Originally released for the GameBoy Advance, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney was given a graphics uplift and ported to the Nintendo DS. This is a visual novel focusing on courtroom drama. You will play as the titular Phoenix Wright, a defense attorney, as he accepts legal cases, gathers evidence and then battle in the courtroom to prove his client's innocence. Naturally, it is heavily text-based and the main lure here is the well written stories. There are five cases in total to play through, all of them dealing with murder with Phoenix's job to declare their innocence. The first case is really short but each new case is longer than the previous. The characters are endearing and each story is amazing. You truly feel the power and exhilaration when Phoenix yells out "Objection!" and you prove the witness or prosecutor wrong. The moment when everything clicks into place at the end of a trial feels great, as the player would have worked hard to get to that point. The best part of Phoenix Wright is the sense of achievement once you complete each case. The gameplay involves gathering evidence through talking to people and examining the environment for clues. This is the part of the game where it's less fun and feels more tedious as the cases go on and you're expected to spend more time in this section.
When scouting for evidence, you go to each setting to talk to people or examine for clues, however, travelling between these places is based on menus. Each setting has a specific list of places to go, instead of a master list. This means it will get tedious during the later cases when you are expected to go to the same places multiple times... and not immediately knowing you were supposed to go there. You'll be travelling through three settings in order to get to the place you want... only to find that maybe you weren't supposed to go here yet and need to go to another place first. The other gameplay element takes place in court during the trials. You will be listening to witness's testimonies, either pressing their statements for more information or presenting evidence to expose their contradictions. Through contradictions, you will be able to deduce what has happened and prove your client is innocent. In a way, it feels like Phoenix is more like an investigator, who finds out what actually happened rather than just defending his client. Still, these court proceedings are much more fast paced and fun thanks to the situational pressure placed on the player. As the cases get more complex, the connections between when to present evidence and when to press witnesses can be hard to determine, since the game only allows five mistakes before a game over.
The game also wins on the music front, with suitable tracks for wins, losses, surprises and more. It helps with the immersion of the story. The graphics are sprites with limited animation but still decent. The backgrounds are much more detailed than expected. So you will be playing five cases in the game, all of which are murder cases. The first case is about a friend who is accused of murdering his girlfriend. This serves as an introduction to Phoenix Wright as the rookie lawyer, his backstory and how the game works overall. It's a short piece but works well as a tutorial. The second case is the murder of someone he is close with, and the stakes are high in the case. There are many twists and turns and is also the case where the handholding of the game just drops off. You're expected to solve the mystery on your own now. The third case is when the stories start being a decent length. It focuses on the murder that took place in a TV studio. This case has a great plot twist but starts to deviate a bit with exaggerated characters and events.
The fourth case is very long, taking at least 3-4 hours to go through if you know where to go and what to get. There are a lot of red herrings along the way but it is a superb story that also functions as a backstory. Solving the murder that occurred recently somehow will also solve a murder from fifteen years ago. Although vents were exaggerated in how witnesses were called or the dialogue that occurred, it lets you know that something like this will never happen in a real court. The last case is exclusive to the DS version, which is the longest case yet, taking at least 5-6 hours to clear. This case has so many plot twists it is not funny. It has a murder case within a murder case, it is complex and intense. It tends to sidetrack lending the player to think why they are looking at some stuff when it ends up not being related to the case at hand. It does wrap up nicely for the ending. The fifth case also has the honor of using the DS functions during the evidence hunting, using both the touchscreen and the microphone. Overall, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is a fantastic game. It is definitely one of the visual novels out there with a decent amount of gameplay to boot. It requires logical thinking in order to know how to proceed and the stories are great. If you have a Nintendo DS, then be sure not to miss this gem.
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