Ever dreamed of being front and centre inside a courtroom, playing a big-shot lawyer throwing down evidence to dispute the claims of a witness but just missing the law degree? Well you’re in luck. The Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy has made it’s way to the PS4, Xbox One and the Nintendo Switch providing 3 full games worth of interesting cases to investigate and solve. This collection contains Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Justice For All and Trials and Tribulations. Providing enough courtroom drama to keep you entertained for around 60 hours.
In Ace Attorney you play as Phoenix Wright, a newbie defense lawyer who is as fresh to the courtroom as they come. You start out with his very first case and quickly realise getting a murder trial for his debut case may be more than he can handle.
The gameplay of the Phoenix Wright games is a cross between a classic point and click adventure game and a story heavy visual novel. In each of the game you’ll work through a number of cases which can be seen as the game’s stages or episodes. The core gameplay loop in each consists of 2 main phases. There’s the investigation phase where you will analyse the crime scene locations to collect pieces of evidence, interview people and try and understand what went down at the location.
Following the investigation phase is the courtroom phase where you’ll cross examine the witnesses on the stand and present your found evidence to discredit their claims or prove they aren’t telling the truth, allowing you to gain leverage for you client’s claim of innocence. Presenting the right piece of evidence to prove your side of the story never fails to feel extremely satisfying but be careful, presenting the wrong pieces of evidence or not disputing the claims well enough can result in a failed mission where your client will be found guilty.
The cases and stories that fill the three games are packed full of drama, suspense but also maintain a steady amount of humour. This helps to carry the story and gets you to care about and eventually love it’s characters. You’ll get to experience the individual ups and downs of the core cast and see them grow throughout the 3 games.
The main story in each game does a great job at sucking you into the plot. Hours can easily go by in what seems like an instant because of how well crafted and well paced the story in each of the entries, it’s the equivalent of a hard to put down book. Just wanting to find out what happens next kept the Nintendo Switch in my hands long after I originally intended to put it down.
Unfortunately there isn’t any new content included in this collection. Not to say that’s a bad thing, you’re already getting around 60 hours of courtroom drama here but it would have been awesome to see some behind the scenes artwork or music galleries or even a new case or two to solve. Especially since similar things have been included in other Capcom remasters of recent years.
What you will get in this collection though is a number of visual improvements to make the game look sharper than ever and transition the game off the DS to modern systems. The pixel art graphics have been completely overhauled and now the game’s feature sharp hand drawn and re-coloured character models and backgrounds. As the original DS versions utilised the 2 screens available on that system changes have been made to make the game work on a single screen and they’ve done a great job getting it to feel great and remain faithful to the original games.
Final Thoughts
The Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy is a fantastic collection of crime solving visual novels. The collection includes the first 3 Phoenix Wright games and will keep you thoroughly entertained for a long time. The cases are even fun to replay if you’re already aware of the outcomes. If you’ve never played any of the Ace Attorney games before then there’s never been a better time to jump in and experience them. Although if you already own the trilogy on another platform then there is little reason to pick it up again due to the lack of extras on offer. That is unless you really want to own it on your current gen system of choice.
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9
- + Great cast of characters
- + Games that are really hard to put down
- + New remastered hand drawn visuals
- - Little reason to pick it up again if you already own the trilogy
