The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures In-Depth Review

The half that’s less than half…

Shu Takumi — the creator of the original Ace Attorney trilogy, and writer for Apollo and the Layton crossover — is back for this duology set over a hundred years into the past. Preceding previous entries chronologically, it becomes a new potential entry point for new players.

May contain general/high-level spoilers.

In order to not ruin the game to those who haven’t yet played it, I decided to give my general thoughts on the cases without actually giving away the setting and development.

I had a hard time deciding on what music to select for this story, as there are many great tracks, but ended up going with this one:

Presentation

I wanted to start off with the music: like every game in the franchise, The Great Ace Attorney has an outstanding soundtrack capable of enhancing our experience, accompanying tense moments, as well building up to that one moment where you raise an objection and turn the whole case around. While I couldn’t name a single entry’s soundtrack as my favorite from the franchise, I’d say this one is up there for me. It also feels distinct thanks to its usage of string instruments for a lot of the tracks, while the Layton crossover also makes use of them, I wouldn’t confuse them with each other.

It’s unfortunate that — at least the PC port — doesn’t have the best music quality it could have, but thankfully there’s a mod to fix this. While the music doesn’t sound bad — and you’d probably need headphones to compare the game against the 3DS and album release in order to notice the difference — if you want the best, I recommend picking up this mod.

In the graphics department, you have 3D graphics for the characters, it’s now been a long time since 2D sprites were replaced for new games, and I can’t complain here: the faces are expressive, and the animations give a lot of personality to the characters — that said, a number of them are clearly based on animations from previous games, whether this is intended as a wink to those who played previous entries or just to cut on development time, I do not know, but I also have no issues with it. You can tell it’s a port of a 3DS game due to models not having as many polygons as current games, but thanks to its art style it still looks great regardless.

The backgrounds look good, at first glance they appear to be 2D, but when the camera pans around big locations you can notice a small shift in perspective, giving away the fact that it’s 3D. Unfortunately, people on the scene don’t integrate all that well because there’s no real illumination, but there normally aren’t people lingering around, and when they are, they are either in your face or far away, so this limitation isn’t immediately apparent.

When it comes to voice acting, I think it’s mostly fine, but I feel the main character’s “objection” is somewhat weak, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Even though gameplay is governed by beeps representing people talking for the most part, the game has videos at the start of cases — and sometimes at the end — you normally get a sepia illustration with a Sholmes’ book narration followed by a normal anime styled one.

In case you wanted to compare them, the game lets you switch from English to Japanese audio.

I want to point out that there’s a mod that helps the game run a bit better by fixing a few issues, but it also changes the framerate from 30 to 60 FPS by the fault — yes, Capcom locked the game locked to 30 FPS.

Gameplay

When it comes to the gameplay, if you’ve played previous entries you mostly know what to expect, but it does add a few new mechanics as well as some that were only available in the crossover. It also adds a new “story mode”.

The story mode isn’t more than an accessibility option that will make the game play more like a normal visual novel, as you won’t have to take any decisions to progress the story. I’d advise people not to use it unless they are really stuck in the game, because it’s not as rewarding finding out who the “bad guy” is when we aren’t piecing the clues together ourselves.

Each case starts with an animation to have some context of what happened — but unlike previous games, we’re never get told who’s the culprit. Then depending on the case, you’ll be thrown at the trial, or allowed to investigate first.

During the investigation part, we can examine or change the location, and talk to or present things to people — although the present option doesn’t get much use in this game. When examining a location, there’ll be a cursor which will change colors when over an object that we can analyze, the cursor will also show a red mark to let you know you already examined a given thing.

When a piece of evidence is added to the court record, we’ll often be able to rotate them in 3D in order to find new clues. If the evidence is just text, like some letter, then we won’t have the option to rotate it unless it’s actually hiding something.

The big addition to the investigation phase is the dance of deduction, where Sherlock Holmes will draw a conclusion where only about half of his statements will be right, and we’ll have to correct them based on the reaction of the witness by presenting evidence, normally from the scene itself.

Now, this isn’t L.A. Noire, and the game will just show bubbles with ? and ! to show their reaction, it will also stop automatically, so you don’t have to guess what is incorrect and just focus on finding something to correct Sherlock’s deduction. In order to do that, you’ll usually have to rotate the scene to reveal something that wasn’t apparent before.

The only oddity of this mode is that the scene could be said to be time-stopped, this normally changes nothing, but when you are looking around a person who is hiding something, you’d expect them to actively hide it as you move around, but that doesn’t happen here…these sections still help break up the gameplay a bit and add a bit of reasoning to the investigation phase, as well as helping players retain information as well.

During the trial phase, we see the return of multiple witnesses taking the stand at once — which was featured in the crossover — and a new jury system, where we have 6 characters determine guilt instead of the judge.

The multiple witnesses system has several people taking on the stand where they’ll take turns saying their statements, but when you press on a statement it’s possible to get more information from the other witnesses. Sadly, the game will explicitly let you know when they have something important to say by having them mutter something off-screen and adding a prompt to the screen, so you don’t have to rack your brain thinking about how to get more information from this system, so to me it feels like a bit of a wasted opportunity.

That said, the game actually plays with your expectations, and at one point you’ll need to press onto the witnesses without a prompt, and the way it happens feels natural, and not like the game is trying to trip you over just for the sake of it. But it’s up to you to find out when this moment comes into play 😉.

There’s also the jury system, which include 6 jurors in the majority of trials, determining the defendant’s guilt rather than the judge. If all jurors consider the defendant guilty, you’ll have to do a summation examination in which they’ll each give the reason for their ruling, you can then press them for more information and try to pit them against each other when they have contradictory statements in order to make them change their mind. When you change the mind of at least 4 of them, the trial has to continue.

Setting And Characters

The game is set in both Japan and Britain, mostly the latter, and takes place near the end of the 19th century, which means this happens before all the previous games — while there are a few references to the other games, it’s perfectly fine to play this one first. The game also has names and locations from Sherlock Holmes books, although Sherlock and Watson got a name change — likely due to a few books not being public domain yet in America — the references are here for those who have read and enjoyed his books, but knowledge on Holmes is not required to enjoy or understand the game at all.

The game references a number of real life events to enrich the story and its believability, and it’s helped by the fact that it’s one of the most grounded games in the franchise — if you were turned off by spirit channelling and other such gimmicks then rest assured, because there is nothing of that here.

On the translation front, I have to say I’m impressed; there are a number of old idioms and English dialects used throughout by the characters that show the effort put on the game by the localization team. Though this also means that if English isn’t your primary language you’re going to have a harder time parsing some sentences.

Having said this, I’ll introduce a few of the important characters from the story:

• Ryūnosuke Naruhodō: The protagonist of this game, and an English major student who becomes a defense attorney due to the circumstances. While his nervousness in court is palpable through dialogue and animations, it slowly goes away as he gains experience. Though it’s harder to tell for westerners due to the early games localization, Ryūnosuke is Phoenix Wright’s ancestor (Phoenix’s Japanese name is Ryūichi Naruhodō), although this isn’t of significance to the development of the story.
• Kazuma Asōgi: A defense attorney, law student, and Ryūnosuke’s best friend. Due to his achievements, he was selected to study abroad in the British Empire in an exchange program. While normally composed and self-confident, he has outbursts sometimes, and isn’t afraid to defy the authority. Always carries a katana inherited from his family.
• Susato Mikotoba: The female sidekick of this game. Despite being only 16, she serves as a judicial assistant, has martial arts training, and is an avid reader of books, she’s shown to be a fan of Herlock Sholmes’ novels in particular. When encountering something unknown to her, she’ll rummage through her books in order to find the answer.
• Barok van Zieks: The prosecutor of this game. An aristocrat often called “The Reaper of the Bailey” (the Old Bailey being the name of a courtroom in England) as there’s no saving those he prosecutes. He regularly mocks the defense and witnesses and clearly harbors anger towards Japanese people.
• Mael Stronghart: Is the Lord Chief Justice of London, and who we need the approval of in order to operate as Attorneys there. A stoic and serious person constantly preoccupied with time, his agenda being so full of things that required his attention that he’d usually arrive late to appointments, a fact that he’d note by commenting his delay down to the second.
• Herlock Sholmes: A consulting detective that’s become very well known in Britain and the rest of the world thanks to his novels. Herlock is shown to be eccentric, forgetful, and, at times, very childish. Despite his self-confidence, his deductions can go awry and require external help in order to correct them. He’s sometimes seen using unusual gadgets to collect information.
• Iris Wilson: A 10-year-old girl, and Herlock’s Sholmes assistant and roommate. Besides designing some gadgets, she also writes novels based on cases solved by Herlock Sholmes, and even has a medical Ph.D. Despite her age, she often acts more mature than Herlock. She is trying to find her father, who she’s never met.

The protagonist, isn’t too dissimilar to Phoenix or Apollo, though his friend Kazuma acts like a beacon, a guide to follow and help him grow. But the sidekick does feel different this time around, being less bubbly compared to others like Maya or Trucy, while also offering valuable help both inside and outside the courtroom, she’s probably my favorite “helper” thus far in the franchise.

While Van Zieks didn’t give me the best initial impression, he does prove himself to be a competent prosecutor. His primary motivation doesn’t appear to be just “winning” cases, and that reflects in his normally stoic attitude when holes are poked in his argument, making him appear calm but threatening during the biggest portion of the cases.

Herlock is a bit of an oddball, but he does prove himself useful in solving cases, even when taking into account his misfires. I do have complaints about Iris, they just crammed too much into her curriculum vitae, remember she’s only 10. I’d have removed the gadget making and her Ph.D. However, it should be said that her character sounds worse on paper than it is in practice.

Case Reactions

Case 1:

This is the main reason I wouldn’t recommend this game to a new player; it’s probably the longest first case in the whole franchise, and while I didn’t have much of a problem with its pacing, I could see others finding it tedious — and the difficulties of a new player faces might lengthen the case. And even as I was widely fine with the case, even I can’t defend how long they spent talking about the “container” before actually progressing with the case.

Having said all that, it’s one of my favorite first cases of the franchise, with big stakes, and feeling constricted by everything as authorities seem to be conspiring against us. However, I feel this case made me expect more of the game than I ended up getting.

Case 2:

This acts as a counterpoint to the first case as, instead of a tutorial to the court phase, it’s a tutorial for the investigation one. And while it makes sense from the story’s perspective, it still makes for a dull case because the investigation part is easy, and the supplementary dance of deduction doesn’t make much to change that.

This case also introduces Herlock Sholmes, and while I ended warming up to him eventually, I think that his whimsical nature clashed with the tone I consider the case should have had.

Case 3:

Surely now we are going to see a full case, right? One with the investigation AND court phase…well, no. We have the court back, but only the court. While there’s a good reason, story-wise, for this, I can’t hide my disappointment.

I found that this case did some interesting things in its development, it also introduces the jury system and the prosecutor of the game. My biggest issue, in this case, is that the “battle” part of the court felt weak. Lord Van Zeiks looks and acts like threatening, but for all the insults he hurls at us… it didn’t really seem like he could back it up in court. I can’t help but feel like the fact that it’s only the second court battle despite being the third case is what made the case simpler, and as a result, made him somewhat underwhelming this time around.

Case 4:

This time for real, we have a full case, we get to investigate before getting to the court phase. During the investigation we don’t really find anything to help our case, instead, we get something that seems completely unrelated, but this is an Ace Attorney game, every piece of information is important. And while it’s a fine case in itself, it really doesn’t seem like a case 4 material, with low stakes that don’t really connect to anything that has happened before, though it could also be said that it brings some variety.

Lord Van Zeiks does better this time around, he feels like a bigger threat, and eventually helps us get to the bottom of things. My impressions of him got dampened a bit in the end, due to objecting to a discrepancy he should have been able to work out himself, but it’s a minor complaint.

Case 5:

Being the last case, we have another full case. While it starts off as a relatively low-stakes case, it starts showing connections to previous cases, and it grows in importance as it develops. We make use of a new gimmick in court, and we have a Van Zeiks with a strong case here, making for a fun battle.

Something that must be taken into account is that a lot of plot threads aren’t resolved at this point and left to the next game, in fact, the game adds even more information after the end of the trial to leave you in suspense to the next game.

Final Thoughts

It’s fine to use a game to build up the next, but in this case so much was left unexplained, that in the end, it felt like this was holding back in order to have more for the second plate, make this an appetizer as a result. This isn’t like the original trilogy in which the first game tells a full story, and then the others expand upon the stories of certain characters (as well as adding new ones), instead, the first game depends heavily on the second and vice versa, this would be fine if cases felt more substantial by themselves in this entry.

Fortunately in the west, we didn’t have to wait two years after the release of the first game for its sequel, as they were sold together from day one, so these issues get lessened in practice. And even if it sounds I’m being very critical of the game, I still enjoyed it greatly, and just lament that it feels like it didn’t go the extra mile.