case by case: conclusion

24 Dec, 2024

In January of 2024, to celebrate the launch of the Apollo Justice trilogy on modern consoles, I decided to embark on a playthrough of every game in the Ace Attorney series, one case at a time, and write about the experience on Cohost. I had expected it to last a year, give or take a few months, because the goal was to take my time with it; these games are, I think, at their best when you take your time

I love these games. Having now played it all, instead of merely most of it, that hasn't changed; having now written about it all I feel like I have a better understanding of how these games tick. Despite the format having some limitations--I dedicated Monday nights to this project, and playing through 4-6 hours of a murder mystery after work doesn't leave as much time for subsequently writing about it as you might hope for a truly thorough examination--I felt like I was able to mostly do justice to capturing my impressions fresh, and writing about it helps those impressions become more than just fleeting memories.

I would of course do things differently if I could go back and do this all over again, and there is a world where a few years down the line I decide to revisit these games, but if I could only give one piece of advice to my past self, it would be this: look up the playtimes of the cases, because sometimes those runtimes get a bit long, and you will end up getting frustrated with the cases because it's pushing 2 am and you're still trying to milk a confession from the murder man of the week.¹

And without further ado, my concluding thoughts on the series.

Of all the series, the original trilogy remains, in my estimation, the best; it is unburdened by the expectations of a popular franchise, or the weight of its characters, or the demand to do something new with the formula. Phoenix Wright is just some guy with spiky hair and a dream; it most cleany sells the fantasy of being a friend to the friendless, of being willing to stand up for people when the whole world seems lined up against them; and the overall quality of the cases feels like it's at its strongest, on just about every level.

The Apollo Justice series struggles a fair bit to remove itself from the shadow of the original trilogy, and has a fairly significant tonal pivot between Apollo Justice and the 3DS games. I still like these games quite a bit, and all of them have some great moments, but you can see it straining against the formula, trying to define itself as unique; it's understandable why they are generally regarded as the weakest entries of the series. But again, still had a ton of fun with these.

By contrast, the Ace Attorney Investigations games felt very clean. They effortlessly walked the tightrope of feeling like Ace Attorney games while also feeling new and distinct. Despite featuring a lot of returning characters from the original trilogy, it keeps a respectful distance there--most of them aren't major characters, and the ones who are major characters feel like they are there because the story wants them there. And there are not enough nice things to say about the Edgeworth/Gumshoe/Kay character dynamics.

And finally, we have Great Ace Attorney. Along with AAI, GAA is a wonderful case study in how you can tell stories that feel fresh and new and different while keeping the same universe and formula. GAA puts storytelling first, and while I do think this ends up making the mystery and puzzle elements weaker (and it sometimes leads to some rather suboptimal pacing), it is able to do some amazing things with that narrative focus. The one thing² that keeps me from recommending these games wholeheartedly is the fact that the darker tone is a little jarring if you're expecting the tone of the much more optimistic main series.

All of which leads to the ultimate conclusion: if they make more Ace Attorney games, that's a day one buy for me. There are so many places they can go with the characters they have--I'd love to see a Franziska Investigations game, John Capcom, I know you're reading this--and plenty of room for stories focusing on new characters, too. Such a charming series and I'm glad to have embarked on this voyage with all of you.

And that's it. That is, for now, all I have to say about Ace Attorney as a series. I'm certain I've forgotten to mention some things, and I wouldn't be surprised if I've forgotten to mention some things that I said I'd get back to mentioning later--do feel free to yell at me about that--but we have truly reached the end. It has been a pleasure; thank you so much for reading.

All right. Time for some administrative notes. I will be taking next week off from my Mondaily adventures, and my current plan is to spend some of my time off transporting posts over from Cohost so they exist permanently on this archive. I'll try to backdate all of them so it hopefully shouldn't spam anyone's RSS feed, but be advised that there may be a small flood of posts if I do that wrong. Apologies in advance.

The week after that, not only will I be back with an announcement of my next project, I will also have a little surprise for Case by Case enthusiasts who really don't want the party to end quite yet. So, watch this space. I'll see you then, friends.

#case by case