I started writing this series of reviews 732 Days ago. Part of what inspired that was a kind offer from Capcom to supply us with a copy of Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice for review. One of my fellow writers here at gintendo was already planning a review, having purchased himself a physical copy of the game. I took the review code and decided to work my way through the whole series, analysing each case.
Since then I’ve played through the original trilogy again and played Apollo Justice and Dual Destinies each for the first time. Now, here I am, ready to play the game I was originally sent and start that review.
Going into Dual Destinies, I’d heard of the original premise. Phoenix Wright visits a country where the spirit channelling technique, which had always existed at the fringes of the earlier games, is the mainstream way of asserting guilt in murder trials. The victim’s spirit is consulted, and the perpetrator is fingered. This flawless system means defence attorneys are rare, and when they do defend a client they must accept the same fate as the accused.
The game wastes no time setting all of this up. Phoenix bumbles into a courtroom and soon finds himself defending a young boy accused of murder. If the boy is found guilty he’ll be sentenced to death and so too will Phoenix Wright.
The slow realisation of what’s happening almost feels as though it relies on the player knowing more than the character. There are lots of winks and nods before the truth comes out. Elsewhere, the game teases the return of Maya Fey but drags out her reveal, and revels in long-time prosecutor Winston Payne finally feeling he has one up on Phoenix.
I wasn’t on board right away. The deliberately over-the-top “foreign” Eastern stylings have less appeal to me than the everyday Japanese real-life setting, even when it was being half-heartedly disguised as America in the translation. The mysticism and fantasy, the overly hostile crowd (chanting “exterminate” no less), the forced drama of the raised stakes for our hero, none of it was landing for me.
I ploughed forward, though, and the case unwrapped fairly cleverly. The animation and models are a step up even from the previous 3DS game, and dissecting the guilty witness was incredibly satisfying.
Soon, I began to appreciate the case for what it was. This wasn’t pure courtroom mystery, of the kind I’d come to love the series for, but a high-concept fantasy story. It takes the idea of a “perfect system” and, like Minority Report, exposes the element of human failure. It’s a different kind of story than I’m used to in the Ace Attorney series, but by leaning into it I can see it being an interesting story to follow in its own right.
The new mechanic which is introduced, of cross examining the priestess’ visions as one might a witness ordinarily, was a little laborious but it scratched the main Ace Attorney itch better than Apollo’s eyes or Athena’s ears tend to.
While I’m not overly enamoured with the Kuh’rain setting, the way the story ends by hinting at a bigger political picture, with rebels and underhand government dealings, does intrigue me. What I cannot forgive, however, is the way an abundance of completely made-up foreign names gives the translation team free reign in the pun game. Just awful.
3/5