good morning guys and women. i have finally made another review!! this time i will be talking about hit video game phoenix wright: ace attorney. ace attorney, if you somehow did not know, is basically a visual novel where you play as rookie (and ace) attorney phoenix wright and you lawyer 5 cases n shit. very famous game, and pretty old too. ace attorney, like devil may cry, is on wikipedia’s games considered the best list so therefore i basically have to play it. anyways it is review time
ok so ace attorney is a pretty simple game (this is really just a gameplay section btw i just couldn’t be bothered to remake the image with different text). most of the gameplay consists of clicking the “next text box” button and reading the text on the screen. at some points in cases you get to travel to places and examine the areas to find clues for cases.
this is all of course in 2d which can be somewhat annoying when there is something incredibly small you have to inspect but you just can’t find it. not that that would not also be annoying in 3d but there is something more annoying about it when it’s 2 dimensionak.
anyways when you get to court you listen to what **witnesses** say then you try to prove that they are lying by pressinf their statements and showinf evidence of their lying. this works pretty well considering the type of game it is.
sometimes (atleast in newer editions) you get to repair or examine things in **3d**. this is pretty bad, with one especially shitty example being the blue badger jar puzzle where you have to perfectly line up a 3d jar with an image that looks nothing like the jar. this typically takes about 500 years for newcomers to the series and about 2 weeks for veterans.
overall, while the gameplay is (usually) not bad, it’s probably not the best visual novel gameplay i’ve seen, although i do think the gameplay fits with the game.
even though the game is played episodically, ace attorney kind of has an overarching story, which i will now explain: spoilers for entire game story
basically, phoenix wright is this rookie attorney and with the help of his like mentor mia fey he wins his first case where his childhood friend larry butz is the defendant. then, immediately after this case, mia fey dies and he finds her younger sister maya fey at the crime scene and then police officer divk gumshoe shows up and arrests maya because suspect. plot twist: all the feys are like psychich or some shit. wright decides to defend her in case and the prosecutor is famous prosecutor miles edgeworth. basically wright gets arrested during like a break and he turns into the defendant and decides to defend himself. he wins the case and edgeworth loses for the first time ever. in the next case some actor from a childrens show that maya watches gets arrested. this case is like awesome and shit but it is pretty much filler so i will skip most of it but basically wright works with gumshoe and edgeworth loses to wright once again. then wright defends edgeworth and wins against famous winning streak prosecutor manfred von karma and the last one is too confusing.
i likr all of these although the first one is short and not super interesting and the fourth and fifth ones (especially the fifth one) are maybe a bit too long. they are all great though and very very funny. great characters and interestinf cases. like what more could you possibly ask for??
the story is probably one of my favorite aspects of this game even though it isn’t like masterclass writing because it is really entertaining and enjoyable (unless you don’t like reading). overall, the story is good/10.
this section is where the game really really shines. the music in ace attorney is fucking awesome. very iconic too, i can guarantee that you have heard atleast one ace attorney sonf at some point in your life. like you’ve got the turnabout sisters, objection, cornered, trial, allegro, logic and trick, search opening, it doesnt end here, it’s detective gumshoe, age regret retribution, the steel samurai theme, won the case and so much more.
the ui is alright if a bit bland. it does a good job at showing you what you need to see and stuff like that so the ui is pretty good.
the credits are very good, not the best credits in a video game but they were still much better than whatever the fuck devil may cry had as credits.
the graphics are very good for an hd port (i'm looking at you, persona 3 portable.). the characters look like they should and stuff. most hd ports nowadays just like upscale it (still looking at you), but in this game they have clearly taken their time and redrawn all of the characters and all of the frames in the animations.
