HardwareGeeks.com - Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney

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Posted by: Rob Liu on Mon, Mar 31st, 2008

Capcom gives its Gyakuten Saiban (Reverse Trial) series a makeover for its first game in the series designed to take more advantage of the DS’s unique capabilities. The first three games (known as the Phoenix Wright series in the U.S.) were more reminiscent of the series’ Game Boy Advance beginnings, only barely utilizing the DS’s hardware in the form of being able to shout “Objection!” and other, selective lawyerly jargon into the microphone. I’ve forged my way through most of the game’s storyline, and it’s a new beginning in more ways than one.

Apollo Justice thrusts players into the shoes of the title character in the same universe as the Phoenix Wright games, but seven years after the events of Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations. As such, while some of the mainstays are present in the new storyline, the majority of them (somewhat thankfully) are not dragged out to play a part in Apollo’s story. Their replacements, however, will be consummately familiar to veterans of the series, as they display many of the same mannerisms in filling the roles of their predecessors. The only genuinely different main character in the game is the new Prosecutor Gavin, which is not particularly surprising given that the only character who really changed over the first three games was the prosecutor in each installment. Also, as with its immediate predecessor, Capcom seems to have gone to slightly greater lengths to create defendants and witnesses who aren’t carbon copies of those who appeared in the first two games. All the characters look brighter and more colorful on the DS and the various environments also have a much richer feel to them than the scenes in Phoenix Wright. Apollo Justice also takes advantage of the system’s other graphical capabilities, including 2D and 3D cutscenes that look like they could have come out of Hotel Dusk: Room 215 and the ability to examine some crime scenes from a birds-eye 3D perspective. The game doesn’t sport any particular aural enhancements over the Phoenix Wright series, rather playing slight remixes of the old background music, but then again, who’s playing a courtroom simulator for the music? Apollo’s “Chords of Steel” were a bit grating on my ears when I started the game, but I’m gradually becoming used to them.

The game is titled Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, and the similarity to the title of the first Phoenix Wright game is appropriate in more ways than one. This is definitely a new beginning for the series with new characters and some new gameplay, but on the other hand it seems to repeat a lot of the mistakes that were cleared up in the second and third iterations of the Phoenix Wright series. The biggest addition to the Apollo Justice series is his ability to “perceive” the nervous twitches of the witnesses he is pressing for information. While this initially sounds like and starts off as a pretty cool mechanism, it provides some frustration later in the game simply because the cues you are expected to see are akin to trying to find items in one of LucasArts’ old Monkey Island adventure games. It’s absolutely necessary that you find it in order to advance, but the twitch may be so small that you can spend long periods of time just poring over every centimeter of the character’s sprite just to try and see what little differences appear when they speak certain lines of testimony. Apollo Justice also does away with the gimmicky “Psyche-Locks” that were in the second and third Phoenix Wright games (due to storyline, but a welcome departure nonetheless) and finally brings back the “scientific” aspects of investigation that have been missing from the series since the “extra” case at the end of the first Phoenix Wright game (also reintroduced through storyline). These scientific abilities include the abilities to actually rotate evidence in a 3D manner (ooooh, aaaah) and to obtain fingerprints and bloodstains off specific pieces of evidence throughout the game. One has to wonder what took Capcom so long to put these options back into the series, as they make much better use of the DS’s unique microphone and touchpad than anything else seen in the series.

Sadly, though, the writing seems to be the aspect that has most suffered in starting anew. The storyline and cases in Trials and Tribulations was the peak of the Phoenix Wright series, especially seeing as it drew on storyline elements from the first two games in order to bring everything to a climax in the final case of the game. Apollo Justice, however, doesn’t manage to reach such lofty heights. It’s telling that some of the most oft-seen comments in the first three games, such as the Judge’s comments and your character’s reactions when a penalty is elicited, have not been changed from the Phoenix Wright games except to replace “Mr. Wright” with “Mr. Justice.” Also, this game features some of the worst puns that I’ve ever seen, and I like puns. Seriously, though, the name of your second client is “Wocky Kitaki”. Wocky Kitaki. Maybe I’m just not that bright, but it took me most of that chapter to even see the pun, and when I did I groaned in mental anguish. The characters also seem to mysteriously drop some of their speech patterns about halfway through the game - your sidekick Trudy abruptly stops calling you by the nickname “Polly” and instead properly addresses you as “Apollo.” Prosecutor Klavier Gavin also leaves off his habit of peppering his speech with pseudo-German exclamations at approximately the same point, only keeping his “Herr” form of address and his use of “Ja” instead of “yeah” constant. I’m not quite sure what happened there, but hopefully we’ll see a return to form in the next game in the series.

If you liked the Phoenix Wright games, it’s pretty much a given that you’ll enjoy Apollo Justice. It’s a terrible drag to slog through your fourth tutorial case if you’re someone who’s been keeping up with the series, but for anybody new to Capcom’s courtroom drama, this is a fine place to start, and veterans might appreciate the tweaks that have been made to bring this series fully into the current generation of handheld consoles.