Adventure Corner ~ Ace Attorney Investigations Collection

Welcome to Adventure Corner, a column where members of the RPGamer staff can give their thoughts, impressions, and pseudo-reviews for various adventure titles that don’t come under our usual coverage. Adventure Corner is aimed at delivering opinions on a wide range of titles including visual novels, point-and-click adventures, investigative mysteries, and so forth.

In this edition of the column we take a look at Capcom’s Ace Attorney Investigations Collection, the duology of investigative titles starring prosecutor Miles Edgeworth.

Ace Attorney Investigations Collection

Capcom has gotten good life out of the Ace Attorney courtroom drama adventure series in the past few years, much to the benefit of western fans. Releases of both the original and sequel trilogy have been accompanied by first The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, a previously Japan-only duology set in Victorian England, and now the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection, the spin-off duology starring prosecutor Miles Edgeworth of which only the first had previously been released overseas. While Investigations may include some of the usual caveats associated with the series, and those who have played all the releases in short order may be readily burned out, it is nonetheless a very appreciated opportunity and still overall highly enjoyable pair of titles that include some of the series’ best cases.

The current-day events of both games take place shortly after the events of the third game in the main series, though each has a case taking players back into the past. Each has its own overarching plot across five cases. Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth sees the eponymous fan-favourite prosecutor get drawn into incidents involving a smuggling ring also being investigated by Interpol and agents from Zheng Fa. Meanwhile, Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit heavily involves corruption in the justice system. Throughout both, he is joined by long-time partner Detective Gumshoe and new character Kay Faraday, an energetic girl claiming to be the great thief Yatagarasu.

While there are some returnees, the games add plenty more memorable characters.

They are notably the first games in the series to not directly involve series creator and writer Shu Takumi, and it shows at certain points. The writing and localisation, if not quite at the same level as The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, are nonetheless solid throughout. Some of the cases do drag on a bit, particularly in the first game, while the second game feels a bit fanservice-happy with a selection of returning characters who pop up for single cases but don’t really add anything to them. All that said, there’s still a lot of enjoyment to be had. The games both have memorable villains and support characters behind them, while the development and trials that both Edgeworth and Kay receive and have to overcome throughout add an extra level of emotion and engagement on top of the base enjoyment of solving the cases.

Despite avoiding the courtroom, Ace Attorney Investigations Collection plays incredibly similarly to the main series. Cases are divided between active investigation of the various crime scenes and rebutting witness statements in the same manner as cross-examinations of the previous game, although with more rotation between them than in the mainline titles. Investigations require players to examine everything they can find to pick up all the necessary clues, while rebuttals follow the same process of pressing different statements until players can find a contradiction that doesn’t match a piece of evidence they have. The main addition is the ability for Edgeworth to link together certain clues to advance an investigation, while Prosecutor’s Gambit also introduces a new element called “Mind Chess”, which is a conversational puzzle rather than anything like the actual game it is named after.

The cases take Edgeworth and co. to a wide variety of crime scenes.

As such, many of the fun and frustrating parts of the main Ace Attorney series are present here. There’s great satisfaction in quickly spotting contradictions and piecing together the full picture, but there are also times when the contradiction is incredibly niggly such that many players will need to devolve into trial and error. Still, the actual cases are engaging and have a lot of depth to them, which is particularly pronounced in Prosecutor’s Gambit as players steadily learn more about what ties together all of the cases. The outcomes may be challenging to hold up in a real-life court of law, to put it mildly, but the way everything is tied up together works exceedingly well.

With the games being originally released on Nintendo DS, some enhancements have been made to the visuals, most notably on the investigations side. Whereas the games originally used pixel-based sprites during investigation sections, Capcom has given players the option to use brand new HD animated sprites or the original pixel art style. The new HD character models fit right in, sticking in line with the rest of the game, while the colourful and distinct location designs transition nicely to the higher fidelity. In keeping with the series, voice acting is limited to the cries of “objection!” and the like, which helps to punctuate those moments compared to the rest of the dialogue, while series composer Noriyuki Iwadare’s score is once again engagingly catchy and helps to build up the drama.

Its reliance on events that took place before it means it might not be an ideal jumping on point, but Ace Attorney Investigations Collection is a worthy addition to any fan’s library. It’s a pity that it took the second game so long to reach the west, as it certainly feels like the stronger of the two, but both games provide their own exciting moments and cases to add to its library. The strong connections running through both games help makes them stand out in the series with some great depth and makes the bundle well worth the time and money.

Disclosure: This article is based on a free copy of the game provided by the publisher.