Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney

September 11, 2022

After finishing the stellar Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney trilogy, I was skeptical that a follow-up could actually do the series justice (no pun intended). I failed to see how a quasi-reboot could manage to bring back the magic of the original series, especially with some rando as the new protagonist, but I was more than pleasantly surprised. Apollo Justice managed both to bring back the trademark humor of the original trilogy and to bring new life to the gameplay, resulting in a worthy successor, rather than a cheap imitator, of the Ace Attorney legacy.

The story follows newbie attorney, Apollo Justice, who just wants to make a name for himself but instead finds his career sidelined by a surprising betrayal and has to drastically adjust his trajectory. What follows is a pretty standard affair for an Ace Attorney game - chapter-based visual-novel-style gameplay stuffed with wacky characters, clever twists, and an overarching plot that neatly ties everything together. It even relies just enough on familiar Phoenix Wright material to feel like a proper continuation without feeling like it's pandering. As a "next-gen" sequel and the first game built with the DS in mind, Apollo Justice also features many new or upgraded gameplay elements to take advantage of the new hardware.

While this game may look almost identical to the original trilogy at first glance, there were some pretty neat additions thanks to the increased horsepower of the DS and the maximum file size of its games. We got a taste of this in the bonus chapter added to the DS port of the first game, but that was purely designed to catapult you here, where the upgrades really feel at home. The biggest changes are the addition of full-motion video and three-dimensional evidence. The addition of FMV helps flesh out some of the storytelling, but it's especially neat when you can use it as evidence during a trial to point out key events. The 3d models used for evidence open up the opportunity for actual observation and testing, whereas the previous games essentially just told you everything you needed to know about a piece of evidence when you received it, and that was that. Together, these upgrades help to make you feel a lot more like you are Apollo Justice, instead of just an outside observer. The approach of the originals still holds up, but this definitely feels more like an actual video game than those do.

That's all to say that Apollo Justice has much more to offer than I had ever anticipated. The story is just as, cute, clever, and witty as I had come to expect for the series, and it had just enough connection to the existing narrative that it felt like a legitimate entry in the franchise. There were definitely characters that I missed, but the new cast was thoroughly delightful. The new mechanics were also a welcome addition, further gamifying an otherwise very text-heavy experience to vastly improve my sense of immersion. While Trials and Tribulations had the better story, Apollo Justice probably has the best gameplay in the series up to that point, and it stands tall amongst its brethren, undoubtedly worthy of the Ace Attorney title.