My 100 Video Game Challenge (2024) #15: Pheonix Wright: Ace Attorney

Played on: Xbox One

Ace Attorney is a franchise I discovered completely by chance in high school. A friend of mine had all three games in the original trilogy for the Nintendo DS, and after I returned from being pulled out of school for a year, he lent me the first game in the series, and said, "Trust me." Since that day, I've been hooked.

If you're reasonably familiar with video games, you might at least recognize the characters from Capcom's celebrated visual novel/howcatchem series, who have been frequent meme fodder since they first made their way to North America via the DS in 2005. Whether it's eponymous, blue-suited defense lawyer, Phoenix Wright, his spirit-channeling assistant, Maya Fey, or perennial prosector arch-rival, Miles Edgeworth, the many faces of Ace Attorney have often showed up across internet punchlines and discourse, becoming the accidental embodiment of fruitless and/or comical online arguments. This is both a testament to Ace Attorney's outstanding character design, which hit the ground running from day one, and its ingenious, DS-friendly hook of shouting at your handheld every time you encountered a fishy testimony during a courtroom cross-examination.

The good news is, Ace Attorney has now found a second life on modern platforms, making it easily accessible to any gamer, no matter what their hardware of choice is. This is all the more true for Xbox players, as the original Ace Attorney trilogy is currently free on Xbox Game Pass, which is what motivated me to revisit its first entry. The bad news is, you can no longer shout into a DS mic in order to point out contradictions in testimony. Still, Ace Attorney remains a lot of fun without that, thankfully.

The original Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney game is divided into five cases, each of which plays out in an anime drama-style howcatchem format. Taking control of defense attorney, Phoenix Wright, players are saddled with a client that an incompetent and/or corrupt court system, which insists on finishing trials within three days no matter what, immediately believes is guilty. From there, players split gameplay between initial investigations, and courtroom battles, with investigations involving moving between locations, interviewing persons of interest, and collecting evidence for the game's main sections; The trials. Overseen by a gullible, easily-swayed judge (although this seemingly immortal elderly judge has become a fan-favourite character in his own right), and a ruthless, likely underhanded prosecutor (usually Miles Edgeworth, in the case of this first game), players listen to witness testimonies, then cross-examine them, pressing for information on fishy statements, and eventually presenting evidence that proves a witness is lying or mistaken. Over time, as players point out more lies and inconsistencies, they'll eventually get to the truth at the heart of every case, and if they can discover all of it, they can proudly declare their clients, 'NOT GUILTY!'

That hook has been maintained across six main series games and three spin-offs, with a further two spin-offs shifting the focus to Edgeworth and flipping the script by having players identify and prosecute murderers outside of court, though only the first Edgeworth game has been localized for the West at this point, sadly. As one can imagine, the series' core hook strengthened further in future games, which introduced more mechanics, and more complex trials. The original Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney still presents some great case hooks, of course, though the series has since delivered more clever and challenging cases in future titles. In fact, while it gave my ailing brain a superb workout as a teenager, now that I'm a sharper thirtysomething adult, I'd actually argue that, in comparison to future titles especially, the original Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney feels a bit on the easy side. Its fifth bonus case is a bit more fiendishly clever, featuring a detective victim that was seemingly murdered in two places simultaneously by the chief prosecutor, but the original four cases are nothing a reasonably intelligent adult will struggle with, so long as you're willing to properly pay attention to the story and court record.

Without some of the mechanics introduced in future games, the investigation portions of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney also feel much drier and less interesting than the thrilling and often comical trial portions, as much as the writing still excels during the investigation sequences. With no stakes at all behind investigations, they feel like unsatisfying busy work as you try to gather information, particularly since it's impossible to miss any evidence before entering a courtroom, as the game won't proceed without it. That's good news for beginners or careless players at least, since the Ace Attorney games in their entirety never allow you to enter a trial without all of the evidence you'd need to win it.

The fifth bonus case exclusively adding CSI mechanics like fingerprint powder and luminol further highlights that this is a series originally designed with Nintendo's proudly gimmicky handhelds in mind, and not all of those mechanics feel all that natural on an Xbox controller. Even so, I'm very happy to see that my love and enthusiasm for Ace Attorney hasn't wavered one bit since my adolescent days, and the game is just as much fun as it ever was on modern consoles.

If you enjoy mysteries, anime and/or courtroom dramas with a delightfully exaggerated flavour, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is required playing, and so are its sequels for that matter. The first game may not be the best in the series, but it's still an incredibly good start, and one that I feel I'll always be happy to revisit, no matter which platforms it resurfaces on. I will miss yelling, "Objection!" into my DS mic though.

IF I HAD TO SCORE IT: 8/10