In which I heartily endorse the Ace Attorney franchise

The Game Room
1

I did a board search and found an old thread, nothing recent, but I just have to gush about Ace Attorney a little bit.

I just finished Dual Destinies, the newest entry to the franchise that came out on the 3DS just over a month ago. It was fantastic.

For those of you who have ipads and iphones, you can download the HD Trilogy which includes the first 3 games of the series, which are easily the best games of the series too. If you’re a fan of adventure and puzzle games, and if you are a fan of murder mysteries especially, you should definitely give them a try.

Dual Destinies was a true return to form for the series after the disappointing Apollo Justice from 2008. If that game killed your love for the series, I strongly recommend getting Dual Destinies anyways. It is an awesome game, and somehow maybe even retroactively makes Apollo Justice a better game (or at least redeems the characters a bit and gives them more flesh). Even still, AJ wasn’t a bad game on its own, just a big letdown compared to the grand, lofty heights that the first 3 games managed to reach.

I am actually jealous of you ipad/ipod/iphone owners because I would absolutely love to play through the first 3 games with the new HD art they did for it. Alas, there is no android release on the horizon, and I do not own an iOS device.

Warning, the games are extremely text heavy. They are often described as graphic novels, but I don’t think that’s fair. However, the vast majority of the game is spent reading. But wow, what fantastic writing they have. The writing is literally some of the best, if not the best in any video game franchise I’ve seen. They can be emotionally touching and powerful when they want to be, and gut-wrenchingly hillarious at other times.

The soundtracks are also some of the best of any video game franchise. Each and every character gets their own theme, most of them are unforgettable and memorable. There is so much going on with the musical compositions in these games that a lot of it goes over my head I’m sure.

In the end, if even one person here gets turned onto this franchise because of this post, I’ve done my job. Ideally, everyone should experience these games. They are just so damn good.

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Still think HD Phoenix looks wrong. They did a much better job with him in Dual Destinies, where he looks exactly like he did on the DS until the camera moves and you realize he’s in 3D. Too bad the music was remixed into a version with less kinetic energy. Though, to be fair, I only played the demo, since I’m not through number 3 yet. (I watch a yearly let’s play, and I like solving along with for some cases, rather than already knowing the solution.)

BTW, I would probably lump these games into “point-and-click” adventure games, not visual novels or interactive fiction, since there is a clear intended direction you are supposed to go, and plenty of puzzles and what adventure games call “logic.”

And I really hate that it’s in-app purchases only. That makes it impossible for me to just buy the iOS version and then play the DS version on an emulator.

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I’m a little torn on this; I jumped into the series with Dual Destinies, and while I REALLY enjoy the courtroom bits, I’m finding the ‘investigation’ sequences pretty tiresome.

Makes for a very up and down gaming experience.

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The only thing that annoys me about the Ace Attorney games is that the plot is usually so compelling that I try to blaze through a 20-hour game in a day or two, accomplish nothing else those two days, and then I can’t play it again because I know who the murderer/s are.

Also, the fact that Investigations 2 isn’t scheduled for an English language release, and Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright won’t be out until next year.

(If Capcom were clever, they’d release the English version of Investigations 2 on August 3rd, 2016.)