Ace Attorney Trilogy

Playtime: 62 Hours

Finished all three games in the original trilogy - don't think there's much else that I can do, other than some ridiculous all-dialogue challenges. Probably liked the first one most, followed by T&T, with JFA being my least liked, though all were still generally fun.

The original Ace Attorney Trilogy is a single narrative for all intents and purposes, even though it's split into 3 games. Each of the 14 total cases operates independently from the others, though a number of them have callbacks to previous cases or foreshadow potential future events. The two key plotlines that the stories focus on are Phoenix's personal growth as a defense lawyer, and the mysteries surrounding a major power struggle in the Fey family; both are pretty much fully resolved by the end of this trilogy, making for a very satisfying ending. Over the course of the games, I really liked a lot of the twists and turns to Phoenix's situation, especially as he gets dragged further into the Fey sisters' issues. It's kind of surprising how well the writing balances the incredibly goofy and often lighthearted dialogue with the intrigue and tension of visiting the scene of a crime (usually a murder).

The quality of the individual cases tends to vary a little bit, though that is definitely partly by intention. The first case in each of the games tends to be very short, and usually relatively simple - which also makes them not particularly memorable. There are also several moderately-sized cases that have nothing to do with the overarching storylines mentioned above, which tend to feel kind of isolated and pointless in the long run. The inconsistent construction of these cases is somewhat strange; I found myself wondering if there was some kind of conflict by the writers for whether the cases should be entirely independent (as a lawyer may see in the real world), or if it should be much more heavily plotline focused. AA1 was the only game for which the episodes generally felt very independent, but AA2 and especially AA3 ramped up the progression of the main story arcs more significantly. At the end of the day, though - I think my overall favorite case was probably Rise From the Ashes, which is 1-5, a bonus case from the DS version (?) of AA1 after the release of AA4. The self-contained plot, while not interacting with any other characters or plots in the trilogy, as well as the high stakes of corruption within the justice system, make for a fantastic case with great twists that doesn't overstay its welcome.

Of the ton of characters met throughout the trilogy, only a few of them have any lasting importance, with most of the others essentially being one-off gag characters. That being said, the core cast (Phoenix, Maya, Mia, Pearl, Gumshoe, and a few others) are extremely likeable, each having a very distinct personality in the games while still getting enough development and depth to avoid feeling static or pointless. Interactions between the core characters generally tend towards being very silly, with some running gags - like the stepladder joke or Gumshoe's salary, and most have great chemistry built up over many cases together. On the other hand, dialogues with gag characters start out funny, but some end up feeling a tad overdone - I don't think Oldbag or Lotta Heart needed to be prominent side characters multiple times, for example. A lot of those side characters, and even some of the defendants are more annoying than entertaining by the time their involvement is over.

Now, to talk about the meat of the experience - the gameplay. Most of the dialogue is done in a VN-style format, and each of the games are completely linear, with no alternate endings or significant secrets of note. Most of the actual cases involves 2 main types of "puzzles" - investigation sections where you visit the crime scenes (and other relevant locations), talk to people with connections to the case, and occasionally present evidence to question or pressure them for answers. I found these to generally be the more fun "adventure" parts of the games, though it suffers from the common problem of occasionally having no clue where to go or who to talk to - the game doesn't give you any pointers or hints when characters suddenly have new dialogue, or when new characters suddenly show up. The menu system is also a little clunky, which makes the process of revisiting locations to hunt for the next clue quite annoying on rare occasion.

The courtroom trial sections comprise the other half of the actual gameplay in these games. The idea is that several witnesses will be called to the stand, where they provide statements, during which you then need to press for details and present some kind of evidence or profile (collected during investigation) to prove a contradiction within. For some unknown reason, the judge continues allowing the witnesses to amend or modify their statements at will without risking perjury somehow, then you need to do the same thing a few more times until they blow up (figuratively) and leave the stand. This is the banana peel that I think causes the games to fall a bit short of what I was hoping for; many of the statements are ludicrous, and oftentimes the contradiction and evidence is so irrelevant to the case that it's actually mind-boggling how the writers came up with it to begin with. The evidence list UI is also only able to hold at most one to two sentences of information, so very frequently the aspect of the evidence that actually proves the contradiction is not even in any text - you actually have to remember it from dialogue or whatever, which makes it very annoying to play a case across multiple days. Finally, each contradiction can only be exposed with one specific piece of evidence, even if several different things that you've collected could all be used to the same effect. It's a puzzle with many reasonable solutions, but only one "correct" one according to the game - which is really stupid.

To make things worse, there is also another mechanic - where sometimes there is no actual contradiction, or the prosecution comes up with some dumbass question or gotcha and reveals evidence DURING the case, sometimes even falsifying information! This causes the judge to force Phoenix into a life-or-death situation (for the courtroom health bar), where he always has to present the one piece of evidence that happens to counter the accusations. If this happened once or twice on pivotal cases, I wouldn't care. However, this happens multiple times in EVERY case, without exception! Any tension that this would have bought the story is completely gone by the end of the first game, after which I basically started expecting these dogshit moves. It's terrible writing and a terrible mechanic, that tries to latch onto a cheap way to induce urgency and utterly fails at doing so. Note that this doesn't happen in the opposite direction, either. I know that world in this series is founded on an extremely lopsided, prosecution-friendly justice system, but it makes the climax of each case hit like a wet noodle, stinging of bullshit. It completely shatters any sense of realism in the game, and with it any real desire to think about the cases and puzzles rationally, which heavily degrades the overall experience.

Despite my ranting, I did still really enjoy the trilogy - but I somewhat question how much I enjoyed the entire experience. I think this is one of those games that's a lot more fun mostly in hindsight, because I don't remember much of the BS and tedium during the actual gameplay that I had to deal with. I know at some point in both AA2 and AA3 I was considering dropping the games completely because I was so bored and tired of the horrible trial scenes, so I don't think I'd have a great experience if I tried to return to it down the line. I suppose that means that I'll never be playing the games again; I can always go and read the synopsis or whatever if I'm interested instead.