Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy

So it only took me about 4 years but I got through every episode. 👍

Really enjoyed playing through this trilogy for the first time. It really feels like everyone talks about the Ace Attorney and it enjoys an iconic status within the gaming landscape, but it seems most people know *of* it yet barely know how it plays. It's funny that the thing most people know the series for, "OBJECTION!", is pretty much the most exaggerated part of it, in this trilogy at least (some character quirks aside).

Now I have played the trilogy and it's definitely a fun bunch of point-and-click/visual novel games but they do have some problems. The writing is really good overall. With 570,000 lines written in this trilogy, it has some excellent mysteries, fun, memorable characters and character dynamics, the twists (memorably translated as "turnabouts") are really creative and well thought-out, although there's quite a few jokes that don't really land but I nevertheless appreciate.

My primary problem with the games is that they tend to have some glaring faults with merging its linear visual-novel style with engaging gameplay. Throughout 30-40 hours of gameplay, pretty much only 1 new game mechanic is introduced after the initial loop of the first game (investigation, trial etc). The mechanics tend to be somewhat brutish, often failing to grasp the nuance needed for solving a particular mystery, you need to present the single particular piece of evidence at the right prompt (which often aren't nearly as apparent as you'd expect). The difficulty is practically non-existent and the developers seem to have never thought of how to appropriately implement it; either you save-scum a bit, which doesn't really make the gameplay rewarding, or you fail and go back to a half an hour before and replay the section the exact same way you did before, but without the challenge of having to discover what evidence is relevant at a given moment, so it's more of a chore than anything.

These are very much extremely linear games, offering nearly no replay value and their leniarity often being detrimental to the point that it directly degrades the pacing of the games. Often you find yourself rather randomly going between areas of investigation, just hoping there's someone there who's suddenly appeared that you can talk to. And you'll often experience characters disappearing out of existence since you had the clever idea of talking to person B before A, rather than the other way around, i.e. in accordance to its leniarity. I recognize this is a component of its genre, but it certainly means the games come off as engaging playable comics, essentially, but fail to be engaging as games *at points*.

If this series of games would want to elevate themselves to the highest possible level, these core mechanics of investigation, witness examination, lawyer business, would have much more depth to them with the story adapting to the player, rather than the player adapting their self to the story. 

If you like solving mysteries; investigative intrigue within a linear game context with witty writing and plenty of heart, I'd definitely recommend these games. However if you're looking for something with depth to its gameplay, these are not the games for it.

Finished: March, 2022
Playing time: ca. 45-50 hours
Ranking:
⭐⭐⭐1/2 / 5