good too. All of them have extremely exaggerated qualities and are often pretty funny.
The stories themselves are also pretty up there for a video game, though these games are definitely much more about the journey than the destination. One area that sets this game apart are the twists and reveals. They really did not bother trying to making them realistic at all. Whatever you think may be the craziest possibility is often what actually happens in the game. You can tell the “T” rating these games originally got on the DS were definitely there for a reason after seeing some of these twists.
The Prosecution Is Jamming
The soundtrack of these games is easily one of the best of all time in a video game. None of the music is orchestrated or anything, but for the style they were going for that doesn’t really hold them back. It sounds about the same as the DS version of the soundtracks, which was just a slightly enhanced version of the GBA soundtracks. The sound effects are also all great and actually more well-known than the music.
Should You Play It?
Yes, pretty much all gamers should play this game. Really the only excuses to not play it are either you can’t read well or you hate reading. Otherwise this game will give you a better experience than the vast majority of other games. The gameplay design itself is lacking, which isn’t surprising since they were originally for the GBA, but it is more than worth putting up with that to see what these games have to offer. This is a great version of these games too, with all of the remastered graphics looking quite good.
Overall, the game is an 8.0/10.
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