After a long, long time, it's back! Both this blog (which I've not updated in seven months), and this series leading up to my timely review of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice, which I believe I haven't updated in two years.
Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney is an interesting game. It's the game that had the unenviable task of following up Trials & Tribulations, which is not only one of the best games of all time but also a game that put a capstone on the original Ace Attorney trilogy. It didn't close the door for future Ace Attorney games per se, but it went out of its way to tie every loose thread it could, and it left most of its characters in places where bringing them back would feel unsatisfying and cheap. As a result, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney might just be the most unique game in the series, excluding spinoffs. I'd also argue it's the most interesting, bravest, mechanically soundest, and worst game in the main series.
Before continuing to criticize the game, I want to make clear that thinking this is the worst Ace Attorney game does not mean I think this is a bad game, in the slightest. I really love Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. It's still a game worthy of the Ace Attorney name, and has most of the things that make the franchise great going for it. Slowly unravelling cases through ludicrous yet believable leaps of logic and eventually realizing that the truth of the matter is the opposite of how it first appears is still incredibly satisfying, the game is still populated by a large number of colorful, memorable, and likeable characters, and the presentation is still second to none. Even among Ace Attorney games, Apollo Justice distinguishes itself by being absolutely gorgeous. As much as I like the 3D models in Dual Destinies and especially Spirit of Justice they don't come close to the fantastic 2D art in this game. This is the only mainline Ace Attorney game to be released on the Nintendo DS, which makes it look much better than the previous ones, which were originally GameBoy Advance titles in Japan, and it makes full use of the increased capabilities of the DS. Apollo Justice also has the most in-depth mechanics of the series, making extensive use of constantly changing mechanical gimmicks to keep each case memorable and unique. Apollo is a great protagonist, similar to Nick in just the right ways but still distinct by virtue of his very different approach as an attorney. I was surprised by how different playing as Apollo felt in this game, something that's lost when playing as attorneys other than Nick in future games. Where Nick'll grasp at every tiny incosistency that comes his way until something finally sticks and completely turns the case around, Apollo'll patiently play defense until there's a clear weak point he can strike at, which sometimes leads to him missing good chances to turn things around. It feels much more scheming and manipulative, but equally tense and equally prone to shoving you into seemingly dead-end situations. Trucy, also, is a fantastic assistant who doesn't linger in Maya's shadow, providing a much less goofy helping hand while remaining resolutely hilarious throughout. I'd also be remiss to not mention the game's prosecutor, Klavier Gavin, who's a pleasant and chill guy who maintains a friendly rapport with Apollo outside trials and shows that he cares about the truth by often pointing out incosistencies in his own witnesses' testimonies. Klavier feels like what Edgeworth would be after his arc in the first game if he wasn't so stuck up.
The game's greatest flaws are in its themes. Right off the bat, the game presents itself as a darker take on the Ace Attorney universe. The first trial is a murder case in a dodgy and semi-illegal poker bar, where the defendant is no other than Phoenix Wright himself. The color palette is darker and gloomier than before, and the music is largely composed of tense synths and blaring bassy electric guitars. By the end of the first trial, you've been led to believe it's possible you've accidentally used forged evidence, and you've discovered that your tutor, Kristoph Gavin, is the killer in your case. Kristoph Gavin continues to be a menacing presence throughout, marking the first time in the series a defence attorney (which so far has been equivalent with good guy) is flagged as an unapologetic villain. Your future cases have you working for the mob, convicting a police officer for murder through legally grey means, and getting a serial forger of evidence off the hook. The first trilogy's spirit mediums are replaced with magicians, who are explicitly using trickery and are not actually magical. It's all got this air of being in a moral grey-zone, edgier and darker than the series has been before, and the game often talks about how its world's legal system isn't equipped to properly take care of all criminals.
Before addressing the ways the game struggles with this presentations of its world, I want to point out that this isn't a good theme for a mainline Ace Attorney. These games do comment on the legal system a lot, but they come from a place of compassion and understanding. Nick's secret to success in the first three games was unconditional trust in his client. It's by bouncing this off of the suspicions of the prosecution that lawyers and prosecutors work together to find the truth. Apollo Justice instead is obsessed with punishing the guilty, and it portrays this as the only way to achieve justice. This isn't the way the series has operated until now, nor is it how it will operate in the future. In fact, a good part of the first game was dedicated to proving this way of thinking wrong. The themes that Apollo Justice tries to explore seem considerably better fitted to a game where you play as a prosecutor, and in fact are touched on in Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth considerably more satisfyingly than they are here.
The implementation of these themes is simply clumsy. The hyper dark and realistic tone of Apollo Justice clashes with the goofier elements of Ace Attorney in a way that the earlier games avoided by being a lot more light-hearted and lighter of touch with their theming, but that's not even the game's main problem. The fact is, Apollo Justice is still an Ace Attorney game, and so it still needs to be fun to play, which is simply not accomplishable while keeping the grimdark tone that it wants. In the second case, yes, you work for the mob, but it turns out they're a bunch of lovable goofballs who work in the best interests of the community. In the fourth case, yes, you get a forger acquited whose fake evidence probably got a lot of people wrongfully convicted or acquited, but she's actually a really nice mentally stunted girl who legitimately didn't realize she was doing any harm. You're struggling through this dark law adventure, but your rival and opponent is a genuinely good guy who you become quick friends with, and the Judge remains the same well-intentioned goofball he's always been. Even when the law isn't equipped to deal with your problems you still manage to scrape by and get justice, and ultimately everyone who's good gets good results and everybody who's bad gets bad results.
Apollo Justice doesn't have the balls to actually make good people suffer or get wrongfully convicted, or to have bad people get away with doing bad things. This is fine in and of itself, since the first trilogy was much the same way, but Apollo Justice presents itself as dark in a way that the first trilogy doesn't, and it all comes across as flat as a result. In fact, the way you wind up convicting likeable characters who committed heinous crimes for understandable and borderline sympathetic reasons in Justice For All (which at face value is a more light-hearted game) is considerably darker than anything that happens in Apollo Justice. This dark presentation incongruent with the game's content means that I actually wasn't able to really discern a coherent theme in Apollo Justice. It seems to be trying to comment on the shortcomings of the legal system, advocating for a jury-driven system, or maybe it's pushing a machiavellian "Ends justifies the means" agenda (once again - something more appropriate for an Investigations game or other spinoff), but its lack of any real bite makes all these attempts fall flat. What's more - and this isn't Apollo Justice's fault - so many of its changes to the Ace Attorney world fall by the wayside immediately once the game is done (like the darker take on Nick, the Jurist system as something that actually matters in trials, the vital importance of Troupe Gramarye and its backstory, or even Trucy being a major character) that it almost feels pseudo-canonical, and any of the darkness it brings into Ace Attorney feels all the more sophomoric and obnoxious as a result. All of this results in Apollo Justice just feeling a bit empty. It's got a lot of what I love about Ace Attorney, and it is a legitimately great game as a result, but it's also the only Ace Attorney I never organically came back to prior to re-playing the series to write this retrospective, and that's probably because it's the only game in the series that's got style over substance. It wants to be dark, moody and brooding, but it doesn't have a real reason for it. It wants to have characters give big speeches about how you can't get this guy convicted through currently legal means, but it doesn't really know why that's a bad thing.
There's also the fact that Apollo himself as a character, while very functional as a main character (especially as an Ace Attorney main character who must be constantly confused and snarky in his internal monologue but appear as a standard milquetoast anime dude on the outside), doesn't have much of an arc in this game. He starts as a nervous newbie defence attorney and ends as a less nervous and slightly experienced defence attorney. This isn't important for this game being good or bad right now, since I never really missed Apollo having an arc as I was playing it. The game focuses more on Trucy and especially Nick, and that's completely fine. The problem is that the two future mainline games - Dual Destinies and especially Spirit of Justice - are going to pretend like Apollo had a satisfying arc in this game, and are going to try and do for him what the original trilogy did for Nick. I'm not going to have a problem with that in Dual Destinies, since I think Apollo's arc works fantastically in that game, but Spirit of Justice's half-arsed attempt to be the Trials & Tribulations of a not-quite-existent "Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney trilogy" is going to be central to my criticism of that game. Just a little teaser for ya.
Thankfully, one of the spinoffs, Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth which I'll be covering next time, does the themes that Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney gestures at way better. Unfortunately, the other spinoff, Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, which I'll also be covering next time, does everything a lot worse than every other Ace Attorney game, including Apollo Justice. So that'll be fun.
Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney is an interesting game. It's the game that had the unenviable task of following up Trials & Tribulations, which is not only one of the best games of all time but also a game that put a capstone on the original Ace Attorney trilogy. It didn't close the door for future Ace Attorney games per se, but it went out of its way to tie every loose thread it could, and it left most of its characters in places where bringing them back would feel unsatisfying and cheap. As a result, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney might just be the most unique game in the series, excluding spinoffs. I'd also argue it's the most interesting, bravest, mechanically soundest, and worst game in the main series.
Before continuing to criticize the game, I want to make clear that thinking this is the worst Ace Attorney game does not mean I think this is a bad game, in the slightest. I really love Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. It's still a game worthy of the Ace Attorney name, and has most of the things that make the franchise great going for it. Slowly unravelling cases through ludicrous yet believable leaps of logic and eventually realizing that the truth of the matter is the opposite of how it first appears is still incredibly satisfying, the game is still populated by a large number of colorful, memorable, and likeable characters, and the presentation is still second to none. Even among Ace Attorney games, Apollo Justice distinguishes itself by being absolutely gorgeous. As much as I like the 3D models in Dual Destinies and especially Spirit of Justice they don't come close to the fantastic 2D art in this game. This is the only mainline Ace Attorney game to be released on the Nintendo DS, which makes it look much better than the previous ones, which were originally GameBoy Advance titles in Japan, and it makes full use of the increased capabilities of the DS. Apollo Justice also has the most in-depth mechanics of the series, making extensive use of constantly changing mechanical gimmicks to keep each case memorable and unique. Apollo is a great protagonist, similar to Nick in just the right ways but still distinct by virtue of his very different approach as an attorney. I was surprised by how different playing as Apollo felt in this game, something that's lost when playing as attorneys other than Nick in future games. Where Nick'll grasp at every tiny incosistency that comes his way until something finally sticks and completely turns the case around, Apollo'll patiently play defense until there's a clear weak point he can strike at, which sometimes leads to him missing good chances to turn things around. It feels much more scheming and manipulative, but equally tense and equally prone to shoving you into seemingly dead-end situations. Trucy, also, is a fantastic assistant who doesn't linger in Maya's shadow, providing a much less goofy helping hand while remaining resolutely hilarious throughout. I'd also be remiss to not mention the game's prosecutor, Klavier Gavin, who's a pleasant and chill guy who maintains a friendly rapport with Apollo outside trials and shows that he cares about the truth by often pointing out incosistencies in his own witnesses' testimonies. Klavier feels like what Edgeworth would be after his arc in the first game if he wasn't so stuck up.
The game's greatest flaws are in its themes. Right off the bat, the game presents itself as a darker take on the Ace Attorney universe. The first trial is a murder case in a dodgy and semi-illegal poker bar, where the defendant is no other than Phoenix Wright himself. The color palette is darker and gloomier than before, and the music is largely composed of tense synths and blaring bassy electric guitars. By the end of the first trial, you've been led to believe it's possible you've accidentally used forged evidence, and you've discovered that your tutor, Kristoph Gavin, is the killer in your case. Kristoph Gavin continues to be a menacing presence throughout, marking the first time in the series a defence attorney (which so far has been equivalent with good guy) is flagged as an unapologetic villain. Your future cases have you working for the mob, convicting a police officer for murder through legally grey means, and getting a serial forger of evidence off the hook. The first trilogy's spirit mediums are replaced with magicians, who are explicitly using trickery and are not actually magical. It's all got this air of being in a moral grey-zone, edgier and darker than the series has been before, and the game often talks about how its world's legal system isn't equipped to properly take care of all criminals.
Before addressing the ways the game struggles with this presentations of its world, I want to point out that this isn't a good theme for a mainline Ace Attorney. These games do comment on the legal system a lot, but they come from a place of compassion and understanding. Nick's secret to success in the first three games was unconditional trust in his client. It's by bouncing this off of the suspicions of the prosecution that lawyers and prosecutors work together to find the truth. Apollo Justice instead is obsessed with punishing the guilty, and it portrays this as the only way to achieve justice. This isn't the way the series has operated until now, nor is it how it will operate in the future. In fact, a good part of the first game was dedicated to proving this way of thinking wrong. The themes that Apollo Justice tries to explore seem considerably better fitted to a game where you play as a prosecutor, and in fact are touched on in Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth considerably more satisfyingly than they are here.
The implementation of these themes is simply clumsy. The hyper dark and realistic tone of Apollo Justice clashes with the goofier elements of Ace Attorney in a way that the earlier games avoided by being a lot more light-hearted and lighter of touch with their theming, but that's not even the game's main problem. The fact is, Apollo Justice is still an Ace Attorney game, and so it still needs to be fun to play, which is simply not accomplishable while keeping the grimdark tone that it wants. In the second case, yes, you work for the mob, but it turns out they're a bunch of lovable goofballs who work in the best interests of the community. In the fourth case, yes, you get a forger acquited whose fake evidence probably got a lot of people wrongfully convicted or acquited, but she's actually a really nice mentally stunted girl who legitimately didn't realize she was doing any harm. You're struggling through this dark law adventure, but your rival and opponent is a genuinely good guy who you become quick friends with, and the Judge remains the same well-intentioned goofball he's always been. Even when the law isn't equipped to deal with your problems you still manage to scrape by and get justice, and ultimately everyone who's good gets good results and everybody who's bad gets bad results.
Apollo Justice doesn't have the balls to actually make good people suffer or get wrongfully convicted, or to have bad people get away with doing bad things. This is fine in and of itself, since the first trilogy was much the same way, but Apollo Justice presents itself as dark in a way that the first trilogy doesn't, and it all comes across as flat as a result. In fact, the way you wind up convicting likeable characters who committed heinous crimes for understandable and borderline sympathetic reasons in Justice For All (which at face value is a more light-hearted game) is considerably darker than anything that happens in Apollo Justice. This dark presentation incongruent with the game's content means that I actually wasn't able to really discern a coherent theme in Apollo Justice. It seems to be trying to comment on the shortcomings of the legal system, advocating for a jury-driven system, or maybe it's pushing a machiavellian "Ends justifies the means" agenda (once again - something more appropriate for an Investigations game or other spinoff), but its lack of any real bite makes all these attempts fall flat. What's more - and this isn't Apollo Justice's fault - so many of its changes to the Ace Attorney world fall by the wayside immediately once the game is done (like the darker take on Nick, the Jurist system as something that actually matters in trials, the vital importance of Troupe Gramarye and its backstory, or even Trucy being a major character) that it almost feels pseudo-canonical, and any of the darkness it brings into Ace Attorney feels all the more sophomoric and obnoxious as a result. All of this results in Apollo Justice just feeling a bit empty. It's got a lot of what I love about Ace Attorney, and it is a legitimately great game as a result, but it's also the only Ace Attorney I never organically came back to prior to re-playing the series to write this retrospective, and that's probably because it's the only game in the series that's got style over substance. It wants to be dark, moody and brooding, but it doesn't have a real reason for it. It wants to have characters give big speeches about how you can't get this guy convicted through currently legal means, but it doesn't really know why that's a bad thing.
There's also the fact that Apollo himself as a character, while very functional as a main character (especially as an Ace Attorney main character who must be constantly confused and snarky in his internal monologue but appear as a standard milquetoast anime dude on the outside), doesn't have much of an arc in this game. He starts as a nervous newbie defence attorney and ends as a less nervous and slightly experienced defence attorney. This isn't important for this game being good or bad right now, since I never really missed Apollo having an arc as I was playing it. The game focuses more on Trucy and especially Nick, and that's completely fine. The problem is that the two future mainline games - Dual Destinies and especially Spirit of Justice - are going to pretend like Apollo had a satisfying arc in this game, and are going to try and do for him what the original trilogy did for Nick. I'm not going to have a problem with that in Dual Destinies, since I think Apollo's arc works fantastically in that game, but Spirit of Justice's half-arsed attempt to be the Trials & Tribulations of a not-quite-existent "Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney trilogy" is going to be central to my criticism of that game. Just a little teaser for ya.
Thankfully, one of the spinoffs, Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth which I'll be covering next time, does the themes that Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney gestures at way better. Unfortunately, the other spinoff, Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, which I'll also be covering next time, does everything a lot worse than every other Ace Attorney game, including Apollo Justice. So that'll be fun.
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