Ace Attorney Investigations Collection
Review
Objection
by JackCarter
reviewed on PC
Back in court
I am no stranger to the Ace Attorney series. I've played both the Phoenix Wright saga as well as the Apollo Justice saga. For some strange reason (unintentional, I assure you) the "Investigations" series flew completely under the radar for me. The second game in the series never made it to the west, at least not officially, but that's now rectified with this collection. It's now my turn to rectify my past transgressions and delve deep into the world of Ace Attorney Investigations Collection (I know, it's a bit of a mouthful) and find out if it's worth the wait.
If you're unfamiliar at all with the Ace Attorney series, it finds itself somewhere in between a visual novel and point and click adventure. It's hard not to mention "Investigations" without mentioning it's original series first, as it's set firmly in it's former's shadow. That's not a bad thing by any means, Ace Attorney is great fun, I just bring it up because the most interesting parts of "Investigations" is how it plays with the originals formula. The previous games revolve around defense attorneys in a court setting, and is planted pretty firmly in the visual novel genre. It's dialogue heavy and is seen through the eyes of the protagonist. Investigations, however, leans more into the adventure or "point and click" genre that it's predecessor barely skimmed the surface of. This time you're in direct control of our main protagonist, Miles Edgeworth, a prosecutor and main rival of Ace Attorney's Phoenix Wright. Edgeworth is pompous and sure of himself, a stark contrast to Wright's affable goofball. Luckily enough this is counterbalanced by Detective Gumshoe, another affable, albeit less intelligent, goofball.
Now I didn't mistype earlier when I wrote "direct control," in stark contrast to the earlier games, you have direct control over Miles Edgeworth from a third person view. There's moving from location to location in a motionless first person view, where you click around to move into the next room, this time you can walk there! As mundane as that sounds, it does actually add an extra layer to the game play, and can break up what can otherwise feel pretty same-y. As much as I do love the Ace Attorney games, being able to walk and investigate made the game feel less dialogue dense in a way. Though both games in the series began their life as portable games for the DS, Investigations was the easier one to play through in short bursts.
Piecing together the clues
Each chapter, of which there are five in total, of Investigations is split up between the investigation stage, where you search crime scenes for clues and evidence, and the rebuttal stage, where you confront other characters and use your newfound clues and evidence and what they say to piece together a coherent story of what really happened. The investigation stage is played primarily in the third person, as you wonder around a few different areas related to the crime scene and find evidence that you can add to Edgeworth's "thoughts" and after finding enough you can piece together these thoughts using Edgeworth's "logic," which is a very small puzzle mini game to find out how evidence fits together. Once you've gathered enough evidence you can use it to prove your case in a style similar to the courtroom segments from the main franchise. It mainly boils down into trial and error to find the best results, although you do have a "Truth Gauge", which functions similar to a health bar and will slowly be depleted the more you mess up. If the truth gauge is emptied it's game over, but luckily enough that didn't happen in my playthrough.
Although coming out nearly 14 years ago (as of this writing), the Investigations series holds up remarkably well, and now with this new collection it can reach a wider audience. With fantastic updates like new HD artwork and the inclusion of the formerly region locked sequel, there no time like to present to start investigating.
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9.0
fun score
Pros
Investigations, the characters, new artwork
Cons
Rebuttals boil down trial and error
