Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy Review

Phoenix really can't help himself

Quick Info
Reviewed by:	Mark Goninon
Developer:	CAPCOM
Publisher:	CAPCOM
Release Date:	10 Apr 2019
Time played:	67.5 hours

My first experience with Phoenix Wright and the Ace Attorney series in general is probably similar to many. A lawyer with spiky hair in a blue suit, pointing his finger towards the other end of a courtroom, crying out "Objection!" is an image that many are familiar with, even for those that have never played the game, but if you are, you'll know that the image is of defense attorney Phoenix Wright from CAPCOM's Ace Attorney series. My very first experience of the game was through the many "Objection!" memes on the Internet, but I finally got around to playing it a couple of years back.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Ace Attorney series with the very first game, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney releasing way back in 2001 on the Game Boy Advance. The game would mark the beginning of a very successful franchise including multiple games, a novel, a manga, an anime, a film and even a theatre show. The game would be referenced in many other games and also spawn many imitators.

This review is about a collection that was originally released in 2014 on the Nintendo 3DS and then on modern systems (including Windows) in 2019: The Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy remasters and bundles the first three games in the series: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (2001), Justice for All (2002) and Trials and Tribulations (2004). The collection was a commercial and critical success with CAPCOM announcing recently that the trilogy has sold over 5 million copies and on Metacritic the game holds a respectable Metascore of 80. The game also holds an "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating on Steam based on 97% of the 35,698 reviews being positive.

But what is Ace Attorney all about? And is it worth investing over 60 hours into playing these games?

So, Who is Phoenix Wright?

The first Ace Attorney game is set in 2016 (which was considered the future when the game was originally released, not a decade in the past) and you play the role of a spiky-haired defense attorney called Phoenix Wright. In the country that Phoenix Wright practises law, trials have a maximum limit of three days and there are also no juries, with the judge alone ultimately deciding whether the defendant is guilty or not. Your job as Phoenix Wright is to prove your client's innocence by collecting evidence and then pointing out contradictions in a witness's testimony until they eventually spill the beans and confess their guilt (similar to Perry Mason). Eventually you'll get the real culprit on the stand and once they reveal the truth, your client is exonerated and the case is closed (at least this is what happens most of the time, not every case results in this outcome).

While the Ace Attorney games share many similarities with the visual novel genre (a commonly found genre in Japan) it does contain some light adventure game elements, such as investigating scenes, gathering objects for your inventory and then using these inventory items at the correct moments in the game.

Concentration is Rewarded... Usually

There's really only one way to fail in this game and it's if you happen to make the wrong choices during conversations or when your "health" bar goes down to zero. The "health" bar in Ace Attorney represents how many mistakes the judge is willing to tolerate before he passes a guilty verdict on your client. At the beginning of the game, it's quite hard to fail, especially considering your first case works as a tutorial of sorts. However, as you progress through the game, it will become trickier and if you offer too many wrong items as evidence, your health bar will reach zero. Save scumming, a necessity of old adventure games, will become your friend. This is because showing the correct evidence is only one half of the equation: you'll also need to pick the right part of the testimony to present the evidence. You have the option to tell a witness to "Hold it!" and press further for more information for a particular section of testimony and this can sometimes be useful in revealing which part of the testimony to link with evidence, however in later courtroom sessions the judge won't tolerate you pressing for information and deduct "health" from your health bar as punishment.

Most of the time, it generally makes sense when to present particular evidence for particular testimonies, however Ace Attorney does suffer from another issue common in adventure games and that's when you've got more than one inventory item that could possibly do the job: sometimes you'll come across evidence that for all intents and purposes, is the smoking gun. Evidence that is so damning there's no way it could fail if shown to the court. And yet there is a proper sequence to introducing evidence which means the smoking gun is usually the last one you're meant to display. It can be infuriating in these instances where you think you're about to win the case only to lose health for picking the wrong piece of evidence.

Yep. That's a pipe organ. In an office.

Off the Wall Humour and a Nonsensical Legal System

One of Ace Attorney's strength is its off the wall humour as well as its nonsensical legal system. The game has the typical Japanese ridiculousness and overemphasis you tend to find in anime with characters, especially the villains, often feeling like two dimensional caricatures. You've got the vain villains, bimbos with ridiculously exaggerated bouncing boobs (again, not uncommon in Japanese games) and police chiefs that have friggin pipe organs in their office. Nothing is off-limits when it comes to what constitutes an acceptable witness but I won't spoil it for you, you'll just have to play the game to find out! Furthermore, it makes no sense how Phoenix is not only acting as a lawyer but solving cases like he's Hercule Poirot and it's also hilarious how every time his defendants are unwilling to tell him important information until it's too late, resulting in many reworded testimonies and the reveal of critical evidence halfway through a trial.

Altogether, this results in a game that's not a very realistic legal drama but there's definitely lots of courtroom Drama with a capital D.

Turnabout Big Top is considered one of the more controversial episodes in the series

Occasional Cringe

As the game was originally released around the turn of the century, there is bound to be some old-fashioned or out-of-date views. These range from innocent gaffes such as the lack of smartphones in 2016 but what I found uncomfortable to process were outdated norms surrounding sexuality: it's at odds with other elements of the game. I think you could be forgiven in believing the game is suitable for kids due to all of the stereotypical characters you encounter, the aforementioned silly humour and the bumbling incompetence from characters such as Phoenix and Gumshoe. However, whenever you come across an effeminate man in the game, characters often mistake him for a woman and continue to make fun of this until the "joke" gets really old. It's not very tolerant and reads like a typical Boomer-making-fun-of-Political-Correctness joke.

There are frequent instances of sexual innuendo and fanservice in this game which is fine as an adult but may cause kids to scratch their heads. But by far the worst episode in this regard was Episode 3 "Turnabout Big Top" in the second game, Justice for All. Almost all the male characters in this episode comment on how "cute" a 16 year-old girl is and what's worse there's even two competing suitors for her hand in marriage: a 21 year old man and another man in his 30s. Coincidentally (or maybe not), 16 years old just happens to be the age of consent in Japan and the USA when the game was originally released as well as the minimum age of marriage for women in Japan (since 2022, this has been changed to 18 to match the male minimum age). While technically everything is "legal" it still feels icky and wrong, especially when you're trying to play the game with a daughter in their tweens (which I was doing at the time). The power balance and potential exploitation of a school-age girl dating and marrying men 15 or even 5 years older is never questioned at any point during the episode.

I wonder whether Franziska thinks Phoenix is foolish?

A Lovable Cast of Characters

What really makes the first Ace Attorney trilogy a great series is its lovable cast of characters, especially the bond between Phoenix Wright, Miles Edgeworth and Larry Butz. As you play through the episodes, characters introduced earlier often make cameos in later episodes. Characters often have their own theme music too with Maya's "Turnabout Sisters" and Phoenix Wright's "Objection!" themes becoming iconic and often covered and remixed by musically-inclined fans. There are also plenty of flashback episodes which are great for fleshing out the backstories of the main characters and the final episode to the trilogy is truly well done, culminating in one grand finale that brings all your favourite characters together.

8	While I'd like to raise an "Objection!" to how the humour and sexual tension was handled in particular episodes, overall the Ace Attorney Trilogy is a zany, funny courtroom drama adventure with great animations, music and a memorable cast of characters.

If you like this game, you might like…

• 80 Days (2015)
• Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective Collection (2015)
• Stray Gods (2023)

Special thanks to my in-laws for providing the funds to purchase this for my birthday in 2024!