Ace Attorney Investigations Collection Review

13 years after Capcom’s Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit was released exclusively in Japan for the Nintendo DS, Ace Attorney Investigations Collection finally brings that classic game to the world at large, updated with enhanced HD graphics, galleries, and new features for both it and the first title, Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth. Both titles take a look at the widely-beloved lawyer-simulating Ace Attorney franchise from outside the courtroom as one Miles Edgeworth, expert prosecutor, as he and his allies investigate crimes and use logic to pin down the culprits. The two titles have long been considered classics, changing up the series’ formula and offering truly unique experiences that anyone can love, but is this collection worthy of that same praise?

The games themselves play beautifully, at least when using a controller or a keyboard. The Ace Attorney Investigations series differs from the other Ace Attorney titles in that the majority of the runtime has you running around crime scenes in third-person from a sort of top-down view reminiscent of a traditional point-and-click adventure game. For comparison, the main series is almost entirely first person and the only moving you do is moving through menus or adjusting your cursor around a picture. In this collection, using a controller or the keyboard, you can easily pilot Miles around the scenes and interact with people or objects and this plays very smoothly.

There is also mouse support and you can click areas of the screen for Miles to walk to. However, this functionality is somewhat clunky. For one note, the default option for moving is on a per-click basis, preventing you from dragging Miles around a given scene. Thankfully, there is an option to change to dragging! Additionally, whereas the other control methods have the simple and obvious method of hitting the spacebar or pressing A to investigate or interact with something, if you want to use the mouse alone, you have to either click a button at the bottom of the screen or a small icon above Miles’ head while directly in front of and facing the given object or person.

Other elements of using the mouse are nowhere near as clunky, though there are a few minor differences. For one, when investigating an object in your Organizer (this series’ version of the Court Record, or inventory of evidence), clicking and dragging will rotate the object and single clicks will adjust the examination cursor to your mouse cursor’s position. Another click at this point will examine that spot. I do vastly prefer the other control options here too, as with them, you can just scan the examination cursor around the screen to see where it highlights, letting you know what you can investigate. Overall, I’m glad that using the mouse is technically a viable option, especially considering how the investigative scenes are essentially point-and-click adventure game segments, but I find that the other control options are more satisfying to use.

As mentioned earlier, this collection also includes new features. In terms of gameplay, the main additions to focus on are Autoplay, Story Mode, and Chapter Select. There are other appreciated adjustments and inclusions, like key configurations, screen shaking and flashing, and text box transparency, but these are the main obvious updates to look out for. Autoplay works the same here as it does in many other titles, having dialogue automatically progress without any buttons or clicks needed on the player’s part, which can be very satisfying if you have a long scene to read and your hands are otherwise busy with helping you eat a hamburger or dramatically pointing at people around you.

Story Mode takes matters one step further, cutting the player out of the equation entirely. All puzzles, arguments, and investigations are solved without any input. This is very helpful if you get stuck or if you just want to experience the plot without any of the puzzles, though it is not particularly helpful if you want achievements, as those will not unlock if you use Story Mode. Beyond that, it’s a fantastic measure for those who aren’t as fond of the Ace Attorney gameplay as they are the story or for those struggling with some difficult logical leaps.

Lastly, Chapter Select works roughly as you’d expect, offering you the option to play any given chapter of the two titles’ stories, even if you haven’t cleared the preceding chapters. Heard great things about a specific case and want to play it now? Uninterested in the tutorial case and want to jump right into the second chapter? Want to skip to the last chapter to tell all your friends you beat the game faster than any of them? Now you can! Personally, this is my favourite of the new gameplay features, as the main thing I usually dread about remastered games is that I have to start over from the beginning, so having the option to start from whichever chapter I’d like is a big plus in my opinion.

Next up, there’s also the performance upgrades, with updated HD graphics and, if you get the pre-order version, a few rearranged musical tracks. Ace Attorney Investigations Collection looks very pretty with the updated graphics, crisp and clean. There are even new sprites for the characters for when they’re walking around, based on their larger portraits. The new sprites are just as expressive as the larger character sprites used in most dialogue and they work really well in the environments, fitting right in and never even feeling slightly floaty. The shadows aren’t particularly detailed for them, but that’s a very minor fault. Plus, if you preferred the old smaller sprites that look more pixel-y, the option to use them is right there in the settings! It’s a wee bit sad that you have to do that from the title menu and can’t do so from inside the chapters, but it’s a good option all the same.

Then there’s the Gallery, which features a variety of different cool stuff to look at. You can see your Accolades (essentially achievements), Photo Album (featuring the CGs from the chapters you’ve completed), Character Compendium (basically featuring the characters from the chapters you’ve completed), Documentation (featuring concept art and other art pieces made for the games, though be warned of spoilers inside), and the Music Collection (including every single track from both titles in the overall collection as well as the arranged orchestral tracks if you have the pre-order version). The Documentation and the Music Collection are both well worth a visit if you like concept art or music, especially since, in the Music Collection’s case, it features some nice music player functions, like being able to loop a single song or shuffle the tracks and listen to them in a random order. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a way to shuffle all three collections of music together in this way, but any looping or shuffling options are welcome in my book. I definitely adore the music in these games and find myself bopping along to them whenever a particularly jaunty tune plays mid-plot, so having the option to go back and listen to them whenever is very nice.

The Character Compendium is the biggest treat of the bunch however, if I’m being honest. Each character features every single one of their sprites, both the larger and smaller variants included. If you want to watch a character’s breakdown animation again and again, you can go right ahead and do so! Enjoy how a character walks or crouches? Feel free to take a look and compare between the original sprite work and the new HD art! Want to watch someone’s talking animations? Well, uh, you can’t actually see that. Except for a few major animations, those shown in the Compendium are the sprites the characters land on when they aren’t spouting any more dialogue. It may sound like a minor, even petty, complaint, but I was genuinely disappointed when I learned I couldn’t view the talking animations in the Compendium, particularly the more entertaining ones, like how Tabby Lloyd essentially shouts into her mic when she’s pumped or stressed. That aside, this is still an excellent place to reminisce over all the wacky personalities you’ve met across the two games.

Now, that might be where a review like this could end ordinarily… After all, this being a remastered collection of existing titles, I find little point in discussing the plot and characters from a particularly critical angle. As far as I can tell, there aren’t any major changes in the first title’s plot or characterisation from its original release, so the only changes that I assume should matter to original fans would be those I’ve discussed already. I’ve played a chunk of it and I find that it starts a bit slow but soon picks up and delivers a fun experience. Not my favourite Ace Attorney by any means, but neither is it a disappointing experience.

However, Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit is not the same. As stated, this is its first release outside of Japan and so it inherently asks to be reviewed on its own merits. The title picks up very shortly after the first Investigations and, while it does a fantastic job of getting the player up to speed on important details, it also does not shy away from the occasional spoiler, treating that information as stuff you should already know, which I absolutely respect and appreciate. Additionally, compared to the first title’s slow start, Prosecutor’s Gambit hits the ground running with a stunning first chapter filled with cunning logical puzzles to solve. It is, in every way I can tell, a clear improvement on the first instalment, delving deeply into its cast and offering some of the best isolated and overall storylines in the series. It has everything you could want from an Ace Attorney game: incredible puns, fantastic and interesting characters both new and old, plotlines that twist in on themselves to shine new light on old pieces of evidence that suddenly make everything click in a super satisfying way. Then the title even throws in a bit more, featuring a surprising amount of fan service with characters, locations, and gameplay elements making their returns after having been absent for a short or long while.

It is absolutely clear, top-to-bottom, that Prosecutor’s Gambit was made with a great love for the franchise’s long history and I am truly stunned by how well the plotline melds together the existing characters and concepts with its new ideas. Is some of my love for this title being fuelled by the nostalgic treat of seeing one of my favourite underused game mechanics show up again after having appeared in only two prior cases? Yes, definitely. But that is still absolutely a treat to play with and it is far from being an empty appeal to seeing a familiar aspect of older games. Everything here that returns from a prior instalment has a purpose and is used exceptionally well. There are people here I wasn’t expecting to ever see again and certainly didn’t expect to have anything else to do as characters, and Prosecutor’s Gambit proved me wrong on both counts again and again.

Seriously. This 13-year-old game has quickly jumped up near the top of my list of Ace Attorney favourites. The new characters are exceptionally fun, the animations and writing are as tight and funny as ever, and the music is just as stunning as it has ever been. Eddie Fender, a defence attorney from Miles’ past, is not only a very fun character with a top-tier pun for a name, but his theme, “Eddie Fender - Wisecracking Candor”, is the most energetic bop I have heard all year, so full of energy that it never fails to lift my spirits or get me grooving in my chair.

I admit, it’s not a perfect game — there’s a small detail that goes unmentioned in chapter two about the metal detectors that feels blindingly obvious to me but never gets brought up, a small handful of the puns chosen for characters’ names are a little uninspired, and, like most in the Ace Attorney series, there can be frustrating moments where you as the player can make logical connections that appear quite obvious but are held back in the plot until later on. To be a little vague so as to avoid spoilers, this can even get a tad egregious in the first chapter, where Miles has to have a particular detail pointed out to him by another character roughly half an hour after that contradiction entered the plot.

However, these details don’t particularly detract from the experience to any major degree. Sure, I’d love to spend five paragraphs complaining about the metal detectors, and you have no idea how close I am to doing so, but that’s an overall minor point. The pun names are mostly so disappointing because the fanbase had already given those characters names that have had a decade to become entrenched. The fact that the majority of the new names are, in my eyes, way better, is a massive plus. The last matter is similarly small, as annoying as it can feel in the moment. I definitely vastly prefer knowing the trick before the detective does to being blindsided by something they consider obvious. Overall, Prosecutor’s Gambit hits every single goal it seems to set out for itself and I am overjoyed that I’ve finally gotten a chance to play it.

As a bundle of the two titles, Ace Attorney Investigations Collection is very good. It looks amazingly crisp, the new arrangements are nice for a pre-order bonus, and the gameplay handles well, even if I might have preferred the mouse controls to be somewhat different. There are some disappointing aspects to the Gallery, like not actually getting access to all of the sprites, but that is essentially a nitpick. As an official translation and worldwide release of Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit, the collection is truly remarkable. This 13-year-old gem is worth the price of admission alone with its careful plotting and exceptional characters, regardless of any minor grievances I have.