The Ace Attorney series has surprisingly humble beginnings, starting life as a trilogy of Game Boy Advance games released exclusively in Japan in 2001 through 2004. It wasn’t until the first game was remade for the Nintendo DS in 2005 that the West was exposed to the series for the first time with Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, introducing a uniquely inspired series of visual novel games and cultivating a devoted cult following ever since.
Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy follows the second half of the mainline story (namely Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies, and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice), so named because they feature newcomer-come-series-regular Apollo Justice, protégé of the legendary Phoenix Wright. The writing is such that although prior knowledge is helpful in understanding the context of the game and a couple of its characters, you don’t need to have played any previous entry in the series to get to grips with the story or the mechanics.
Because the Apollo Justice trilogy can be a different experience depending on a player’s history with the series or visual novels, this review will attempt to explain the collection’s merits as visual novel games, as remakes of the original titles, and its appeal to fans of the Ace Attorney series as a whole.
The collection’s title screen features an absolutely incredible arrangement of “Apollo Justice – A New Era Begins!”, the Apollo Justice character’s “theme”, an amazing composition that is a joy for the ears for casual enjoyers but is doubly appreciated for an Ace Attorney fan. It’s great to listen to while perusing the game’s Museum containing art, models, and music throughout the trilogy, as well as the surprising amount of options available to tweak the games, including a Story Mode which effectively plays through the game and all its puzzles for you (a godsend for those who struggle, or just want to focus on the excellent stories), the ability to toggle the hint system in Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice (known as Consultations), and the surprising but very welcome ability to change the text and voice acting to one of six languages.
It’s great that the games are available in so many languages; as visual novels, they are extremely text heavy. Each title’s puzzles, storytelling, and even their humour rely on a decent understanding of things such as idioms or wordplay. With each adventure containing approximately 200,000 words, it’s commendable that each one was competently translated from Japanese to each of the five other languages.
The Ace Attorney games follow the events of defense attorneys Apollo Justice, Phoenix Wright, and Athena Cykes (depending on the title) as they defend their clients against murders which they are accused of. As disappointing as it is that you exclusively deal with murders without exception, they do nicely to keep things gripping and stakes high knowing that potentially innocent civilians may be locked away for decades without the lawyers’ quick thinking and wit.
The text-based nature of the games means that they are very light on action or otherwise active gameplay, with 80% of your time spent reading. As great as the writing is throughout the series, those expecting something a little more engaging will certainly come away disappointed. The other 20% is split between the investigation segments and the courtroom segments.
Investigations, which involve the player going between a handful of local environments, gathering clues and conducting interviews with civilians and witnesses, are the weaker portion of the games. You’re forced to go back and forth between the same areas repeatedly, doing nothing but asking the questions the game requires you to ask and poking parts of the environment that may not be obvious to advance the plot with little in the way of hints. Frustrations from getting lost will not be an uncommon occurrence.
Courtroom segments are where the bulk of the “action” takes place. They are even more linear than the investigation segments, yet somehow much more engaging. They involve listening to witness testimonies, pressing witnesses to extract more information and bring to light any inconsistencies and counter with accumulated evidence. There is immense satisfaction from putting together all the knowledge and evidence you’ve gathered about the case and any key witnesses and using them to tear down the liars and uncover the truth of the case. The incredible soundtrack just adds to these hype moments.
The first title in the collection is Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, the only one of these games that was released on the Nintendo DS (the later two entries were released on the Nintendo 3DS), and unfortunately it shows. While every single art asset has been redrawn and is presented in glorious high definition (a blessing considering they were previously confined to the tiny DS screen), everything else makes it very clear that this was originally a DS game. It’s effectively a high-definition copy and paste.
Cutscenes, though redrawn, use the same animation as on the DS, with some looking like very high definition PowerPoint animations with their jagged movement looks. The soundtrack, while absolutely stellar musically and definitely better quality by virtue of being played on the modern Nintendo Switch hardware, is the same set of MIDI chiptunes used in 2007. It feels like a missed opportunity not to update these assets to be in line with the other two games in the collection, which made use of the higher specs of the Nintendo 3DS and really benefited from this Switch remake.
In spite of this, the experience from start to finish is a joy. The decision to use Apollo Justice as the first game was perfect. Besides Phoenix himself, not a single character from previous entries returns or is even referenced – excellent for newcomers. The story that’s told across the four court cases is incredibly engrossing, full of plot twists that emerge and Chechov’s guns that get fired much later on.
Each playable attorney in the trilogy has a unique ability to glean secrets from witnesses. In Apollo Justice, Apollo is the sole playable attorney, and his Perception ability is introduced here. Perception allows him to notice normally innocuous tics when witnesses tell specific lies during their testimonies, such as a person playing with their sleeve when they recount a detail they logically could not have been present to see. It’s up to you to detect which part of the sentence is inconsistent and what their specific tell is. Though slightly fantastical and anime-esque, it doesn’t make things any less satisfying to zero in on a witness’ unconscious habits and understand why their testimonies make them so nervous.
The next game, Dual Destinies, was the first in the series released on the 3DS, and made use of the system’s 3D capabilities, with 3D models and environments, meaning more expressive characters and dynamic investigations particularly in this HD remaster. The soundtrack sounded great on the 3DS, but hearing the tracks uncompressed and in their full splendour is a very welcome feature here.
The game has fully animated anime cutscenes dotted throughout the adventure (beautifully animated by the legendary Studio Bones, who would later go on to work on My Hero Academia and Mob Psycho 100), which compliment the greater focus on character and narrative, particularly involving the new character, aspiring lawyer Athena Cykes.
Athena’s unique ability is the Mood Matrix, which allows her to hear the emotions in a court witness’ heart during testimonies, allowing her and Phoenix to pick up on emotional inconsistencies to know where and how to press them for more information. Though simple early on, it is used extremely cleverly in later cases and adds another layer of depth in deciding how to approach and take apart witness testimonies.
Spirit of Justice, being the last mainline Ace Attorney game and released much later in the 3DS’ life, benefits the most from the HD uplift. The backgrounds, which up until this point were static images, are now dynamic with some moving elements like moving oxen or fluttering flags. The always excellent music is really given a chance to flourish on the Switch. The anime cutscenes, by A-1 Pictures studio this time (who also produced the Ace Attorney anime series and would go on to win awards for Sword Art Online and Solo Levelling), still look beautiful and do a great service to the characters and environments.
One of the many returning elements in this game is Phoenix’s unique ability, the Magatama. The Magatama allows Phoenix to see a person’s “Psyche-Locks”, spiritual locks that appear when someone is guarding a secret, broken by presenting evidence to the person that clues him into the secret. These appear exclusively during Investigation segments, and do a lot to make these parts much more engaging, culminating in an “A-ha!” moment when you find that one piece of evidence you need to break a person’s final Psyche-Lock.
One thing that the collection can do very little to alleviate is their complete lack of replay value. Ace Attorney games are very linear; if you ever decide to replay any of them, you’ll effectively play the same story in the exact same way, experiencing the same plot twists at the exact same moments, with no hidden content to discover. Unless you take enough time away from the games that you literally forget the story beats and puzzle solutions, there is literally no reason to play them again once you finish them.
The pettiest criticism is the lack of immersive way to participate in the trials. On the DS and 3DS, a player could use the microphones to speak the interjections out loud to make the lawyers shout “HOLD IT!” and “OBJECTION!” at the witnesses, a truly genius and inspired use of the consoles to immerse players. A feature as simple as, say, using the Joy-Con’s motion controls to simulate the lawyers’ exaggerated pointing gestures when they object would have gone a long way to recapturing that charm, and it’s truly disappointing that Capcom has not found a way to do so even with a compilation released in 2024.
In all honesty, those are trivial criticisms that take very little away from the Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy experience. Going through all three games is a joy from start to finish. Like an excellent series of books filled full of characters bursting with personality and plot twists at every corner, it is easy to lose oneself in such a narrative, especially when the satisfaction of piecing together the story and unravelling false testimonies always keeps a player wanting to stick around to see which direction it goes in next. Just like a good book, though, it’s likely a player won’t want to revisit the series for a while after the final cutscene, but will have plenty of memories to look back on, and time away is just what is needed to fully experience the wonder of this visual novel series again.
