All caught up

As a fan of the Ace Attorney series after first discovering them on the DS and eventually catching up on all the releases, it has been quite nice to see them being remastered and released on more accessible platforms as of late.

With the release of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy, Capcom has managed to release all entries that made it Stateside (sorry Miles, your spinoffs clearly aren’t a priority). As such, I decided to check out this release to see how well these games hold up and also to see to what length Capcom has gone to put them out on modern platforms.

I do miss the ability to hold a button down while I yell out “Objection” to trigger the action in the handheld versions.

MSRP: $49.99
Price I’d pay: $49.99
Platforms: PC, PS4/5, NSW, Xbox
Steam Deck: Verified and plays perfectly well.
Played: 20~ hours

Picking up seven long years after the last game in the original trilogy left off, Apollo Justice and Athena Cykes join the legendary attorney, Phoenix Wright in a series of cases filled with a cast of eccentric characters and stories with more twists and turns than a rollercoaster ride. With Apollo, Athena and Phoenix all having their unique special “abilities” that they have access to, it added a much needed variety to the gameplay side of things which was much appreciated.

For example, Apollo’s ability to hyperfocus on a witness giving testimony to pick out their telltale signs of when they’re lying was especially tricky but rewarding to figure out. Athena’s ability to see the emotions of others also played a key role in her cases where I was trying to figure out which emotions seemed out of place given the situation to find inconsistencies.

There isn’t much to say about the story itself without going into any specifics but I would say while not every case lands in the way it wants to, the majority of them did and despite having completed them all ages ago, it was still fun to revisit as I had forgotten much of the finer details of the cases and how they end up playing out.

It’s also worth mentioning that as this is a trilogy spanning three full length games, each spanning between 20-30 hours of content along with their DLC, there’s a ton of content here to enjoy and makes for a great value.

Apollo Justice also marks the last Ace Attorney game to use their trademark 2D sprites for characters and it’s really a shame as even though I think the 3D models do a good enough job mimicking the 2D sprites, they still feel like a lesser imitation overall.

The 3D models are fine but I still much prefer the 2D sprites.

In terms of the remaster efforts, the character models and backgrounds have all been touched up fairly well, even though there are some cases where things feel a bit too flattened and loses some of the detail. Also, when releasing these types of compilation games, it’s always a good opportunity to add to them with features like voice overs or remastered OST but sadly, neither of those features are present here.

Even though I don’t have a problem reading a lot of text since I’m into visual novels as a genre, I’m sure there are many others that would’ve greatly appreciated some VOs. It doesn’t even need to be full voice acting, even just voicing the court segments (ala Danganronpa) would’ve gone a long way in making the game feel more modern but that is not the case here. The same could be said of the music, which is exceptional no doubt but could’ve used some arranged tracks as those chiptune style of music fit well coming out of a handheld device, it doesn’t feel quite as appropriate coming out of a 5.1 surround system from a PC.

In terms of a PC port, it felt barebones but given the type of game it is, I wasn’t expecting much to begin with. Having said that, I was happy to see that it was Steamdeck verified right out of the gate and having spent the majority of my playtime on the device as I found it worked without any issue or any tweaking required.

Using the unique abilities of the characters during their respective cases is a great way to add some variety to the formula.

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy is a compilation title that succeeds thanks to the quality and quantity of content on offer more so than the effort it has been given to remaster each individual game. Having said that, it’s a great way for veterans of the series to revisit these classics as well as a nice way for those who have been following up on these re-releases to finally catch up to all the mainline entries released thus far. Surely, this means we’ll get a new Ace Attorney game in the near future, right? RIGHT?! CAPCOM!?

Fun Tidbit – Check out my Spirit of Justice (third game in the collection) review if you’re interested in a more detailed review about that title.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.