Impressions from playing Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy

While it’s been seven long years since the last mainline Ace Attorney game, Capcom has been trying to bring older games in the legal saga to modern audiences in recent years. It all started in 2019 with the release of a remastered first trilogy for PC and modern consoles, followed by The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles Collection in 2021, which includes two spin-offs from the early 20th century that were originally released only in Japan. And next month, we’re expecting the second trilogy, which will be released as Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney (2007, Nintendo DS), Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies (2013, Nintendo 3DS), and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit for modern Justice (2016, Nintendo 3DS) platforms. I’ve had the chance to play it for a while now, and today I can finally share my first impressions.

Lots of improvements

I’ve only finished most of the first game, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, but it seems to have undergone the biggest changes. After all, the Nintendo DS only had a resolution of 256 x 192 pixels, which is incredibly small by today’s standards. You can easily play the new edition in high resolution, including 4K. This makes characters or backgrounds look very sharp and beautiful even by today’s standards.

Of course, it’s not just about the visuals, the collection primarily brings a number of quality of life improvements. There’s an autoplay mode (text automatically scrolls) or a story mode (the game solves all the puzzles for you), as well as a dialogue history (which is definitely useful if you miss something important), as well as a detailed menu where you can choose not only the game (which is logical, of course), but also a specific case, and even the section you want to play (if you wanted to remind yourself of something specific, for example). Along with more storage slots, it’s a really nice upgrade.

Definitely not for everyone

Of course, at their core, these are still games that are aimed at a relatively specific audience. Part visual novel, part adventure game, Ace Attorney is very much about reading and reasoning. It’s not for everyone, and a fairly high level of English (or another supported language) is required to fully enjoy the games. Whether it’s specific terms, various slang expressions, accents, or the relatively frequent (and quite successful) puns and other jokes. Although Ace Attorney deals with serious topics and you often solve murders, humor is an integral part of these games.

I still think that Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney is the weakest part of the entire main series. It has a pretty strong opening, but the rest of the cases already have quite a few problems. Although I must say that the second (even if it is filler) is a little better than I remembered. And it should also be added that the entire series is of such a solid level that you will have a good time even in the “worst” game from this collection. The mechanics have not aged at all, and the plot too, you can enjoy everything without problems even today.

Ideal for portable devices

Either way, the series certainly doesn’t shy away from its roots, and while it’s available on PC and home consoles, I think you’ll enjoy the games best on the handhelds they were made for. So if you have the option, I’d pick up the Switch or PC version and play on the Steam Deck, which is what I chose. The game is fully supported on Valve’s device and I had no issues, even running the game at 4K and then downscaling it to 720p, which eliminated all the aliasing and made the text much sharper. The OLED display makes all the colors pop beautifully.

To all this, it should be added that the second trilogy also contains a lot of bonus content, which I would like to dwell on in more detail in the review itself. However, so far my impressions of the collection are positive, and I think it can appeal to both avid fans who have played all the games before, and complete newbies, to whom I would still recommend going through the first trilogy.