Nerd Mentality

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

Posted September 24th 2006 by Jordan Mammo.

If you made a list of what most gamers would like to be in their video games, "lawyer" would likely be nowhere to be found. Ninjas? Pirates? Soldiers? Those would probably be on the list somewhere, and heck even plumber would make its way on there... but lawyer? Not a chance. Well, my friends, it's time to rethink your answers.

At its core, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is a classic text adventure. The game is split up into two parts: the investigation and the trial. The investigations are fairly basic; you'll examine the scene of the crime for clues, question the detective, witnesses, and various other people who you discover are involved in the case somehow. All of this is done in a linear fashion and is set up to give you hints and clues for the real meat of the game--the trial--so there's no need to worry about heading into court unprepared.

The courtroom is where all the action happens. And when I say action, I mean more reading. Phoenix Wright is not a difficult game to understand: the witness will testify, and after that's done you may question whichever statements he/she made. But wait! The witness said something that contradicts the evidence you have in the court record! What do you do? As your senior counsel so eloquently explains in the game's opening trial, "Present it and rub it in the witness' face." Present the wrong evidence too many times and you lose; present the right evidence when it's needed and you win the case.

And, well, that's the game. Rub the evidence in their face. I wish I could explain Phoenix Wright by saying that it's like the Blitz or the Ridge Racer of the law simulation genre, but there is no law simulation genre. This game is not about learning the intricacies of the legal system; it's about kicking ass and taking names, and frankly it does that quite well. Discovering the contradictions in witness testimony is undeniably satisfying, and watching Phoenix pound his hands on the desk and reveal the evidence to a shocked witness and courtroom is just icing on the cake.

"Gyakuten Saiban," the Japanese title for this game, roughly translated means "turnabout judgement," and there is perhaps no better way to describe what goes on in the courtroom during these trials. The tides are constantly being turned in your favor and in your opponent's. It's unbelievable how many times Phoenix will say to himself something like "Ha, just try and squirm your way out of THIS!" only to see the witness do exactly that, or the prosecutor reveal some new, crippling evidence against him. Before you know it, the simple case at hand has ballooned into something entirely unexpected and seemingly unrelated.

In fact, it's this exchange that gives the game such a dramatic and surprisingly gripping feel. It's like Street Fighter with words. Between all the gavel pounding, shouting, desk smashing, finger pointing, and dramatic close-ups, you nearly expect Phoenix to jump out from behind the desk and hadouken the bejeezus out of the prosecution. Of course, he never does that, but when you see the prosecutor reel in shock and then bend over his table in anguish over what you just said, it might as well have happened anyway.

Even better is that between all of this, Phoenix Wright still manages to pack in a boatload of humor. The translation is great, the script is hilarious, and the characters have, well, character. How a murder trial diverges into a back-and-forth about lunch, with the judge himself using the discussion to explain why his food was salty, I'm not totally sure. But I'll be darned if it doesn't make me laugh. The presentation certainly helps also, as witnesses will try to use their quirky character traits to their advantage when they can't quite throw out a great explanation about something they said.

It's a good thing that Ace Attorney has such great characters and presents them so well, because the game is mainly just reading. You don't actually move your character around and for the most part you cannot really interact with the environment around you. In fact, if you don't read carefully enough, you may find yourself in trouble when it comes to proceeding with the trial. Certainly not everyone is going to enjoy this game, but for those it strikes a cord with it will strike hard.

Special mention should be made of the Nintendo DS-exclusive case, which is unlocked after you finish the first four cases. As Phoenix Wright is essentially a port of the Game Boy Advance title, most of the game makes minimal use of the DS's unique features, and if you wish you can play through all four court cases without breaking out the stylus at all. The novelty of shouting "Hold it!" or "Objection!" into the microphone, though satisfying at first, is also lost as you keep playing. The DS case, obviously, is much better suited to the system's capabilities, as the evidence you find can actually be examined by turning and rotating it on the bottom screen. This alone brings the feeling of interaction up to a new level and when coupled with other things such as taking fingerprints, it not only offers a tantalizing taste of what's to come in the announced sequel, but it's also a welcome addition considering you're mostly weeding through witness testimony.

Where Ace Attorney falls a little short is in the replay value department. Once the game's over, it's over. Sure, you might want to replay the cases to make sure you caught everything that happened, but there isn't much incentive to keep playing, and understandably so; it's not like you can backtrack in a trial to go play a mini-game or go on a side-quest. The game itself is very linear, so it's really tough to get lost, stuck in terms of who to talk to next, or even lose a case altogether. Fortunately, Phoenix Wright offers up a lengthy adventure that will easily take 15-20 hours or more to complete, most of it gripping and humorous. It wouldn't hurt to have a more competent judge though, because after I claim that there were two bullets at the scene and then show a picture with two bullets clearly in it I don't expect the judge to ask where the two bullets are. I mean they're right there just look at the damn picture holy crap are you blind?!

This game gets an N-Philes score of B+.

A while back Capcom proudly proclaimed that with Phoenix Wright, "the law has never been this much fun!" While most would say that the law wasn't fun in the first place, Capcom has managed to make it just that: a very engaging experience packed with fun and interesting characters and puzzles that really make you think. It's a little too linear and, excluding the final case, the game could've made better use of the DS's capabilities, but Ace Attorney succeeds at what it attempts. If this review managed to make the game appealing to you at all, don't hesitate to pick it up.

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