I have a strange relationship with the Ace Attorney series. On one hand, I do admire the original game and the rest of the two titles in the original trilogy have lots of wonderful moments as well. On the other – I’m not a fan of the ratio between adventuring and visual novel storytelling they ever had, very heavily leaning into walls of text and sacrificing gameplay logic over plot twists. That’s the main reason why I stopped playing a couple of hours into The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles as it bored me to tears and I’ve never bothered with the second trilogy either. Which is why I wasn’t sure if I should give Ace Attorney Investigations Collection a go. But after playing the demo and discovering to my relief that this game, as the name implies, is far more into investigative adventuring than the other titles, I gave it a go. And I’m glad I did, as Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth is easily the most enjoyable entry in the series I’ve played. And it will probably be the last one I ever finish.
If you’re unfamiliar with Ace Attorney series, they are titles that combine light adventuring elements and visual novel-style storytelling to bring a rather unique experience of a court room drama. All the rest of the titles in the series are focused almost exclusively on said drama itself, with occasional investigative bits that are entirely linear and extremely primitive. So most of the time is spent on cross-examining someone’s testimonies in court and presenting correct evidence to highlight contradictions in them. Which, as I’ve mentioned already, involves way too much expository talking for my personal liking, as the games feel far more like barely interactive storybooks than adventure games. The original trilogy is still quite fun, especially the first game, but for all the fun twists and funny moments, the further the games went, the more they decided to sacrifice fun adventure elements in favor of guessing correct inputs to move plot forward, even if it’s not always logical. And the plot itself went from over the top and silly, to completely absurd and obnoxiously overcomplicated.
Ace Attorney Investigations breaks away from this approach. Instead of ditching the investigative part, the games (or, well, the first one at least) focuses a lot more on them, providing relatively simple, but genuinely engaging investigative gameplay where you examine the crime scenes, question the witnesses and suspects and connect clues. If you’ve played any of the titles that focus on the similar things, be it Sherlock Holmes titles, Detective Grimoire series or something like L.A. Noire, you know what to expect in general. It’s just somewhat simplified, without (at least usually) holding your hand and still providing the excitement from discovering hidden connections that may change your understanding of the case. Cross-examining testimonies is still present as well, but this time outside of the court setting and is used to bring out new information out of someone who intentionally or accidentally lied, or putting a criminal in a spot where they might reveal who they are to the surrounding crowd of witnesses, making the job of the police easier.
And given that the only game in the collection that I’ve completed is the first one (I’ll talk about the second when we get there), I have to say that Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth is worth the purchase of the collection alone. It’s not without its flaws, for example the final case lasts way too long and becomes increasingly more absurd and convoluted as it goes. But even that one has strong moments and in general the flow of the game and its story is perfectly delivered. It makes sense, nothing feels too absurd to ruin the gameplay process, cases are interesting (even if they are way too reliant on murder) and vast majority of the logic checks are indeed logical and not of the “guess what the developer was thinking” kind. It’s better enjoyed if you do play the original trilogy of games first as some of the references and returning characters work much better with that knowledge. But it’s not like the original trilogy wasn’t worth playing on its own anyway, so you might as well do it. This isn’t Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective – that adventure game is beyond fantastic, while this one is just very very good. But it’s worth experiencing if you like investigation focused titles or like the Ace Attorney series.
Then I started playing Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit and gave up in the middle of the second case. Apart from adding a horrendous new mechanic of “mind chess”, which might be the worst “dialogue battle”-type mini-game I’ve ever experienced in my life, this title just starts with the clown makeup half-applied, and rapidly continues to become a farce by the end of the first case. It’s incredibly stupid, throws several logic-defying “logic checks” at you from the get go, makes several characters that worked so well in the previous game unbearable and then somehow keeps getting even worse as it goes. It also seems to have almost entirely decided to ditch the focus of the investigation in favor of the mind-chess and testimonies, as while investigating still happens, it takes far less time then the talking bits. So after I realized that the game is actively irritating me and doesn’t plan on stopping, I quit it and doubt that I will ever return to finish it.
That said, as I’ve already mentioned, this collection could be not a collection but just Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth and I would’ve still said that it’s worth buying. Maybe not for the full price… but I honestly can’t say that it’s not worth that price, even if you would just play one of two games. It’s a shame that the series are, in general, not really my thing. And reactions from other people to the second game that I couldn’t stomach were quite positive from the fans of the franchise… So I guess, if you’re like me, just like a good adventure game and Ace Attorney never clicked with you before – the first game in the collection might be exactly what you’re looking for. Thankfully, you can try the demo to see for yourself if you want to get it. But I’m glad that I did.