The Ace Attorney series is one of my favourite, but also one that I hold to a high standard. These games are “visual novels” at heart though with more gameplay than most others in the genre. What this means is that the gameplay isn’t necessarily the most in depth nor is it particularly hard to grasp. To compensate for these factors, these types of games need to have a good story driving them, well-built tension and both likeable allies and enemies. Dual Destinies is quite possibly the most dynamic and most streamlined addition to the series yet, and it remedies many issues players may have with the franchise up until this point. But unfortunately there’s still some holes in this games testimony that need to be explained.
Dual Destinies takes place a year after the events of the last game, Apollo Justice. The legal system has entered a “dark” time, where lawyers amass falsified evidence to wrongly convict people of crimes they didn’t commit. The reason? An emphasis on winning a case rather than seeking the truth. Phoenix Wright, a recently reinstated defence attorney, takes on a new lawyer known as Athena Cykes to help him and Apollo Justice tackle several new cases that will lead the player through many twists and turns.
Dual Destinies does a fantastic job at getting you inside the heads of each of your protagonists – Phoenix, Apolllo and Athena; who are all playable at some point throughout the game. Their dialogue is unique, their levels of experience are varying and the writers have done a fantastic job at conveying this fact through their dialogue. The secondary characters all have that kind of kitsch-esque appeal about them and many you’ll love and hate for their unique and strange idiosyncrasies. Both new and old faces return too, so there’s a healthy balance of references to the point where Dual Destinies is approachable by newcomers but also appreciated by series veterans.
The cases, on the other hand, are a different story. Most of them are well written and have unexpected methodologies that are slowly revealed by key witnesses and suspects as the cases fold out. But the results themselves and the revelation of the culprit is usually done without surprise from the player. The process itself is enjoyable, of course, but it is very deflating to be left with a feeling of “I knew it” after completing a case and unfortunately this is more than likely to happen in three of Dual Destinies five cases. We won’t spoil anything about the final two cases, for obvious reasons, but they are definitely some of the standouts in the entire series thus far and almost (but not quite) make up for the shortcomings of the first three.
The game itself remains largely unchanged from previous instalments. Each case is split into “investigation” and “trial” phases. During investigation phases, players search for evidence and conduct interviews to build a case for their client. During these moments, the game lets the player examine areas for evidence or even just random objects to hear some dialogue. The new art direction – which uses a blend of full 3D and traditional 2D allows for greater exploration of environments and feels more realistic too. These moments of the game are traditionally slower than when in the “trial” phase, however much has been done to streamline the process.
First off – there is now a list of things that need to be done which points the player where to go. This does make the game a lot more linear, but at the same time the player is not forced to view the list either so it’s more of an assistive tool rather than a dumbing down of the system. The second is that the game is more inclined to take the player to an area during a moment of urgency, which makes logical sense from a narrative standpoint but also prevents players from mindlessly wandering around empty environments because they forgot what the previous character told them (which, by the way, is now remedied with a “backlog” that lists all previously spoken dialogue too).
When in the courtroom, the tension and the pacing ramps up considerably. Witnesses give testimonies in blocks of text, and each block of text can be “pressed” for more detail or evidence can be presented to highlight contradictions in the testimony. It’s a great little system that still feels as fresh as it did years ago when the first game was released and thankfully most of the instances of ridiculous and nonsensical roundabout logic has been left in previous games. There are some questionable moments – like when a witness continually lies and still is allowed to give testimony in court, or when a convicted murderer is allowed to act as a prosecutor. But these zany moments should probably just be overlooked by the player.
The newest addition is Athena’s mood matrix, which correlates “emotions” with testimony and requires players to point out contradictions in testimony based on that. For example – should a testimony indicate a sad tone when spoken, but the witness is highlighting a “joyful” part of the mood matrix, this is a contradiction and must be pointed out to highlight. Apollo’s Perceive power also returns, allowing him to study body language to indicate when somebody is lying in their testimony, while Phoenix’s Psyche-Lock abilit y also returns although it is used more so in investigation phases than in the courtroom. The other new ability is the Thought Route, which requires players to join two facts to create lines of reasoning. This is not unlike the “Logic” feature of Ace Attorney Investigations although it is simplified.
Dual Destinies will take most players roughly twenty to twenty five hours to complete. Anyone looking to exhaust the game by examining every single item and presenting every single piece of evidence for optional dialogue could easily stretch that to around thirty five hours but this would be rather rare. Unfortunately, once all the twists have been revealed there is little reason to revisit the cases, however considering the price of Dual Destinies this still feels like a substantial and very reasonably priced package. Capcom have announced plans to bring one downloadable case to the game, in which players defend a whale (it must be good, right?) which will extend the experience by about three to four hours. It’d be nice to see Capcom bring out more downloadable content, as Ace Attorney is perfectly suited to it, but it doesn’t seem like there are plans at the moment.
One thing that Dual Destinies does a fantastic job with is presentation. From the animated cutscenes, to the lively and vibrant character models – the entire game is dripping with charisma. But a weird charisma, of course. 3D is used to great effect here, particularly in Athena’s mood matrix segments where words and scenes overlap at different layers to give a fantastic visual effect that reminds us that these games are ostensibly taking place in the future. The transition from sprites to proper models hasn’t compromised anything in terms of animation, which is great to see too. The soundtrack is good, but unfortunately not as hard hitting as previous tracks like “Cornered” which is seemingly absent from this game for some reason.
Dual Destinies has everything that a good Ace Attorney game should have. A zany cast of loveable characters, a good sense of humour and a killer almost jaw-dropping finale. In particular, the three characters of varying levels of experience in the practice of law provide an interesting insight into the game’s world, as well as a breadth of abilities for players to use. On the whole, the quality of all the cases is somewhat variable however – with some very out there revelations being made during cases but very predictable outcomes leaving a feeling of disappointment.
To put it succinctly – the sum of Dual Destinies is greater than its individual parts. Don’t get me wrong, the Ace Attorney experience is still here. Dual Destinies is, in short, a fantastic Ace Attorney experience that just falls short of being as great as the best games in the franchise thus far. Given the price, it’s easy to recommend as its good value for money and the finale alone is worth experiencing at least once.
Mercs, Vectorman and ToeJam & Earl in Panic on Funkotron.
It's Black, Back Again.
Makes sense to us.