Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth

Back in January, Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth was released. I finally got a chance to finish it, so I thought I'd share my thoughts on it.

-Backstory-

     Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth is just the latest in a series of wonderful games. Seeing as the Ace Attorney series isn't extremely well known, I'll need to share some backstory.
     The first four games focus on two different defense lawyers: Phoenix Wright (games 1-3), and Apollo Justice (4). Each game features one prosecutor (though they are not the only one each game): Miles Edgeworth (1), Franziska von Karma (2), Godot (3), and Klavier Gavin (4). Each game takes place over the course of around a year, with the fourth taking place 7 years after the third. Investigations is set a few months after the ending of the third game. Each game is split into four or five different cases, in which the story switches between two phases: one in which you investigate the crime scene and related areas and ask witnesses about the case, and one in which you are in court. Investigations plays a bit differently, as I will explain in a section below. The games are largly humorous, and feature some very strange characters (whose names are usually puns), and a somewhat odd court system.

-Gameplay-

     The regular Ace Attorney games play like a mix between a point and click adventure game, a hidden object puzzle, and a visual novel. That is, you're mostly reading text, and to move from room to room you're simply selecting from a list of nearby locations. When you examine a room, you're presented with a view of a room, and you can then choose objects to examine. The court sections play out almost entirely like a visual novel, with you pressing or objecting (by using an item from your inventory that's proof of a contradiction) to witnesses' testimonies. Depending on the game, there may be slight differences in gameplay. 2 and 3 have the Magatama, which allows to know if someone is hiding something during the investigation stage, and 4 has the Perceive System, which allows you to point out small physical tics that show that a witness is lying.
Investigations changes this up a bit. The movement around a room is now shown in its entirety, with Edgeworth moving around the room to find things to examine. It loses a good amount of the hidden object puzzle aspect of the game, though there are many times where you'll switch to that view while examining. The movement between rooms is also a bit different, in that it's very rare. Changes of location are usually story based, though by the last case, you'll be examining a rather large number of areas anyway. Investigations also adds the Logic feature, which allows Edgeworth to connect various ideas in order to solve problems or fill in gaps of logic. It doesn't really add much, though it's a nice addition, and there's several moments where it's used very well, plot-wise.

-Story-

     Investigations' story plays out slightly differently than a normal Ace Attorney game. Usually, there are 4 or 5 different cases per game, and they're spread out over the course of about a year. The cases may have direct connections to each other, as in the third game, but often they are mostly unrelated. This changes entirely for Investigations, because Edgeworth deals with 5 cases over a course of only 3 days, the story is much more connected. Edgeworth is pulled into a series of investigations as he returns home from a brief trip around the world, and after encountering some old friends, he begins to uncover the truth behind a mysterious smuggling ring, as well as the true identity of the mysterious thief known as the Yatagarasu. The story is on par with, and at some points better than, the other games in the series. The change to investigating for the truth rather than trying to defend someone innocent hoping that the truth will be found on the way allows for a much more "epic" story to be written, and Investigations does not disapoint. It still manages to have a great deal of humor, and even begins to enter the realm of self-parody in some cases. The final scene manages to be both extremely tense and hilarious at the same time, with the series tendency to have allies burst in at the last minute in the final case being taken to the point where the characters don't even know who's interupting anymore!
     Additionally, the story shows the end of a great amount of character growth for Edgeworth. He started this growth in the first game, where he learned that always aiming for a guilty verdict was not the best path to follow, and continued it throughout the second and third games, where it was shown that he had learned to search for the truth instead. However, the fourth game did not include him, and as such we did not see the end of his growth till now. Investigations truly shows that Edgeworth has truly learned that the truth is the most important part of a case, and at the very end of the game there is a particularly strong scene that shows that he has even begun to accept that sometimes someone can not be perfectly lawful in their pursuit of the truth.

-Characters-

     The Ace Attorney series is known for its wacky characters, and its tendency to reuse them, and Investigations does this as well. Many fan-favorite characters make at least a cameo appearance, with some others (such as Phoenix himself) being seen in the background or vaguely mentioned. The only problem with the reuse of characters is that, as I've heard many people say, it lowers the amount of people that could potentially be the murderer, since only new characters could possibly be the killers.
     However, it also manages to add a strong cast of new characters. Kay Faraday and Interpol Agent Shi-Long Lang are certainly among the best characters the series has to offer. Kay fits nicely into the role of Edgeworth's assistant, and Lang's view of the truth plays nicely against Edgeworth's. Both manage to contribute a lot to the story, while still having some great comedic moments, and it's sad that they only appear in the third and fifth cases of the game. I certainly hope that they show up in a later game, because they are far more worthy of being reused than, say, the extremely overused Wendy Oldbag, who managed to be an annoying character in the first game, and still showed up in the second game, as well as this one, where she shows up twice.

-Music-

     The music, like the music from the Ace Attorney series in general, is awesome. Of particular note are the themes for Kay Faraday and Lang, which really carry the feel of their characters. There's also some very good remixed tracks that fit in greatly with the new tracks. If you're playing this game, you'll want to keep the volume up.

-Difficulty-

    Compared to the other Ace Attorney games, Investigations is, in my opinion, much easier. I had to check a walkthrough only a few times when I was unable to make sense of things, compared to the many times I've had to within the rest of the Ace Attorney series. I believe this is a result of playing as Edgeworth instead of Phoenix or Apollo- as a defense attorney, you're often fishing for thoughts and making jumps in logic, but as Edgeworth you have time to think things out and develop a well thought-out chain of logic. However, that does not bar the occasional annoying situation from occurring, though as long as you're good at looking over the evidence given to you and remembering what's happened, you should be fine.
     My only real problem with the difficulty is the life bar, which is decreased when you mess up, either by presenting the wrong evidence, or (in Investigations) connecting two unrelated pieces of Logic. This lifebar makes sense in the main Ace Attorney series, for you're trying to not make a fool of yourself in court, but it makes somewhat less sense when it's applied to the personal thoughts of Edgeworth. The main problem with the life bar in Investigations is the lack of opportunities to refill it. In the main series, it's refilled whenever you finish a court section or successfully use the Magatama, but in Investigations it is only refilled when you complete an investigation. The problem with this is that near the end of the game, you can go for long stretches of only testimony, and this leads to infuriatingly annoying portions of the game where you are forced to reload over and over to try to present different pieces of evidence, because you have such little life remaining that a single mistake will equal a game over. Thankfully, you can save whenever you want, but that only barely decreases the time you waste in reloading. It's still a problem though, and something they really need to fix, though it's not likely they ever will.

-Final Thoughts-

     If you have a DS (and for the first three games, a Wii with internet access), and haven't played the Ace Attorney series, you're missing out. Although a slightly different spin-off, Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth is one of the best games in the series yet, and I can't wait for AA5 after seeing how well made this game was. I certainly hope they do another Investigations game somewhere down the line, though I think it'd be a good idea to pick someone other than Miles Edgeworth for that, since his story was nicely wrapped up with this game. Nothing has been announced regarding the next game at all, though, because AA's creator is currently working on a very different game: Ghost Trick. Only time will tell whether a new AA game is in the works.