All things Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (Gyakuten Saiban) series

[JaySevenZero]

Here's where you can write up your thoughts and opinions for Capcom's 2001 game - Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.

[hazeredmist]

YES!!!!!!!!!!!

Currently on holiday but just noticed this and will post ASAP on my return. Cheers gents! One of my all time favourites and something I've wanted to be covered for a long time by the C&R crew.

[hazeredmist]

Right then.

This game kicked off my love of narrative-heavy 'visual novel' games, of which this is one of the finest examples, with a unique angle. A lawyer simulator? How can that possibly work?? Brilliantly, I'd say.

Mechanically it's light in terms of what it demands from the player, and is text-heavy with a lot of linearity with how you progress. To criticise it for that would be to miss the point however, as I like to think of games like this as more of a fun way to absorb a story as opposed to being challenged. You will face difficulties when the game has a definitive method of progressing you haven't worked out yet (eg. tap this item, show this item to so and so) or if you HAVE worked out the next steps but haven't found how the game currently wants you to carry them out, but those issues are pretty much the only issues I have with the game.

The plot-lines and characters are what make the game truly shine, each one bursting with personality, the developers also aren't shy of tugging at the heartstrings with certain events in the game. The likes of Phoenix, Edgeworth, Mia, Maya, Pearls, Larry and so many others will become your friends while you play, and the plot of each case will often surprise you with excellent twists. The cases escalate in a way with a simple beginning to the fourth case where a big overarching plot comes to a head, with so many 'just one more page' type moments as the plot develops, and the fifth case (exclusive to the DS game) introduces some great new mechanics utilising the DS's capabilities well.

The music is some of the best I've ever heard in a game. Hands down. Catchy melodies for different scenarios you don't mind hearing again and again that truly steer your mood where the game wants it to be, be that urgency, fear, triumph. I'm not sure I've had video game music resonate quite as strongly as it does here. Detective Gumshoe is on screen? You know right away because of his theme tune which somehow perfectly fits his character.

I'm sure a lot of what I'm bursting to say about this game has already been covered by now in the podcast so I'll cut my gushing short, but I will say this game captured my imagination perfectly, and ever since I've used either the sequels of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney or other visual novel type games to wind down at nights, as part of my routine. I've finished this game and each western-translated sequel multiple times, even though I know the plot and dialogue inside out I keep going back and have recently picked up the enhanced 3DS versions of the originals to relive them once again.

I'd also like to give a special mention to my good friend Tom "Reznor" Gardner (a fellow listener to the podcast) who introduced me to the genre as he has so many games, though few have affected me the way the Phoenix Wright series has.

...and thanks for finally covering it!

[AlexMaskill]

I have way more affection for Phoenix Wright than I feel like the game deserves; in fact I can't think of a game with which I have a more skewed quality:affection ratio.

I have a history of being visual novel-adjacent - played a lot of games with visual novel bits, read a lot of visual novels over Let's Plays without actually playing them. Phoenix Wright was my first outright visual novel, however - I borrowed it off my cousin's now-husband - and I completely fell in love with it. I replayed it again with the 3DS "Trilogy" release, and none of the magic has faded.

This was weird, as I was always frustrated trying to deal with its problems. Phoenix Wright has very substantial communication issues. When the player figures something of the case out, their ability to articulate that realisation within the game is always hampered by a certain need for mind-reading the "yell something or show something" player verbs. This thick layer of ambiguity between what the player means to say and what gets communicated was something I found to be a constant annoyance. I found that tension during play came far less from hoping a hail-mary insight would lead somewhere than from gambling that the game will understand what you're getting at. The game is to be commended for trying to build an entire game around conversation, but its systems just aren't there yet for really allowing the player to express themselves.

The lucky part is that in my opinion, everything else about this game works. The art is vibrant, the dialogue and character designs rarely make sense in context but create memorable memorable personalities to interact with, and the stories always managed to throw a twist or two I didn't expect yet, even if the real killers almost all suffer from Obvious Cackling Evil Person Syndrome. I can't hate it for that cartoonishness, because I think that might be what I love about it.

There's something about its blase approach to death, its disjointed character design and writing and its quietly bizarre world that I just find so damn charming. It gives you all the fun of a classic procedural murder mystery story, without any need to, say, "deal with personal pain and trauma following death" or "confront the sometimes-tragic-sometimes-horrifying motivations and events that can lead to murder" or "think about death, like, at all". It's junk food gaming, but it's so charismatic in its presentation that its insubstantiality doesn't really bother me.

It also has one of those soundtracks I'd recognise in any context. It's the kind of generic daytime TV music that seems like it should be as featureless as possible by design, but it always managed to find its mark when heightening the emotional state of a scene. It's the best kind of soundtrack - I can't imagine the kind of person who'd actually sit down and listen to it by itself, but in context, it always compliments and casts a perfect tone of the scenes it runs over.

[Alex79]

Desperately trying to finish this in time for the podcast. I just finished the Steel Samurai case. I've found I'm loving and loathing the game in equal measure at the moment! The courtroom bits are (by and large) a lot of fun, but the investigation is really tedious I think.

[hazeredmist]

It gives you all the fun of a classic procedural murder mystery story, without any need to, say, "deal with personal pain and trauma following death" or "confront the sometimes-tragic-sometimes-horrifying motivations and events that can lead to murder" or "think about death, like, at all". It's junk food gaming, but it's so charismatic in its presentation that its insubstantiality doesn't really bother me.

Great post but I can't say I agree with this - feelings of loss and the effects of losing a loved one are sprawled throughout this game, with the death of a key character massively shaping Phoenix's early development and throughout the game, in addition to characters exhibiting typical bereavement reactions that affect everything they do. I actually thought the way the game deals with death is quite profound at times, albeit in a light hearted way.

[martymcfly3004]

Desperately trying to finish this in time for the podcast. I just finished the Steel Samurai case. I've found I'm loving and loathing the game in equal measure at the moment! The courtroom bits are (by and large) a lot of fun, but the investigation is really tedious I think.

I got about an hour into the game and got horribly stuck on one of the first investigation segments. Not been back since, I really should give it another try.

[Craig]

I played this a while back probably in it's first year of release and I thoroughly enjoyed it at the time. It was a really novel concept which could have went either way but the balance of the tone was just right. It was absolutely ridiculous and silly, but with a hint of melodrama. It reused it's assets well (sometimes with knowing winks to the camera) and when you have a new witness on the stand you can't help but want them to break so you can see their different animations.

What really seals the deal though is the music. Everything about the cross section sections are so well done from the tense music setting the scene, the "ahah! Got you!" music to the really intense music they start using towards the end of the case making you think "He's on the ropes, finish him off!". It really helps sell the mood and knows you're on the right track. It's sometimes difficult to describe music in words but I'm sure anyone who has played the game knows exactly which pieces I'm referring to.

Revisiting it last year before I played the 3DS entry it didn't quite hold my attention as long. It may be that I knew the story already, or that this kind of game just isn't for me any more. It does paint a horrifying view of the judicial system with the main characters saying "Look at him! You just know he's guilty!" but it mostly gets away with it.

I think part of me is reluctant to play through the longer cases. I appreciate they can be more complex, but I'd really like a game which had lots of short cases which just lasted a day each.

[hazeredmist]

From reading some of these comments and hearing a segment discussing it on the Cane & Rinse review of 2015 podcast, I'm a little worried about this show! It really shouldn't be taken seriously, much of the premise / depiction of society / law is utterly ridiculous, but that's entirely intentional and should not be held against the game. I'm also slightly concerned about people's views of the mechanics / structure, but this could easily be me being such a dedicated fan of the series / genre and being blind to it's flaws, so I'll try to bear that in mind if this show ends up being on the hyper-critical side of Cane & Rinse's coverage.

If it ends up like Heavy Rain's podcast I will literally cry though

(I will)

[InsrtCoins]

If it ends up like Heavy Rain's podcast I will literally cry though

It won't. We actually like this game

[Alex79]

I finished this game a couple of days ago, having never really played a Phoenix Wright game before. I was playing the original release on the Nintendo DS and, well, I didn't really think it was that good. There were things I liked about it, the bright bold graphics, the music, the twisting turning stories and the originality of the whole thing. But oh my gosh that was all ofset by some of the most tedious gameplay I've ever experienced.

The courtroom sections of the game were very interesting and enjoyable to play. I really liked going through the characters testimonies and picking them apart. There was something incredibly satisfying about delivering a perfectly placed OBJECTION! or TAKE THAT! Filtering through your clues, working out the holes in their stories, these parts of the game were a lot of fun. But to counter these flashes of brilliance you had to wade through the most mind-numbingly boring investigations, where you'd meet a bunch of ridiculous, stereotypical characters who would insist on feeding you hours of exposition delivered two soul-crushingly frustrating lines at a time. Half the game was spent tapping away at 'next line, next line, next line, JESUS COULDN'T THEY HAVE MADE THIS AUTOMATIC!!! Next line...' The progress through the investigation sections was painful too. Half the time you'd just visit each location available to no avail. Hmm, what now? Erm, ok let's just visit them all again. Still nothing? Try one more time... Oh. There's someone here to talk to now! Barely any of it made any sense either, plot wise. I enjoyed the stories to a degree, the reveals, the penny drop moments, but a lot of it relied very heavily on you suspending any preconceptions of how the real world works completely.

I started to lose any interest I had in the game barely part way through the fourth case, and by the time I got to the end I was just relieved it was over. This isn't a series I'll be returning to any time soon.

THREE WORD REVIEW : Phoenix Wrong. Retired.