If I asked you to think of the most iconic rival characters in video games, the chances that you’d think of the Ace Attorney series’ Miles Edgeworth are pretty high. First appearing in 2001’s Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, the calculating prosecutor has since become a mainstay within the greater Ace Attorney franchise and one of gaming’s most popular characters, even going so far as to star in two spin-off games: 2009’s Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth and 2011’s Japanese-exclusive Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutors Gambit. Now, Capcom has seen fit to re-release both games for modern consoles in the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection, finally giving Prosecutor’s Gambit a proper localization and updating both games with updated sprites and other extras.
In both games, you play as the titular Miles Edgeworth as he works alongside the bumbling detective Dick Gumshoe to solve a series of murders that have ties to larger criminal conspiracies. Without spoiling either game, I found both games’ stories to be quite enjoyable. The Ace Attorney series is known for its charming cast of characters mixed with exaggerated legal drama, and both games in the Investigations Collection to deliver on both. Miles often plays the straight man to an increasingly goofy cast of characters with increasingly goofy names (some personal favorites were “Tabby Lloyd” and “Cammy Meele”), and while that often led to instances of comedy, i was nonetheless invested in the cases I was investigating and the consequences if I failed. The games do a good job at balancing their exaggerated reality so that it never takes a player out of the story they’re trying to tell or the emotions they’re trying to convey.
The Investigations Collection both gives both titles new anime-esque sprites for a console release as well as the pixel art sprites from the original DS titles for those that want an authentic experience. I mostly played with the new sprites, but I can attest that the games look good with both sets of sprites. Crime scenes feel distinct and detailed, and the characters’ animations and expressions look great with both art styles. Alongside this, the collection features updated character portraits and animations for dialogue and interrogation scenes which add a lot of personality to the game’s cast. It’s always a delight to see the cartoonish reaction a criminal has Miles catching them in a lie, or Miles bringing a finger to his temple and wagging it whenever you reach a new, investigation-winning breakthrough.
The gameplay is also enjoyable. Each game is split into a series of episodes that revolve around one case each, and your time in each game is going to be split between gathering evidence and confronting suspects. Gathering evidence is simple. You’ll walk around a small area and interact with pieces of the environment or characters to collect pieces of information about the case, sometimes being able to connect different pieces of information to create new evidence using a logic system. I think this portion of the game is excellent as it really forces the player to actively engage with the mystery at play, constantly thinking about the different evidence you find and how it might relate to certain characters.
This is improved in Prosecutor’s Gambit with the mind chess system. Sometimes, players will have to interrogate other characters to learn what they might know about a case, and they aren’t always willing. “Mind chess” sees the player try and pry those answers out of a character by asking them the right questions at the right time, or knowing when to keep quiet and let them reveal something on their own. These bouts of “mind chess” are also all on a time limit, meaning that the game forces you to think both quickly and strategically with how you go about interrogating each character before you lose that information forever.
All of the information-gathering culminates in confrontations. In these scenes, you’ll be presented with a character’s testimony and pick it apart for anything that contradicts what evidence you’ve collected and, failing that, press them on certain parts of their testimony to see if they add anything to or change their story and try to pick apart the new information. These confrontations are tense, largely due to the fact that contradictions might not be readily apparent to you at first, and some confrontations might reveal information that throws a wrench into what you’ve previously thought about into question. Because of this, these confrontations end up feeling incredibly climactic regardless of their place within the episode, and are often the most narratively interesting moments of the game.
In short, Capcom’s Ace Attorney Investigations Collection is an excellent time for both veteran fans of the series and franchise newcomers. Both games mix a cast of endearing characters with inquisitive gameplay that forces players to take on the role of expert prosecutor Miles Edgeworth, and they do so in a way that will make you really feel like a proper detective. Coupled with updated sprites and multiple graphical styles to experience both games in, it becomes the definitive way to play these titles in the modern day. I give the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection a 9/10.
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Related: Reviews by Josh Freeman
I love games and love talking about games. Some of my favorites include action games (both 2D and 3D), metroidvanias, roguelikes, shooters, and Indies.
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