Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth
It's been a long time coming but I'm finally starting the last canonical Ace Attorney games I have yet to play. I knew a little bit about what to expect going into Ace Attorney Investigations, but nothing concrete. In fact, my only exposure to the games has been screenshots on digital storefronts and the announcement trailer for the collection. After having been focused on the 3D entries in the series for the past few years, it was fun to return to the 2D era again. Although, with the HD sprites enabled, this certainly doesn't feel like a DS game anymore. While not as poignant as the Great Ace Attorney games, not as loaded with twists as the Phoenix Wright stories, Miles Edgeworth has an excellent first entry into this spin-off duology.
As the name implies, Ace Attorney Investigations fleshes out the investigation side of the mainline games, entirely forgoing the courtroom. While it makes sense, I was honestly baffled when I finished the first chapter and hadn't done anything from the prosecutor's bench. Instead, the trademark battle of wits happens entirely in the field, challenging you to nail contradictions and squeeze the truth out of the games colorful characters at the scene of the crime. In order to justify shifting the focus entirely to the investigation portion of the series, it had a complete overhaul.
Instead of viewing locations from a first-person perspective and navigating between them using a menu system, you are giving full access to explore and investigate as you control Edgeworth from a birds-eye view. The new format means there can actually be more than one other person to talk to at any given location and actual animations for events and character interaction, making for a much more engaging setting than the glorified slideshows that Phoenix Wright explores. There's also, mercifully, very little downtime. There were many times in the mainline games that I remember wandering from location to location, clicking on random things, and presenting evidence to bystanders without explanation because I just couldn't figure out what to do next. Miles Edgeworth breaks each phase of the investigation into digestible components, funneling you from one thing to the next as soon as you've seen everything important. I rarely found myself confused by what the game was asking of me, and I think that was only while scrutinizing testimonies. That also happens to be the part of the game most similar to the rest of the series.
While you won't be in an active session of court during this game, the tried-and-true formula of pressing more information out of a witness and using evidence to trap them in their contradictions is still here, practically untouched. Grounding this spin-off within the familiar confines of the rest of the series, this loop felt intimately familiar thanks to all the other Ace Attorney games I've completed. In fact, despite Edgeworth's position as a prosecutor, you still spend most of the game defending somebody who was wrongfully accused of the crime while you work to determine who is actually at fault. Although you never get to see an actual trial, it is still quite satisfying to suss out the truth and catch the criminals.
While I'm hopeful for another traditional Ace Attorney game in the future, I appreciated how refreshing this take ended up being. It was like an ice-cold sweet tea to the rest of the series' steamy earl grey. I finished it faster than any other game in the series, but it felt just as long as it needed to be. I also loved revisiting (most of) the returning characters, and a few of the new ones stood out as potential series favorites! Now I'm itching to see what all the fuss around its sequel, Prosecutor's Gambit, is about. In the meantime, I'll happily recommend Ace Attorney Investigations to anyone who already enjoys the franchise, but I hesitate to suggest it as a jumping-on point. The first Phoenix Wright game is definitely required reading for everything in this one to make sense, but it is even better with Justice for All under your belt too.
The game is available for Switch and Switch 2 here (as of 3/14/26): https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/ace-attorney-investigations-collection-switch/
The game is available for Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S here (as of 3/14/26): https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/store/ace-attorney-investigations-collection/9P25VS66VJVN
The game is available for PS4 and PS5 here (as of 3/14/26): https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP0102-CUSA45441_00-AAIM12FULLGAME00
The game is available for Android here (as of 3/14/26): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.co.capcom.kenji1en&hl=en_USThe game is available for iOS here (as of 3/14/26): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ace-attorney-investigations/id1227608370