4.5/5 ★ – Smabbott's review of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles.

The foreboding sense of deduction I can’t believe this game nearly took me a year to finish. But it’s done. There was some ups, there were very minor downs but overall it’s understandable why so many people find these two games as the best of the series. If Phoenix Wright was a Hollywood spectacle of a game, The Great Ace Attorney plays like an indie experience. The way the game unravels its mystery from start to finish shows this clear, strong direction for the game’s story and what a mystery it is. Spanning two games gives the presence and intrigue needed to show this wider conspiracy in all its glory. However, this comes with a caveat in which the experience suffers from. The decision to use Adventures as a teaser essentially to build hype for Resolve ultimately hurts Adventures as an experience and I don’t think I would have been fulfilled if I was to play the first game and then waited for the second. Every case has a gotcha moment of ‘don’t worry, we’re saving why you should care about any of this until next time.’ This made every case apart from the final case of Adventures hollow to me. Because the weight of each story only comes to fruition with the knowledge obtained through the brilliant conclusion of Resolve. Starting with the overly long tutorial, Chronicles has longer cases and as a result longer investigations. The fact that the tutorial case is split into two parts shows the magnitude of the experience. But the reasoning as to why the crime was committed is hidden until the very last case of Resolve. The game does this constantly which can make for a frustrating play through. The investigations are long and strenuous, multiple times I found the amount of dialogue to be too disjointed and spread out compared to the tight delivery of consistent information in Phoenix Wright. Resolve was definitely an improvement over Adventures in this regard but still felt too much like wishy washy dialogue. The Psychelocks were greatly missed in this game. They allowed a certain levity to each investigation as you essentially have a mini confession every time. Breaking up the monotony of asking people question tabs time and time again. The added aspects of the deductions with the incredibly charismatic Herlock Sholmes were a great break from the game’s constant questioning of characters which made them blend. The added effect of the 3D aspect to the game started as jarring. But I appreciated the fact that this allowed for some brilliant animations for when you cornered multiple witnesses. The use of the 3D space made certain things such as deductions to be incredibly cinematic. The added aspects of interrogating multiple witnesses at once was a great idea in practice. But was not used as much or as impactful as it ought to be. The game then introduced Jury’s which honestly were again a great idea, but did nothing more than to pad out the game with longer trials. I’m glad the final trial didn’t have them. The aspect of not being able to use people unless prompted when presenting as evidence was genuinely a good inclusion. It limits the amount of options you have to manage when some cases will give you upwards of 20 pieces of evidence to sieve through. The cast of characters is brilliant in the games. Already mentioned Herlock Sholmes. But Iris as the loveable innocent genius was great. Gina was a standout. Susato is even better than Maya with how well she was written. Baron Von Zieks may well be the best prosecutor in the series. His resolve is concrete. You find you catch so many prosecutors out on multiple occasions in Phoenix Wright. But Von Zieks felt like he was never caught off guard until it really mattered. And of course Ryunosuke who could’ve easily been a poor man’s Phoenix was absolutely brilliant. The way he grows through the two games shows this great sense that this company did not just want to do Phoenix Wright once again. All the main cast of characters were great and were never duller imitations of what came before. Overall The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles is deeper, more mature and complex in its storytelling and world building than Phoenix Wright. Through its endearing cast, it crafts a brilliant tale which by the end really does feel like it was worth the wait. But aspects which were added and others which were removed makes this entry a very strong, but not perfect successor to what came before. Wrapped too much in the politics of the world (seriously the amount of racism in this game is insane) and storylines so dense they take multiple games to conclude becomes a detriment to the flow of case after case. However, there is no denying the skill on show of these two games is to be commended highly and I really hope we get another game in this series too because there is nothing like this series. Brilliant!