After finishing up the Maya saga over an epic span of three games focused on Phoenix Wright, Capcom continues its Ace Attorney series by starring a new prodigy, Apollo Justice. For the uninitiated, Ace Attorney is basically a text-adventure game for the DS that simulates courtroom action, allowing users to present evidence in “cross examinations” to protect their defendants.

With a new protagonist at the helm, fans of Mr. Wright don’t have to fear, while this game is focused on getting players familiar with Apollo Justice, in the end you’ll still get to administer justice with Wright, while learning even more back story about our favorite lawyer.

Apollo Justice – A New Spiky Hair Prodigy

You get to play as the still young untried Apollo Justice who gets involved in a case with none other than a 7-year older Phoenix Wright who now has his cute magician daughter Trudy. It follows the same Phoenix Wright motif in some sense; Apollo is badgered by Trudy (as opposed to Phoenix badgered by Maya) and he goes from case to case to unravel a much larger and more complex conspiracy at hand. Apollo Justice is a great new character, he’s practically another Phoenix Wright but with his own little quirks, and Trudy the magician is also similar to Maya but cuter and less annoying.

The newer and more interesting character molds are in the supporting cast, such as Prosecutor Gavin (the younger brother) who leads a double life as a rock star in his spare time, and the older Phoenix Wright, who has gotten even smarter and more legendary over the years. He plays an excellent role similar to that of Yoda, guiding Apollo in his growth to becoming a good lawyer while setting him up for a greater plan. It’s awesome.

Even better is that this story doesn’t have Phoenix Wright playing behind the scenes the whole time. There’s even a flashback trial involving him and old characters like Detective Gumshoe, not to mention the now grown up and ever so science-y Ema Skye, who has become a snack munching stubborn detective.

Same Old Game Engine

Capcom continues to NOT innovate anything in the Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney system, so there’s still no option menu to allow you to adjust text speed or any sort of extra features. The game is as linear as ever if not even more so, and the lack of replay value is still heightened by the inability to skip dialog and return to your favorite scenes or trials. Re-playing an episode can literally take 2+ hours and without a skip feature most of the game’s length sadly is based on how slow the text scrolls.

There are a few interesting features in Apollo Justice such as the mini-science games where you can analyze sealed envelopes for writing using a fancy type of X-ray and compare footprints at a crime scene. These cool elements, while they don’t need any skill to accomplish at least make good use of the DS touch-screen.

Finally instead Psych-locks, Apollo’s special ability is to zoom in on witnesses on the stand and determine if they are lying by mini-twitches (lump in throat, fiddling of the finger, etc.). While it’s not a challenging feature, this mini-game does also mix things up a bit and is different from the Psych-locks that Wright used.

Conclusion

Despite more of the same old same old, I gobbled this game up with an intense non-stop DS spree the week it came out. The first episode is amazing, and with four episodes in total, I felt like there was at least a solid 15-17 hours of gameplay.

My caveat is that Apollo Justice is not really a game. It’s an interactive text-adventure with a good story and some choices to make during the courtroom, but really only one way to win. That’s what limits Apollo Justice the most because if you do mess up completely, you have to play the game from your last saved point, which can often mean trudging through the same boring stuff. If you want to avoid this you’ll use a walkthrough, and if you’ve done that, then the game is basically a manga you carry around and read.

If the Ace Attorney series captivated you to the third game, then you’ll most likely enjoy Apollo Justice a lot. It has all the addicting elements of the first three, building up the mythology even more, while moving away (thankfully) from the overdone Maya/Phoenix relationship. I think Apollo Justice probably is my second favorite in the series, with the first being the favorite, followed by two and three. With a lot of important back story, while it isn’t essential to have played the other Phoenix Wright game, I do recommend being sure to start on the first Phoenix Wright and playing them through before getting to Apollo Justice.

Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations

Recommended: Yes