Re-release this: Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth
The Ace Attorney series spun out a more adventure-based outing featuring a beloved prosecutor back in 2009, but it's never received the same kind of constant re-releases as its cousins.
This column is “Re-release this,” which will focus on games that aren’t easily available, or even available at all, but should be once again. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.
Relating to Phoenix Wright isn’t tough, unless you’re some kind of monster. The man takes on seemingly impossible cases to defend those who have no one else to turn to — often at the expense of his own wallet — and he refuses to give up until the truth has been brought to light, his client’s name cleared. Sure, one particular client abused this and was actually guilty, but that guy was a dick, and he got what was coming to him, because the truth did still come out: that was an L Wright was glad to take.
Relating to prosecutor Miles Edgeworth is a little more difficult, given he’s on the side that so often was attempting to put innocent people in jail, but he’s also someone who saw the light and what was important about the courtroom due to working against Wright — and then, as one of Wright’s own clients, for a crime he didn’t commit. He stands out as a virtuous and good person among a sea of lawyers who seem to be more concerned with securing a guilty verdict at any cost than in revealing the truth of things, which is what makes his spin-off, Ace Attorney Investigations, work as well as it does. Rather than taking place in a courtroom, where you’d have the full support of the police and all of the messy history with wrongful convictions and a shaky suspension of disbelief that you’ve got the right guy that would stem from that, Ace Attorney Investigations takes place before there’s a courtroom to go into. This is at the arrest stage, with Edgeworth not even officially being on the case sometimes, and now cleaning up the kind of sloppy work that Wright would normally have to handle himself before it even gets to that point instead of standing in front of a judge.
It was a big swing from Capcom, considering the popularity (in Japan, anyway) of the Ace Attorney titles and their specific gameplay loop, and it’s one that mostly works really well, aside from some pacing issues. Capcom leaned a little too hard into the “debate me” vibe and it makes for the occasional drawn out chapter: when they’re drawn out, they’re ridiculously drawn out, is the thing, so even though it happens just a couple of times, it’s a problem. That the worst offender is the final chapter, which is longer by far than the rest of them, does not help matters, especially since much of that length is when you and Edgeworth know just who the guilty party is here, but they just keep squirming out of admitting as much for so long that it loses some of its shine.
That all being said, the game as a whole remains a fine outing and a fun way to spin off Ace Attorney into other styles of games. There are point-and-click adventure elements in the Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney games, sure, but this is more of a pure adventure game, like the classic ‘90s titles where you walk around the environment interacting with it and hijinks ensue. It’s not quite a LucasArts throwback — Indiana Jones didn’t debate any Nazis he found after finding the items he needed to reach them, and all — but it’s still more of that kind of title than the Phoenix Wright-led games were.
You will do a lot of debating here. Edgeworth will essentially take unofficial testimony from various characters — witnesses, accused criminals, the actual perpetrators — and try to find contradictions in what they’re saying compared to the evidence on hand. One thing that’s different here from Phoenix Wright’s titles is that there is a Logic function: sometimes, Edgeworth will make a note of something, and it’s filed away for later. When later comes, you combine two of these notes together to create a logical thought from them that will be illuminating in some way. If X, then Y, that sort of thing. Which you can then confront characters with, armed with this new revelation or bit of logic, and then defeat them on the battlefield of debate. Don’t worry, there are too many women in this game for Debate Bros to be anything but terrified of playing it, you can safely enjoy it in peace without that association latching onto you.
The top screen is used for the actual adventuring, while the bottom is for menus and, if you choose to play this way, touch screen and stylus controls. You don’t have to use the stylus for anything, however, as the D-pad and buttons work just fine. Capcom utilized the DS’ features for the Ace Attorney titles, sure, but it’s worth remembering, too, that the series actually began on the Game Boy Advance, and, with few exceptions, wasn’t built from the ground up with the DS in mind. Which ended up working out when it came time to port the games to new systems in the future that also lacked DS features. Related: Takeshi Yamazaki helmed this game instead of the Ace Attorney creator, Shu Takumi, who was preoccupied with developing Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective at the time, but he did a fine job of it, especially in converting some old series elements over into a new format alongside new elements. No surprise there, considering Yamazaki’s role with Ace Attorney previously had been figuring out how to make it work in its transition to the DS in the first place, which also involved the for-the-DS exclusive fifth chapter added to the original game for its re-release.
Watching Miles Edgeworth and Co. walk around and perform actions is both new and amusing: the animated character portraits of Phoenix Wright’s adventures were and are exceptional, of course, but getting to see a little Franziska von Karma sprite doing an actual whip animation that hits Detective Gumshoe, instead of just reaction shots of the two next to each other, is both goofy and lovely. Oh, and if that last sentence didn’t make it clear, yes, this game is full of cameos and returns. The daughter of Edgeworth’s mentor and a formidable prosecutor in her own right is here, of course, as is Edgeworth’s bumbling but goodhearted detective sidekick. Wendy Oldbag? You know she’s here and hot for Edgey-Poo, much to his horror and dismay. Meekins, Ema Skye… lots of old friends making appearances, some more Easter Egg-y and hidden than others, but there are also loads of new characters to interact with, as well. And they’ve all got their own little idiosyncrasies that make them memorable, with the young thief Kay Faraday, whom you see the most of from the bunch given she’s Edgeworth’s sometimes sidekick, being tops of that list.
The story takes what seem like unrelated cases, solved out of order, to bring you to a conclusion that ties them all together. You play what would be the fourth case first, the first case fourth — it’s a flashback years into the past instead of just one from a few days before — then two and three are where they would be, chronologically. The fifth and final one is a beast that puts a bow on the whole saga that’s been unveiled to you by this point. It works well, since the first case gets to be pretty localized both in terms of location (one room, one hallway) and who is involved (a handful of characters), while making you wonder about the underlying story of the game and introducing you to the mechanics of this one. Though, it is a little funny that it takes until near the end of the third case of five for you to use this game’s “gimmick,” the “Little Thief,” and then the following case is a flashback set years in the past, where the character that introduced this tech to Edgeworth is a mere child.
That “Little Thief” is a tool that Kay uses to stage her heists — don’t worry, this is like a Robin Hood thing but with Kay in search of the truth, not valuables. You enter in parameters, and it creates an Altered Reality environment for you to test theories out in. Which, for Edgeworth’s purposes, means being able to envision a crime scene he doesn’t actually have access to: he can hypothesize and test and adjust endlessly until he’s figured out how all of these seemingly disparate pieces actually fit together. Hey, Phoenix Wright gets to play around with a mystical object that lets him know if people are hiding secrets in their heart, of course Edgeworth can play with some technology that’s like, the complete opposite of that concept. It’s only fitting. No offense, Miles.
The only real issue with Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, outside of the occasional pacing slip up, is that it’s maybe a bit less clever than the series it spun out of. You and Phoenix Wright are both often trying to figure out what’s going on and struggling just to keep up, and you feel like a genius for getting the eureka moment just when you need to, when all is seemingly lost — just like Wright. Edgeworth’s whole deal is about being pretty smugly a few steps ahead of everyone else at all times, and since you’re Edgeworth here, you’re also ahead of the game… which means reveals don’t always have the big dramatic impact they should, because you’d figured it out yourself well before. Sometimes, that’s satisfying, because you feel like you’re smart about it all, but other times, it’s taking a little too long to get to the fireworks factory, and in instances where said factory is only full of sparklers.
When Edgeworth is smug and he’s your antagonist, well, you get to rub his face in it. Here, though, you’re Edgeworth: you’re the one doing the rubbing of faces into it. So sometimes you’ll be a little offbase, maybe, but the thrust of the game is truly that Edgeworth’s relentless search for truth combined with his ability to construct an argument means he’s always ahead of things, and almost always spot-on with his analysis. It can get a little tiresome, just in terms of you proceeding naturally from where you start and getting to the conclusion yourself. Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth isn’t a game where a parrot gets to be a key witness, is what I’m getting at: it’s all a lot more predictable than that.
These are just little complaints, though. None of them are gamebreaking, they’re just the kinds of things you notice, especially if you’re a person who has bothered to buy the Phoenix Wright trilogy on three different platforms in the last two decades, or who has a 17-year-old cat named after the protagonist of this game. Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth is a great game, but it’s got just enough that’s a little off going on in it that you can’t — or, at least, I can’t — say it’s better than the series it spun out of, or its attempt at a new game with a new protagonist. Justice for Apollo Justice, baby, he deserves it.
Ace Attorney Investigations would receive a sequel on the Nintendo DS, also starring Miles Edgeworth, but that remains safely tucked away in Japan and away from international eyes. Disappointing, of course, but if the Great Ace Attorney games could eventually make it out of Japan as a paired set, then there’s always hope for a re-release of the two Ace Attorney Investigations games, and this time both localized in one package. For now, you’re limited to just iOS and Android ports of Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, which both released in 2017. Which isn’t nothing, but it’d be nice to have more Investigations, and not relegated to just phones, either. The rest of the Ace Attorney series exists on modern platforms now, so why not this spin-off, too?
A note: Alt text was breaking images and captions for some unknown reason, so the usual alt text was included with the image captions in this feature. It’s not a new editorial style decision, merely a way to ensure the alt text still made its way into the article somehow.
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