My Review of the Ace Attorney Series. Chapter-2: Turnabout Phoenix

Phoenix Wright : Ace Attorney is the first game of the Ace Attorney franchise. In this game we play as a rookie lawyer named Phoenix Wright *Objection theme plays* (Ryuuichi Naruhodou in Japanese). We also have an assistant named Maya Fey (Mayoi Ayasato in Japanese) who helps in 2 out of 5 cases. The prosecutor who we see most in this game is Miles Edgeworth (Reiji Mitsurugi in Japanese).

Story-wise, The cases in this game is fairly simple (with the exception of case-5. It's as complicated as hell!). However, the prosecutor made the simplest cases difficult (for the player). They made cross-examining the witness as hard as one could hope for! This made the other-wise simple cases fairly difficult.

This game has 2 main styles of game-play; Investigation and Trail. In investigation, you move around and collect evidence to use in trails. A problem with the game was the investigation segments became tedious and dull. However, the funniest jokes in the game were in these investigation segments, so I can't really complain. The trial segments are a lot more fun. It's also here, that you can get a GAMEOVER. Screw-up 5 times in         cross examination and your client is instantly declared guilty.

The game had an amazing sound-track! The Objection and Cornered themes were simply amazing. The turnabout sisters' theme and Gumshoe's theme were also some of my favorites.
The characters in this game were well-developed and interesting. 4 of the main characters of this game ( Phoenix, Maya, Edgeworth and Gumshoe ) are my favorite Ace Attorney characters.
Completing cases 1-5 without getting a game over (If you don't abuse the save feature) or having to read a walkthrough is as hard as hell. In case-4 whenever you try to press the witness during cross-examination, Manfred Von Karma ( the toughest prosecutor you will ever face) cuts you off with an "OBJECTION!". He also steals important evidence from you and shocks you with a tazer. In the end, It makes beating him all the more satisfying. Case-5 has a complicated plot, tight testimonies and long and confusing investigations. You will often find yourself evidence and hoping you got it right. This is probably the hardest case in the series.

Now, this game isn't perfect. There were flaws in the game. The sheer difficulty of the 5th case were one of the the things that annoyed me. Another thing that annoyed me was a force-fail (if you can call it that.) in case-2. In the last part of the case, you run out of contradicting evidence. At that point a pressed every statement the witness made but it didn't change anything. Here you have to skim over the testimony again without presenting any evidence. HOW WAS A I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT?!? I panicked and presented evidence in trail and error and wasted a lot of time and effort before I realized it was a force-fail.

Other than the above mentioned problems nothing else really stood up to me as a problem and I found that this was a over-all great game.

I rate this game: 92/100
Thanks for reading.