From Capcom Ace Attorney Investigations Collectionthe derivations of the popular although tremendously inaccurate from the legal point of view Ace Lawyer The series is finally available. The two-game collection includes a long-awaited gift for Ace Lawyer Diehards: The Official Western Release of Ace Attorney 2 Investigations: The Prosecutor's Tactics. And although Research suffers from gameplay issues that go against the spirit of the series in general, the characters and story make the collection a must-have for any Ace Lawyer fan.
Although there are two games in the collection, I will focus exclusively on Ace Attorney 2 Investigations: The Prosecutor's TacticsDespite being released in Japan for the DS in 2011, the game never officially made its way to the West until now. The prosecutor's tactic It puts you in the shoes of District Attorney Miles Edgeworth, Phoenix Wright's childhood friend, opposing attorney, and, if you identify with certain sectors of the fandom, lifelong lover. (I don't, though; I'm a firm supporter of detectives and Edgeworth.)
The game plays out similarly to Ace LawyerSomeone is murdered, someone innocent is accused, and Edgeworth must investigate crime scenes for clues. Once the necessary information has been gathered, Edgeworth interrogates people, pointing out contradictions in their testimonies with evidence to ultimately determine someone's guilt or innocence.
I often visited the game's extra content only to rewatch all the outrageous “Oh no, I've been found out!” animations.
In The prosecutor's tacticThe characters are wonderfully colorful, and it's always a pleasure to watch them fall apart when Edgeworth uncovers their lies. I often visited the game's extra content just to rewatch all the outrageous “Oh no, I've been found out!” animations.
Because Ace Attorney Investigations It's a spin-off series, you don't need any knowledge of the main games to understand what's going on. But if you do, oh man, you're rewarded. I was excited playing a case that has a huge – and I mean massive — impacts not only on the events of the first Ace Lawyer game, but also about Miles Edgeworth's reason for being.
Although the game's story and characters are just as charming as in the main series, The prosecutor's tactic It is distinguished by its unique gameplay features, both of which are somewhat lacking. New in The prosecutor's tactic are the mental chess and logic mini-games. The logic game requires putting together two pieces of information found during an investigation to create new clues. During an investigation at a prison, Edgeworth learns that a critical piece of evidence, a key, has gone missing. He also learns that a metal detector was set off in the vicinity of the prison's alligator enclosure. (Listen, at any time Ace Lawyer Game, things can get very… peculiar.) You literally put those two pieces of information together to deduce that the alligator swallowed the key. With the new information, the game can move forward.
Completing logic games is extremely easy and does not require any of the deductive puzzle solving skills that do Ace Lawyer The games are so fun that they're a waste of time. It's like the developers needed to add something to make this game stand out from the main series, but they couldn't think of anything interesting, so they came up with what is basically a compilation of tests with superfluous steps.
Mind Chess, however, suffers from the exact opposite problem. It's a worthwhile addition, but the logic required to overcome it is completely impenetrable. In Mind Chess, a subject has a piece of information that he doesn't want to reveal, and Edgeworth must choose from a rotating selection of dialogue options to exhaust him until he reveals it.
The problem with Mind Chess is that, unlike any other part of the game, you are not using evidence to disprove false claims. Instead, you are trying to read and respond to an opponent's claims… vibes? If you choose a dialogue option that doesn't match your opponent's emotions, you fail. The game tries to help you with hints. In one instance, Edgeworth points out that a mentally weak opponent will clam up if I choose aggressive options, so when he inevitably burst into tears, I stayed quiet. However, those hints didn't work in every situation, leaving me in a bind. I lost that mental chess game because I once again stayed quiet when that tearful opponent got even more tearful.
The good thing about both Ace Lawyer The thing about the series is that I get rewarded for being thorough. I feel like a genius when I catch someone lying because I took the time to learn everything about each piece of evidence, which often involves noticing the tiniest or most cleverly hidden detail. And when I'm wrong, it's not hard to go back through my case files to find what I missed.
Guessing your way to the right answer is the antithesis of that: there's no brain power involved, just button-pushing. And because Mind Chess relies on what the player can somehow intuit (from a bunch of pixels, no less!), rather than what they know specifically, I ended up guessing in every case. I might as well have been playing Click to make cookies.
But suffering through Mind Chess is well worth the clues you gain to solve the game's biggest mysteries. Ace Lawyer In the series, most cases are not closely related, and if they are, the connections are incidental. A major character from one case will appear as a brief cameo in another, or a murder may have minor implications for a later one. The prosecutor's tactic This is the first time I've seen that every case and every character (even the dead ones!) have a direct and important impact on the climax of the game.
All those connections muddied the story and created a voluminous record of evidence that was difficult to parse. But when I finally uncovered the mastermind, my body slowly went from relaxed and reclined to upright and alert. It was exactly like a scene from a mystery novel where the detective finds the perfect clue that solves the case — something you can do every time you play the game. Ace Lawyer The game should feel like this.
