Ace Attorney: Edgey Investigates! is out now

[Kim]

Originally Posted by Great Cartoonist

So, since we get to play the prosecutor in this game, does this mean that the defendants will be the smug blowhards or will Miles intimidate the hell out of them?

Miles is fairly Phoenixy in this game, and Franziska even calls him out on it if you press a character at one point.

Also Kay Faraday >>>>>>>>>>>> Maya

[Kerensky287]

Originally Posted by Regulus Tera

The problem was that they didn't even bother to redo the old sprites when they appeared for a cameo in Apollo Justice. And it was lame.

I was WONDERING why Phoenix's face changed shape so much between his hobo and lawyer versions.

[Ryong]

So.

When you were Phoenix or Apollo, your defendants were always innocent.

Now, you're on the other side, so the defendants are always guilty?

Whoever's in player focus is never wrong, it seems. I guess that'd make a shitty game.

[PCD]

Not so much. The game is more about investigating crime scenes to find out who's guilty. Doesn't take place in the courtroom.

Considering that Phoenix and Apollo would essentially become prosecutors halfway through every one of their cases, that part of it should be familiar anyway.

[MuMu]

There were a couple of GUILTY(One for Murder and one for Robbing) veredicts, but considering that Phoenix had the Magatama, which gave a 99% of chance of telling if the Defendant was the murderer or not, it's not a surprise that most of them were set up against.

Been waiting for this one, will get it next week or so. Hope it doesn't disappoint me like Apollo Justice.

[Kim]

At Chapter Four and loving the game still. Got stupid stuck during chapter three because even if you have an idea of what the contradiction is you won't necessarily know what to do, but I eventually figured it out.

Main problem with the plot so far is how much it jumps around.

Chapter Four is seven years before Chapter Three which is one day after Chapter Two which is two days before Chapter One and AAAAAAAAAAUGH

[Regulus Tera]

The music in this game is SOOO goood.

The DS speakers just don't do it justice.

[Kim]

Just beat the game last night. Really good. Probably my favorite Ace Attorney game yet. I had problems with a couple parts and the end "fight" lasted too long, but overall still really good. I like Kay Faraday more than Maya as Japanese Teen Assistant, I think I like Edgeworth more than Phoenix, and Franziska was a lot cooler in this game. Agent Lang was also a badass.

I did notice that I always seem to hate the recurring witnesses of the series though. Especially Oldbag. Hate her so much.

Also, I love that this game confirms Edgey as a closet Steel Samurai fan. "How dare someone like you call yourself a true Steel Samurai fan!"

[Regulus Tera]

I'm in the last portion of the last case and goddammit I have to work now but fuuuuck this has been just as good as Trials and Tribulations.

[Solid Snake]

Man I hate to disagree with the masses but I'm going to have to take the hit on this one.

I'm almost finished with Case 5 of Ace Attorney Investigations. It's just nowhere near Trials and Tribulations on my list of favorite Ace Attorney games. I'll concede that objectively speaking, it's probably the second best in the series (I have fonder subjective memories of the very first game, but I couldn't possibly recommend its simplistic charm over a polished product like AAI.) And I'll further concede that the polish in this game is impeccable.

First, to me, the heart and soul of the Ace Attorney series will always be with Phoenix Wright and the fact that this is the second straight game where his influence has been minimized just struck me as discomforting. In Apollo Justice, Hobo Phoenix showed up a lot but he felt like a completely different character and the game suffered from too few cameos, leaving gamers with the distinct impression that Capcom arbitrarily forgot about all the awesome friendships Phoenix had invested in over the course of the original trilogy. I couldn't possibly imagine a hypothetical future in which Phoenix would lose his license and subsequently isolate himself from those who once cared about him, just as I couldn't believe Miles, Gumshoe, Maya, Pearls and hordes of others wouldn't involve themselves in making sure Phoenix didn't fall into a precipice of despair.

Strangely, Ace Attorney Investigations continued this notion of screwing over Phoenix's character despite an absolute opposite position of cramming in tons of cameos from virtually every supporting character imaginable. Phoenix even had a split-second cameo. But the way Franziska and Miles referred to Phoenix simply as "him" (as if they were offended by the mere thought) seemed to utterly contradict their character development through the original trilogy. What I loved about the original trilogy was how, through Phoenix's influence, Edgeworth, Gumshoe, Godot, and (to a lesser but still notable extent) Franziska all became better people. I suppose the best compliment AAI proffers in that regard is that Edgeworth has become something of a proxy Phoenix, but as a huge Franziska fan I was disappointed with her apparent character regression -- I felt like she was making real progress to becoming a more tolerable and less antagonistic person through Justice for All's ending and Trial and Tribulations and instead she went right back to a walking cliche of whips, whips and more whips.

(As a brief aside I probably enjoyed Case Four the most in large part because, as a flashback episode, Franny and Miles' old-school perfectionist personalities better fit the characters back then, and it was awesome to learn how they met Gumshoe...it always seemed like Gumshoe had known Franny fairly well before they "met" in JFA and we never quite understood why, and this game filled in those gaps.)

AAI definitely tried to restore some of the "Ace Attorney magic" by cramming cameos (many of which were, frankly, unnecessary and a least a few of which arguably detracted from the plot moreso than added to it) down our throats, but what interested me about the original trilogy wasn't the cameos in and of themselves but a certain degree of evolution for the principle characters. In this game, however, pretty much everyone fit into their stereotypes. The game felt...stagnant, in a way. And the sheer plethora of cameos really detracted from the mystery in the cases because you just knew that all the cameo characters weren't the real murderers. In four of the five cases I had deciphered the true identity of the killer and their methodologies in killing long before Miles had to present the evidence, which just stripped the game of much its tension. It's particularly bad in cases four and five when I knew Callisto and Shih-na were respectively the murderers from their earliest scenes in those cases.

Aside from all that, the story was still awesome: I liked Franny as an Interpol agent, snippets of dialogue between the characters (particularly Case Four, which rocked) were just plain awesome, Edgeworth's narration was distinct enough from Phoenix to retain a certain degree of independence as a character, the new characters (Lang, Callisto and Badd in particular) were several degrees better than anything Apollo Justice offered us (and all three those characters had amazing jazz/rock style theme songs.)

What disappointed me far more than the story (which was fine, with a few minor qualms) was the gameplay, which really felt several steps backwards. The game just felt too easy. The original Ace Attorney titles used to trip me up, man! I remember being stumped sometimes, and the turnabouts where much more brilliant because I was genuinely caught off guard and impressed with a few of the final twists. Take Case 2-4 in Justice for All and Case 3-5 in Trials and Tribulations: both were intense roller-coaster rides of cases, with fast and furious battles between the Phoenix and the case's prosecutor. Franny was shot! Edgeworth took over the prosecution! Phoenix was shot! Edgeworth took over for the defense! More importantly, the evidence just seemed to click into place in such a way that retained a far greater degree of deduction.

By comparison I practically slept-walked through some of these AAI cases. The Logic system was ludicrously easy. The Logic system could have been immensely improved if some red herring clues -- false leads that you could link inappropriately -- were thrown into the mix. There's really no moment where a wrong guess causes you to lose a substantive amount of your health bar, so you can breeze through five or six incorrect guesses per section and not worry about a thing. Furthermore, Edgeworth seemed to command far more respect than Phoenix -- which I'll concede is consistent with the character, but Edgeworth's deductive skills in terms of the narrative eliminated those tense moments of "THE JUDGE AND THE PROSECUTOR ARE BREATHING DOWN YOUR THROAT" that made me bite my nails in fear in the original Ace Attorney games. By contrast, no one really seems to doubt that Edgeworth's going to make the right deductions, so there's really not as much suspense.

So, in closing, Ace Attorney Investigations was great, but it wasn't as great as I think it should have been, which killed some of my enjoyment of the experience. Piecing together the evidence and utilizing the logic and deduction systems was too easy. The cross-examination sequences might as well have taken place in a courtroom, as they really weren't anything new or exciting. The cases were named after Turnabouts like old times, but none of the cases had a "resurrection from the brink of death" feel that propelled Phoenix through the original trilogy. Miles never really seemed to be in danger to the same extent that Phoenix was, and everyone's acknowledgment of his acumen enabled him to successfully challenge characters like Lang in such a way as to eliminate the suspense. Franziska and Gumshoe and Larry Butz and pretty much everyone but Edgeworth himself has appeared to remain stagnant, and without character growth, the narrative loses some pull. The cameos were actually excessive, and the one cameo I felt was necessary just didn't come to fruition.

The humor is better than ever, the music is phenomenal, and the artwork is pretty. And it's still the second best Ace Attorney game, which is saying a lot. I just can't...I can't feel that same level of excitement I once felt when I was playing Trials and Tribulations or case 2-4 of Justice for All. I hope Capcom reaches those heights again but honestly, unless they start taking much larger risks with the formula, they may never reach T+T's pinnacle again.