Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy Review
After the success of the original three Ace Attorney games, series creator Shu Takumi was ready to end Phoenix Wright’s story. But the world wasn’t done with these surprisingly intriguing lawyer games, and so he had to figure out how to make a new game without re-treading old ground. Thus, Apollo Justice, pointy-haired greenhorn lawyer, was born – and Phoenix was unceremoniously disbarred. The following three games, now serialised as the Apollo Justice Trilogy, serve as Apollo’s version of Phoenix’s story – but because of that tension between Takumi’s wants and the players’ needs, Apollo never quite gets the spotlight all to himself.
We begin with Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, set seven years after Trials and Tribulations. In that time, a lot has happened, and the familiar angles of Wright’s face are buried behind stubble, grime, and a deep sense of ennui after having lost his attorney’s badge. But Apollo Justice, our new main character, isn’t going to give up that easily, and joins the Wright Anything Agency (formerly known as the Wright & Co. Law Offices) hoping to make a real difference to the legal profession. Unfortunately for him, he’s entered his career during the Dark Age Of The Law, where cowboy prosecutors and manipulative murderers will stop at nothing to get the results they want.
Like Phoenix’s Magatama, Apollo has his own secret power, and it’s much more closely tied to his backstory: a magic bracelet that allows you to slow time and catch people’s ‘tells’ – the subconscious muscle twitches and movements that highlight their lies. Unlike the Magatama, this is almost entirely used in court to trip people up during their testimonies, adding a new element to a well-trod feature of the Ace Attorney games.
Our first case sees Phoenix himself getting accused of murder, and sets up this new game’s intentions as a darker, sadder version of what came before, as well as our old friend’s slightly jarring heel-turn into Bad Boy Phoenix. A slow-ish second case, Turnabout Corner, deftly combines three separate mysteries – a theft, a hit-and-run, and a murder. But Turnabout Serenade and Turnabout Succession, our third and final cases, are expertly crafted tales with strong gimmicks – reviewing concert footage, and time-travel (of a sort) – while turning the tone into something much more sinister.
But with only four cases and no DLC, Apollo Justice is over pretty quickly, and then we’re on to Dual Destinies, our second game. The biggest and most welcome change here is the art, transitioning from the 2D sprites of the last four games to detailed 3D characters and backgrounds, with some genuinely impressive animations accompanying fantastic writing and localisation, as well as fully-animated and voiced cutscenes for each case. The cases themselves are more bombastic than ever, including multiple actual bombings, defending a killer whale, and a two-part murder case that will genuinely blow your mind.
However, Dual Destinies’ story suffers from a fairly severe identity crisis, as it flounders to find as compelling a main character as Phoenix and his sidekick, Maya. The result is that Apollo and Trucy largely get sidelined and left in plot stasis, but Phoenix never quite feels like the main character, either – more like a substitute teacher filling in.
New sidekick Athena Cykes is a spunky youngster, but that’s hardly a unique quality in a world where passing the bar is something that most people do before they can drive. She’s likeable enough, but she’s unfortunately also the source of most of Dual Destinies’ over-tutorialisation, making you feel a little less warm towards her as she re-explains how to be a lawyer to you for the eighth time. Yes, thank you, Athena, but we were winning cases while you were still eating paste.
Athena’s gimmick – for every lawyer must have one – is psychological analysis by way of a talking robot necklace. It’s shaky at best, and confusing at worst, asking you to find emotional inconsistencies in witness testimony by pointing out the feeling they shouldn’t have, or should have, or have too much or too little of. It’s never as simple to understand or quite as hard-hitting as Psyche-Locks and Apollo’s magic bracelet, although it’s still fun to have the court cases broken up by a minigame.
After blazing through Dual Destinies’ five cases and its meaty DLC, we have Spirit of Justice. After Dual Destinies raised the stakes to the ceiling, it was hard to see where Ace Attorney would go next, so it made sense that Spirit of Justice took place in a totally new (and totally made-up) country called Khura’in, where the legal system is in shambles and lawyers are put to death if they lose their case. Phoenix’s simple holiday to support Maya on her latest spiritual journey – for Khura’in is the home of spirit channelling – quickly devolves into a nightmare of murder, revolution, and more murder. And just like that, the stakes have once again been raised, tackling deeper and darker themes like religion, politics, and foreign diplomacy.
Meanwhile, back home, Apollo and Athena are dealing with their own separate, but related, problems – namely a new prosecutor who just happens to be from Khura’in. And here, finally, is where we get some back story for Apollo, which was first teased in Apollo Justice and then largely discarded for Dual Destinies. By setting the story in two places at the same time, finally Apollo and Phoenix both feel like they’re in the spotlight, and it’s delightful to see the grown-up versions of Trucy and Pearl Fey get screen time, too.
Just like Dual Destinies before it, Spirit of Justice also amps up the visual quality, with even more detailed animations and anime cutscenes. The character designs are as varied and creative as their pun names are groan-worthy. “Pees’lubn Andistan’dhin”? Really? It’s a good thing you’re beautiful, because otherwise we’d be very angry at you, Spirit of Justice.
Put all together, this trilogy is a worthy follow-up to the Ace Attorney originals. There is a slight dip in the middle, and your mileage may vary on whether or not you enjoy the more gimmicky cases, but the wealth of gorgeous art, unparalleled writing, and sheer volume of story makes this well worth the price of admission. Throw in the DLC cases (but be prepared for the most gimmicky murders of all) and the small but mighty upgrades to the remaster – the “notes” system that lets you keep track of your movements so far, the “consult” and “story mode” options that let you cheese the more difficult parts, plus the extra art and achievements – and you’ll see that this remaster has done these excellent games justice.
Conclusion
We genuinely can’t believe how lucky we are that these games exist, let alone that they’ve been lovingly polished up for the Switch. This is some of the best writing you’ll find on the console, and it’s a steal for all three games plus extras. A couple of bumps here and there are to be expected with such a wealth of content (three games, DLC, and extras), but they barely leave a dent on the brilliance of this well-written and beautifully illustrated trilogy.