I never took Miles Edgeworth for the investigating type. Playing the original ‘Ace Attorney’ game, a visual novel with bits and pieces of point ‘n click, our young and composed red velvet antagonist never across to me as the kind of person to get his hands dirty on the scene. He’s a prosecutor, not PI—and yet here he is, thrust into multiple cases in CAPCOM’s latest collection of two adventure classics ‘Ace Attorney Investigations Collection’.
Remastered for all console platforms and PC, this set includes a game never before localised for the west, redrawn spritework, some rearranged music tracks, and plenty of production goodies. No need to scrounge about for your Nintendo DS anymore, the real deal is here in a great package for this chaotic courtroom drama series.
Evidence to Rule Them All
The Ace Attorney Investigations Collection contains two spinoffs from CAPCOM’s Ace Attorney series of games, where the player takes the role of prosecutor Miles Edgeworth as he solves a myriad of cases he unexpectedly finds himself tangled up in—all of them being murder cases, naturally. Unlike the mainline series, players have full control of Miles in a 2D environment, where they can walk up to points-of-interest, gather clues related to the case, and challenge witnesses and potential criminals to a battle of wits: by hearing testimony and countering it with evidence!
All the Investigation games are doing is taking what worked in the original games and expanding it into a new perspective, but it works deceptively well. The added control we get lets us explore Ace Attorney’s oddly mixed “Japanifornia” setting in a more in-depth fashion, talking to NPCs on the fly and being able to approach clues, as opposed to simply moving around the world through dialogue boxes. Characters have more spritework and, per series tradition, are emotive aplenty. The Investigations Collection features new HD art alongside the games’ original pixelated sprites and, though I was a bit hesitant to use them at first, after I switched to it I couldn’t help but keep it as is; they’re really well-done.
See, I played the originals years ago, as I’ve said in my preview. Not just these spinoffs but the whole series, which had been ported to the Nintendo DS when it finally got its localisation done. I had really grown used to the dirty pixelated look of these games, down to the portraits and, like all purists, balked at the idea of using the HD sprites like I had with the modern Ace Attorney ports to mobile and home consoles. The good news is that these sprites passed my purity test, the bad news is the newly arranged music tracks do not. Only a few music tracks from the first game were rearranged and they sound busier and seem to be putting up a fight with the overall audio mixing.
Stick to the original score—it’s better for your ears.
In the first Investigations title, we have a number of tools at our disposal to seek out “the truth”, as Miles often calls it. As I said earlier, you’ll investigate crime scenes and prod holes through witness testimony through “rebuttals”. Gathering physical evidence is only part one of the gig, however, as you’ll also come across clues that need to be connected to others to make sense, like concepts of sorts. This also includes using available evidence on hand to “deduce” certain facts from other evidence you find on-scene. And then there is also a certain someone’s gadget you’ll get to use later to ascertain possibilities Miles and the crew didn’t think to entertain.
For the second title, dubbed ‘Prosecutor’s Gambit’, we get a new Mind Chess gimmick that is one of my favourites in the series. In this mode, players will hear out characters who are reluctant to share their side of the story by listening intently and observing their behaviour before interjecting. Some characters give away more details if you draw out the conversation by remaining silent, but other times you’ll need to be on the ball and listen for key information and use it against the opposition. It’s not just a regular game of words either—you’re against the clock and pressing a bad angle can penalise you pretty hard.
Mind this applies to just about any connection you make or evidence you present. There’s a little health bar that takes damage every time your credibility takes a hit. Meaning you can’t just make wild guesses here and there, you’ll need to put a bit of thought behind your “Objections!” lest you be reloading saves over and over. But both games will almost always blatantly nudge you onto the right path as long as you’re reading and not glossing over text in both spoken dialogue and the evidence itself. If you’d rather just follow along to the story, you can turn on “Story Mode” whenever you’d like, which essentially has the game play itself. You won’t unlock achievements with this turned on, however, so keep that in mind.
You can also save almost anywhere and at anytime. Worst case scenario, you can save scum like I occasionally did—without having to reboot your DS!
Now these games are story-heavy. Par for the course, being narrative adventure titles and all that. You don’t need to have played the original games to play Miles Edgeworth’s titles, but it would do you a lot of good as there are plenty of references to his deeds in the other games and gets you better acquainted with the cast of Ace Attorney. Speaking as someone who has played these games many times in the past, your experience will only be enhanced by knowing what came before. But I don’t think either game does a great job of selling you on who Edgeworth, Gumshoe, Franziska, and the like are better than their origin games as the script can only do so much referencing to “event that came before” so many times.
Besides that, if you take the characters at face value, they still make for a good read. The original cast of characters from these games range from weird to insane and the more they drive Edgeworth mad, the more I smiled. In the span of a few weeks time, Edgeworth manages to find himself in a host of situations and different locales. Sometimes he’s the lead investigator, sometimes he’s even a victim. And even when things get dicey, the truth always prevails. These games have very feel-good stories, even in the face of tragedy. The second game builds on from the first almost immediately and goes into more background details about Edgeworth’s past—even familial ties.
Now one thing both Investigation games do struggle with is pacing. The first Miles Edgeworth title starts to drag its feet from the middle case onwards while the second more or less starts right from the first case. It’s one thing to be text heavy, but it often feels like Edgeworth and Co. will go in circles before coming to the same conclusion you’ve likely made minutes before. I can’t say its as bad as some of the 3D games that have come later—but don’t be surprised if you catch yourself slamming through some conversations.
Overall the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection is a great kit of two very fun adventure titles. Alongside new quality-of-life features and development documents on characters and environments, this collection finally completes the series’ transition to modern platforms and brings an untranslated game westward for the first time. Highly recommended for Ace Attorney fans who’ve never played these games before. ∎
Ace Attorney Investigations Collection
Played on
Xbox Series X
PROS
- Great presentation in both HD and retro sprite mode.
- Collection has lots of production goodies.
- Quality-of-life changes make for a more enjoyable read.
CONS
- Pacing issues for both games.
- Best enjoyed by at least playing the original 'Ace Attorney' trilogy.
