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Back to the courtroom
Ace Attorney has been one of my favourite game series ever since it was launched on Nintendo DS back in 2006. The gameplay was fun and you could even yell to the Nintendo Ds’s microphone “OBJECTION!” when you wanted to object something or “TAKE THAT!” when you threw your evidences at the court battle. It was a fun little quirk that just added the charm and nostalgia to the experience.
Since then, Ace Attorney got many other games and spin-offs, such as remastered version of the first three games Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy (2019) and the newest being Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy.
So, can the remastered version of the Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice be as good experiences as the original games?
Story
There are three games in this trilogy and I’ll shortly go through them. Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney tells story of a rookie defense lawyer Apollo Justice who gets his first court case to defend the legendary attorney Phoenix “Nick” Wright. He’s been accused of a murder and your job is to prove his innocence. After the court battle is over you’ll join Phoenix’s lawyer office and work for him from now on.
The next game Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies happens a year after the last one. You get to play with three defense attorneys – Phoenix Wright, Apollo Justice, and a new character, Athena Cykes. Together, they defend their clients in various cases and work to rebuild trust in the courts.
In the third game Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice, the story happens mostly in fictional Khura’in village where they must solve murders and defend their clients.
The story in all three games were good. The games always started with simple court room case and simple characters and plot. But the story will twist into so much more and there were so many twists and turns that I didn’t see coming—some of them being rather outlandish, but that what’s so special about the games.
Gameplay, Controls and Visuals
Gameplay in all three games were almost the same, but there are some variations. Mostly what player must do is to gather evidence before going into the courtroom and in the courtroom player must do everything they can to defense their client. Usually the wintesses hid much more than they wanted to show and sometimes even they were the guilty ones. You must press them and try to pry as much information as you can, even tiniest details might be crusial. Then comes the evidences which player must to use in correct place, as in correct sentence what the witness says. Palyer get penalised every time they present wrong evidence or do it at incorrect spot. When player has used all their penalty-meter, the game is over and your client will be automatically verdicted guilty. So the gameplay might get tedious at some points, especially towards the end of each game as the court cases gets more and more difficult to crack.
Controls are very simple in all three games. I’m not sure do I even have to go through them, but simply; it just pressing few buttons and finding things from stagnant backgrounds and in the courtoroom it’s pressing the witnesses and showing evidences.
Then comes the visuals. The game is a visual novel and all the graphics were made again so the game isn’t a port, it is a remastered version. In the original Ace Attorney games’ graphics are always pre-rendered images, meaning the are drawn pictures rather than graphics. In this remastered version I think they used both pre-rendered and actual graphics. It makes the whole game much easier to play. I think all the places and characters were well remade and they looked just as I remember them from the original games.
The Verdict
All three games in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy were great! I enjoyed my time with the games and the humour in them were entertaining, as usual. I cannot say a bad word about this remastered version. If you’re looking for a game that has great and intrigue story and simple gameplay, this is totally for you. All three games took me a quite a long time to beat about 80-90 hours. So there is a lot to play.
Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy is available on PS4 (reviewed on PS5), Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Windows and Steam.
(Review copy kindly provided by the publisher)
SCORE:
5/5
“there were so many twists and turns that I didn’t see coming”
One More Level 