Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth (DS) Review

When the next title in the famed Ace Attorney series was announced for the Nintendo DS, I was understandably excited. Coming off the brilliant Apollo Justice, I knew that another adventure created specifically for the Nintendo DS would be just as amazing. Then, it was announced that the game wouldn’t focus on series veteran Phoenix nor the recently established protagonist of Apollo, but rather the “perfect prosecutor” Miles Edgeworth. I was worried; not only were they removing the courtroom sequences that made the original games so enjoyable, but the game also took a more “active” approach to investigations. Needless to say, I was sceptical, but upon receiving the finished product, Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth is a title that’s just as much of a fully fledged sequel rather than a spin-off, as the name would have you believe. Ace Attorney Investigations takes place at an undisclosed part of the Ace Attorney storyline, though it’s fairly obvious it’s all largely occurring between Trials & Tribulations, the third game, and Apollo Justice, the latest game. Miles Edgeworth, a famed prosecutor, has been caught up in a series of crimes concerned with an international smuggling ring, who leave a trail of bodies wherever they seem to be involved. To make matters worse, a famed thief known as the “Yatagarasu” is believed to be stealing evidence and pulling strings behind the scenes.

It’s a little hard to explain Ace Attorney Investigations’ story without spoiling what happens, but it’s a bit of a mess chronologically. It’s still a great way to tell the game’s story, because unlike the other Ace Attorney games, each of these cases contribute to a greater story, which creates a much greater sense of accomplishment when everything the player has done culminates in a rather epic conclusion.

As usual, the quality of writing is higher than ever in Ace Attorney Investigations. There are several pop culture references, genuinely funny jokes, and some really well designed and developed characters. It’s just a bit of a shame that the returning characters (besides the ones in Edgeworth’s inner circle) are poorly implemented in the cases in a manner that just makes it feel like they were forced into the game for the sake of providing fan service. Even then, these characters aren’t that interesting to begin with.

Naturally, being an Ace Attorney game, the artistic direction has not varied that much since the original game; however, the visual fidelity and quality of animations has increased rather well. The new environments that have been drawn up are bursting with colour and life, and animate regularly – removing a static feeling from the environments. The newest addition, obviously, besides character portraits used during conversation, is the actual sprites for the characters themselves. Being a game in which players take direct control of Edgeworth during investigations, all characters have to be created in full body sprites. These sprites are not only well animated and well drawn, but also mimic their classic gestures from older games, too. This attention to detail really makes the game’s graphical presentation quite nice.

The crux of Ace Attorney Investigation’s gameplay is largely the same as previous games. There is a murder, or a crime, and Edgeworth is appointed to find the truth. While in previous games players would defend the criminal or the wrongly accused in a courtroom setting, in Ace Attorney Investigations Edgeworth must discover who committed the murder and uncover the truth, before even stepping into a courtroom. In fact, you’ll never step into a trial like in previous games, instead you’ll run around the crime scene and surrounding areas, collecting evidence and piecing them together to ascertain how the crime was carried out. In addition, Edgeworth will interview potential suspects as well as witnesses, and this is where the similarities start to draw themselves to previous games in the series. Interviewing characters is exactly the same as cross examining subjects in previous games – a character presents their recount of events in segments, and players can present evidence to specific segments that contradict whatever has happened. These are the most enjoyable parts of the game and are where you’ll do most of your “cornering” of suspects, and where you’ll make the most progress in the cases.

In addition to the main gameplay, Ace Attorney Investigations also incorporates a new system known as “Logic” to the fray. In the past, the games would include some kind of supernatural element like the Psy-Locke system or the Perceive system, but the Logic system is fairly grounded and allows for little to no error. During conversations with characters and examination of the crime scenes, small bits of information are added to Edgeworth’s “logic pool”. Players can then piece together these pieces of information to draw new conclusions and “deduce” about what happened. To give a crude example, I would have a pair of broken glasses in the logic pool, along with a question “How did the broken shards get here?”. Using the logic system, Edgeworth can piece together these two pieces of information to deduce that the pair of glasses was recently broken. A crude example, yes, but hopefully the point has been illustrated.

The system itself works really well and is quite ironic considering how illogical some of the conclusions in previous games were, but in reality the implementation of this system signals some new hope for the series. Thankfully, since the basis for this system is logic, it’s pretty hard to lose and as such the game has lost a lot of its difficulty, though this could just be put down to a greater localisation budget, too. Either way, the Logic system is, while a little redundant at times, a perfect way to move the story along.

The biggest question on everyone’s lips is without a doubt whether this change in structure and setting affects the gameplay and whether it still really is an Ace Attorney game. Well, rest easy Ace Attorney fans; Ace Attorney Investigations still has many of the great gameplay mechanics that the original games did, while really overhauling the investigation mechanics to make them much more interesting than just moving between static backgrounds and selecting options. Now Edgeworth can physically move around an actual environment rather than a background, talk to all kinds of characters as well as converse with his partner (who changes for each case) for clues on where to go next. While this system is a little bit more linear than the original game, where progress from area to area can only be made upon collecting all available evidence, it works a lot better overall in making the game interesting. But all in all, the game is still largely similar to it’s predecessors – there’s still a crime scene, there’s still an enemy figure trying to prove you wrong, and you’re still trying to prove the innocence OR guilt of someone.

The investigations can be quite long, and because of this it’s important that a game with looping music gets the soundtrack right. Thankfully, Ace Attorney investigations does this perfectly. Almost all of the tracks featured are newly composed, nearly every character has their own particular theme song that really suits their personality and/or profession and the existing tunes have been reworked or remixed to sound much more, well, modern. In particular, the game’s tracks that play when a character is cornered or “found out” are very exhilarating and really add to the gameplay. Voice acting is, well, rather low in terms of content but what is there is well done, too.

Ace Attorney Investigations is a rather long game. There are five cases included, putting this at the higher end of the spectrum as being one of the longer games in the series. Each case takes at least an hour to complete with some taking even more, particularly the final case, which is probably one of the longest in the series I’ve ever played. Needless to say, at the current price the game is selling at, it’s definitely worth your while and will last you at least ten hours, though there really isn’t a whole lot to come back to upon completing it. Still, for the price of entry and the rollercoaster ride that’s within, Ace Attorney Investigations is definitely worth it.

And so I come to the end of another Ace Attorney review, and after finishing Apollo Justice I honestly felt a little bit burnt out on the series, despite the fact it was pretty amazing. Thankfully, though, I never had this feeling while playing Ace Attorney Investigations, and in fact recommend that the development team maybe incorporate this investigation series into the main series further on down the track, as it definitely makes things feel a lot less slow. All in all, Ace Attorney Investigations is a game that fans of the series should try, as well as those who might have been put off by the rather passive nature of the previous games. A lot has been tweaked and made much more approachable here, and it rings good bells for the next game in the series.

Graphics 8.0

A great mix of nice environmental designs, quirky character profiles and animations really bring the worlds to life.

Gameplay 9.5

A game thats more weighted to investigations would otherwise be boring; however, Investigations revamps the mechanics to make it extremely enjoyable. Courtroom-style segments in the argument/rebuttal system work great, while the Logic system is nearly flawless.

Sound 9.5

A nice revamp of the older tunes, combined with some well put together original pieces make the game rather intense.

Tilt 8.0

Quite a lengthy adventure that never really gets old, but unfortunately theres not a whole lot to do after solving the major case.

Value 9.9

Ive had a lot of fun with Ace Attorney Investigations, but then again, I always do with this series. Investigations upped the ante, revitalised the gameplay and introduced a whole bunch of characters I cannot wait to see return.