Capcom’s Ace Attorney has been one of my favourite video game franchises for years and has largely contributed into making me the gamer I am today with its brilliant visual novel gameplay, mixed with clever and hilarious writing. Sadly, ever since the third game in the series, minus a few spin-offs, the series has been on the downfall in quality for me. This is most evidently because the series’ creator, Shu Takumi, has abandoned the main ‘Phoenix Wright’ entries to work on Dai Gyakuten Saiban, which has yet to see a release outside of Japan and may never because of localisation issues. Capcom has had another team of writers work on the main series in his absence and while it hasn’t been horrible, the games have seen a significant decrease in quality. Despite all this, I was still very excited when Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice was announced at Tokyo Game Show 2015 because the series still holds a special place in my heart due to my emotional connection to it. This said, I did hold skepticism as even though a lot of people really enjoyed the previous game, Dual Destinies, I thought it left much to be desired. Does this game improve on what Dual Destinies left to be desired? All rise, the court is now in session for the Gaming Respawn review of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice, released digitally on September 8th for the Nintendo 3DS.
Spirit of Justice sees defence attorney Phoenix Wright travelling to the kingdom of Khura’in to reunite with his previous assistant Maya Fey, who is training to become a Spirit Medium. While visiting Khura’in, Phoenix gets caught up in a murder case and is forced to step into the Khura’inese courtroom, where he learns that lawyers such as himself are deemed useless and are looked down upon. In Khura’in, Spirit Mediums such as Rayfa Padma Khura’in are able to use their powers to show the court the victim’s final moments before their death. Though this seems like a definite method of proving a suspect’s guilt, Phoenix is easily able to pick away at contradictions while this is in use, proving its unreliability. Phoenix and Maya take it upon themselves to tear down this broken format of conducting trials and show the Khura’in people real justice. Meanwhile, back home (Japan or America, Capcom can’t seem to decide) Apollo Justice and Athena Cykes deal with their own cases, such as defending Phoenix’s adopted daughter, Trucy Wright, when she is suspected of murder.
The location of Khura’in was quite a fresh and interesting setting for the game, especially since the game shows the player the culture of the location alongside Phoenix learning it. Considering this, it would’ve been easier to just set the entire game in this location instead of having the player jump between it and ‘America’ (make up your mind, Capcom). The idea of setting up a location, but immediately taking the player out of said location for lengthy periods at a time is just begging for convoluted pacing. Speaking of which, this is definitely the longest game in the series with the opening case alone taking 3 hours to complete, followed by 4 at least 6 hour long cases each. Whether it’s worth it or not…
One of my biggest problems with Dual Destinies was the over-abundance of characters. The game made you play as Phoenix for two cases, Apollo for another two, and Athena for one, in the end making for an over-abundance of character switching in a game with Phoenix Wright’s name in the title. I’ve always thought that the series should’ve been split in two, one for Phoenix and his cast of characters and another for Apollo and his, and Spirit of Justice has me begging for Capcom to do this in the future. Nothing about Apollo or Athena has made me really want to play as them, as everything that happens in their cases could easily just happen with Phoenix in their shoes. It feels like the developers are just begging all of the players to like these characters whether we want to or not, and there’s just nothing about them that makes them as likeable as Phoenix, a character we’ve spent more than enough time getting to know through his own games.
While the writing is for the most part on point with the rest of the series, Phoenix himself, like in Dual Destinies, is written rather distantly to how he was in the original trilogy. He’s less of the loveable goof that was still a force to be reckoned with in the court room like he was in those games and more of an intellectual, sophisticated adult that just has cynical inner-dialogue and sometimes makes a fool of himself. You can call this character development and you’d be right, but it takes away from the charm of the character. He simply isn’t written the same or as cleverly as before. Maya Fey returns and while also showing a bit of maturity, she’s definitely written closely to how she was in the original DS games, and her interactions with Phoenix are probably the best writing the game has to offer, if mostly because they reference the previous games a lot.
The cases themselves are well thought out and complex as usual, which has been the series’ most consistently strong point throughout every game. I did notice a bit of laziness in them though in that a lot of the time you’ll find yourself defending main characters in this (such as the previously mentioned case where you defend Trucy Wright), which the writers seem to think is a method of causing tension for the player, but if anything it lessens it as these cases take place mid-game and because of the tone of the game not taking itself too seriously, you know everything’s going to be fine. The original games only did this during the final cases as it actually did create tension for the player, not knowing whether a character would make it out free, Spirit of Justice doesn’t seem to be misunderstanding to this, it appears to be completely oblivious to it.
Though I have a lot of problems with it, I did have fun with Spirit of Justice‘s cases. The interactions between Phoenix Wright and Maya Fey brought back memories of the previous games, but Apollo and Athena felt unnecessary and out of place in the story up until the final case. Phoenix seemed out of character a lot and because of the nature of the game, nothing was at stake. New character Rayfa Padma Khura’in was definitely a high point for me, getting some well executed development as the game progressed, but the new prosecutor, Nayuta Sadmadhi, really left a lot to be desired and is definitely the weakest prosecutor the series has seen yet. Especially following Dual Destinies‘ brilliant Simon Blackquill.
Gameplay in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice is as great as it’s ever been, but the over-abundance of main characters can sometimes reflect itself onto it. The Ace Attorney games have always consisted of investigation sequences where you examine crime scenes for evidence, followed by courtroom sections where you use said evidence to prove your client innocent. Returning since Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney is the ability to examine almost every background in the game, as opposed to Dual Destinies just allowing the player to investigate the crime scene. I was surprised by just how much I missed this since it really adds a lot of variety to the investigation sections, which are usually the more drawn out and boring sections of the gameplay. I’m surprised by how much I enjoyed them during this game. Making a return from Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney are also the forensic investigation mechanics such as checking objects for fingerprints. These were also elements I never realised I missed so much until trying them again.
The trials this time around have introduced Rayfa’s vision viewing technique into the cross-examinations, meaning that you can now cross-examine a victim’s final moments with your evidence to point out contradictions, while also being able to do the same for witness testimonies. While nice in concept, this really didn’t add anything fresh to the way the trials were conducted really, because if anything it was just an easier way of doing what we’ve done in every other game until now, cross-examine testimonies. Apollo’s bracelet can be used to point out a witness’ twitching and subtle tension during cross-examination, as does Athena Cykes’ Mood Matrix. These were nice little distractions to keep gameplay fresh and nothing more, and the same can be said about Phoenix’s magatama that allows him to see Psyche-Locks. These are generally invisible physical locks to symbolise that the witnesses are hiding parts of their knowledge of the case which, when Phoenix has the right evidence, he can use to unlock and find more about what they know.
Nothing really separates Spirit of Justice from the previous games, especially Dual Destinies, but Capcom has followed the ‘if it’s not broke, don’t fix it’ approach for this, which is fine for a visual novel game of this type. If anything kept me hooked until the end, it was just the joy of playing another murder mystery visual novel of this type since I’m constantly craving them. In terms of gameplay, there really isn’t much more you can do for the series, which makes me think that if the series continues, we may not see much innovation.
The music in Ace Attorney has always been some of my favourite in gaming. While the soundtracks have had their downs in the past, even then there are catchy songs that shine through, and Spirit of Justice is no stranger to this. With beautiful new pieces and remixes of songs from the past, the music of this game really helps bring the nation of Khura’in to life and makes the player feel triumphant in the courtroom. It’s not the best soundtrack in the series though, that still goes to the first game in my opinion.
Dual Destinies brought around the introduction of voice acting to the series, and ever since I have not been a fan of it. Despite Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney having pretty good choices for Phoenix and Maya, the cast from the last game has returned, and while I don’t doubt they’re great voice actors, their direction and delivery is just terrible. They sound like an early 90s anime dub cast, back before there were standards for this type of acting. This doesn’t seem to be the fault of most of the voice actors because I’ve heard Sam Riegel (who voices Phoenix) in roles such as Teddie from Persona 4: Golden, and while he did a great job there, his voice just doesn’t suit Phoenix here and his line delivery is just trash.
Another thing the fifth game brought to the series was 3D rendered characters and background, thanks to the power of the Nintendo 3DS compared to the DS. Most of the returning ones have been lifted from that game, but new character designs such as Rayfa’s are nice and fit in well with these three-year-old character models, being that this is made with the same game engine from the last game. The background visuals are also nicely implemented and work well with the investigation gameplay. The game also takes advantage of fully 3D areas for certain sequences, such as showing off a magic trick during a testimony (don’t ask) where a character is fully animated, movement and all, in a 3D courtroom, which the series has never seen before. These worked well in context and were impressive considering the game engine was made for a visual novel, but nothing more since a lot nicer work has been done on the 3DS. The 3DS is known for having rather edged looking 3D environments, but Spirit of Justice actually stands as one of the nicest looking games on the system, with everything looking clear and sharp, with an alright 3D effect.
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Platforms: 3DS
Release Date: 8th September 2016