1192: Take That!

(Because it’s just too obvious to start a post about Ace Attorney with the word “Objection!” these days.)

I’ve started replaying the Ace Attorney series, largely because I recently reacquired the two installments I used to have in my collection that went missing when I loaned them to someone unknown a while back. (The person I thought I loaned them to swears blind he doesn’t have them, and I believe him, sooo…) After finishing Lifesigns in all its Ace Attorney-esque glory, I was keen to revisit Nick, Maya and the rest of the gang for some happy fun times.

And I’m reminded why this is still one of my favourite game series of all time. It pushes all my buttons. Visual novel? Check. Adventure game elements (i.e. puzzles?) Check. Interesting characters? Check. Anime silliness? Check. Overdramatic music? Check.

It’s testament to the quality of this game series that, even remembering most (though not all!) of the solutions to the various puzzles throughout, it’s still a compelling experience I’m happy to sit through again, primarily because of the characters throughout.

Phoenix himself is a good protagonist. He doesn’t enforce his personality on the player too much, but he’s very much his own person rather than a blank slate. His growth from constantly-sweating, nervous rookie lawyer in the first game to confident giantkiller over the course of the entire series is heartwarming to see, and as I recall, taking down the villain in the final case of the third game was an immensely satisfying experience on a par with, say, defeating Sephiroth for the first time in FFVII.

One thing I like about the series is that it manages to successfully involve the player in a sense of “conflict” without ever resorting to violence. Not once does Phoenix draw a gun or any other weapon over the course of the game, yet the courtroom showdowns are as thrilling and exciting as any lengthy RPG battle sequence. This is one thing that actually improves slightly as the game progresses — in the first game, you simply have five “lives” in the courtroom sequences, whereas in later games you have a “health bar” that depletes by various amounts when you make an incorrect answer or accusation. This is a much better solution, as it allows for a storytelling trick that is unique to games — drama through interface. When the judge says that you’d better get your facts straight before you answer and you see that an incorrect response will drain your entire health bar in one go, you think damn carefully about what you’re going to say next.

Ace Attorney is also pretty much the poster child for why it’s a good idea to have a “companion character” with the protagonist — particularly if you’re not going to go full-on visual novel and have them narrate everything they do. The chemistry between Maya and Phoenix — which successfully manages to get a cross a real sense of love between the two of them without ever once getting the slightest bit sexualised — is a real highlight of the series, and again it’s something that grows and changes over the course of the three Wright games. It’s a tradition that’s continued in the fourth game Apollo Justice, too, albeit with a different companion character, and again in Ace Attorney Investigations (again with an all-new companion), which brings the wonderful Miles Edgeworth to the fore and inverts the series’ usual format.

The game looks great on the big screen of the DSi XL, too. I’m rediscovering a bunch of great DS titles on those lovely big screens, and I’m really looking forward to playing the other Ace Attorney games in succession. It’s actually been quite a few years since I last played them, and I don’t think I’ve ever played all five one after another. I’ll be interested to see how “coherent” they end up being. We’ll see!