Ace Attorney Investigations Collection

Genre: Compilation / Graphic Adventure / Visual Novel

Players: 1

.

Review:

Ace Attorney Investigations Collection, released in 2024 on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, is a Compilation containing two games, both spin-off or side-story games within the Ace Attorney franchise starring a frequent antagonist of those games, Miles Edgeworth. These two games are Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, originally released on Nintendo DS in 2010 and ported to mobile devices in 2017, and Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit, originally released in Japan on Nintendo DS in 2011 and until now never released in the West, making this collection this game’s US debut.

The Acer Attorney Investigations games play somewhat differently than most other games in the Ace Attorney franchise. While those games are Visual Novel games with Graphic Adventure elements set primarily inside courtrooms, the Investigations games are Graphic Adventure games with Visual Novel elements, and they largely take place at various crime scenes, where government prosecutor Miles Edgeworth takes the role of a detective investigating crime scenes while comparing evidence to witness statements looking for contradictions that reveal someone may be hiding something, with players often moving Edgeworth directly to look around these crime scenes.

It’s… not really all that realistic that a government prosecutor would be investigating the crimes that he will then presumably be prosecuting, but I suppose it’s just as unrealistic that the defense attorneys in the mainline games in the series would be doing so, as is frequently the case in those games.

Ace Attorney Investigations begins with Edgeworth coming home to discover a murder having taken place in his own office, with an overall plot arc about a smuggling ring and an infamous thief named Yatagarasu. Ace Attorney Investigations 2, on the other hand, begins with an assassination attempt on a visiting foreign president, with an overarching plot involving the complex past of that president and the highly-skilled assassin hired to kill him.

Both games have Edgeworth as the player character, with Ace Attorney series regular character Dick Gumshoe acting as the oafish dim-witted Watson to Edgeworth’s Holmes, and with the other main character seen throughout both games being Kay Faraday, a purported thief who may or may not be the infamous Yatagarasu. These three make for a pretty good trio – Gumshoe and Faraday’s lighthearted and personable nature acts as a good foil to Edgeworth’s seriousness and occasional lack of social skills, Edgeworth and Faraday’s competence balance out Gumshoe’s frequent incompetence, and Edgeworth and Gumshoe’s respect for the law balance out Faraday’s enthusiasm for thievery (or at least, what she perceives as thievery).

While I do appreciate the very different characters from what we usually see in a lead role in Ace Attorney games, and I do think that overall these games have puzzles and plot just as good as what we tend to get in the Ace Attorney games, I do think that they fall short of the mainline Ace Attorney games in a few key ways.

First, the Graphic Adventure elements can be frustrating because the game doesn’t highlight hotspots for you to check. Furthermore, the game doesn’t really indicate what pieces of evidence you should present to which characters, and often they have nothing to say about evidence they should at least hold some opinion or strong views about. Furthermore, Investigations 2 introduces “Mind chess” that requires verbal jousting with an uncooperative witness with a ticking timer, but it’s often unclear what the correct responses are supposed to be.

While I’m not as thrilled with these games as I am with the mainline Ace Attorney games, I appreciate the effort that has gone into ensuring these games have been updated for modern platforms. In addition to the new localization for Ace Attorney Investigation 2, both games have gotten a full graphical overhaul so the sprite-based visuals used when Edgeworth is walking around a crime scene have been transformed into high-quality hand-drawn 2D visuals here. They look a bit weird because the body proportions look somewhat “chibi” in when changing the art style in this way. That said, purists can still opt to play the game with the original visuals (though character portraits will remain high-definition). In addition to this, this Compilation has a gallery of production art, promotional art, in-game art, and a music mode to listen to the games’ soundtracks.

Finally, I should note that while there are only two games in this bundle compared to the three games in most other Ace Attorney bundles on Nintendo Switch, the $40 price tag more than makes up for this comparative lack of content.

Overall, while I may not like the Ace Attorney Investigations games quite as much as the mainline Ace Attorney games, these are still excellent Graphic Adventure and Visual Novel games, presented in their best form, and we can thank this bundle for being our first chance to play Ace Attorney Investigations 2 in an official English release in the West. What’s more, with this game’s release, we now have every canon game in the Ace Attorney series playable on Nintendo Switch (we’re only missing the non-canon Professor Layton Vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and cameo appearances like Phoenix Wright’s appearance in Marvel Vs. Capcom 3).

If you’re an Ace Attorney fan, Ace Attorney Investigations Collection is a must-have. If not, you’re probably better off starting with Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy where both Miles Edgeworth and Dick Gumshoe are introduced, or my personal favorite in the series, prequel Compilation The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles. Still, even though this isn’t a good entry point for the series and it’s my least favorite of the whole bunch, it’s still very good and I do recommend playing it after playing one or both of those.

tl;dr – Ace Attorney Investigations Collection is a Compilation of Graphic Adventure and Visual Novel games Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth and Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit, both spin-off side-story games in the Ace Attorney series. While this is probably my least favorite pair of games in the franchise, they’re still excellent games, presented at their very best on a modern platform, and it’s certainly nice that this is the first Western release of Investigations 2. I don’t recommend this as a starting point for Ace Attorney newbies, but if you’ve played other games in the series and want more, this is absolutely worth a look.

Grade: B+

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