Game Review: Ace Attorney Investigations – Miles Edgeworth

The Ace Attorney series has been a very successful and simplistic adventure game series. While it has overtones of classic adventure titles, all the games have displayed characters in a format more reminiscent of a visual novel, displaying the characters as animated portraits with text boxes on the bottom. While this format has worked very well for the series, Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth marks the first time the player can control the characters inside of an environment.

Running in an Ace Attorney Game?! Blasphemy!

The game still follows the classic Ace Attorney format: Someone is murdered, a suspect is wrongly accused, the main character gathers evidence and reveals the killer through various testimonies. However, this game does have some differences.

Miles Edgeworth goes through cycles of story, investigation, and argument. The story is told through text dialogs and various animations, utilizing the animated portraits of the previous Ace Attorney games and the new full body sprites and environments. The argument phase is almost exactly like the previous games. You find contradictions in a suspect’s arguments with evidence and by asking for further testimony by “pressing” the subject.

Get used to a lot of scrolling text!

The true differences in this game show in the investigation phase. You are able to control the characters within the environment and you can have them walk over to areas of the crime scene and have them investigate. The character will either make a comment about suspicious areas or look closer. By looking closer, the player can then further examine the crime scene, gathering evidence or finding contradictions with the evidence using the “deduce” option. There is also the new “logic” function which allows Edgeworth to connect ideas in his head to further elaborate on evidence or to otherwise advance the plot.

Pictured here: LOGIC!

These new options change the gameplay a little bit. The inclusion of the full sprites and environments enhance the game, making it feel more fleshed out, and more reminiscent of an old-school adventure game. The full environment scenes have animations that better tell the story than the portrait style of the old games. Since the characters are not confined to a courtroom, you will go between investigation and interrogation quicker than the previous titles. This breaks up the game more and makes interrogations drag less than they did.

Despite the new gameplay mechanics, the problems with the old Ace Attorney games still show up. Often the player will find themselves knowing exactly what happened too far ahead of time and get impatient while the characters figure it out. This can also lead to presenting some evidence too early and losing life. Players may also encounter the opposite problem, in having no idea what is going on. As a result, the player may use blunt force and bombard the game at random with evidence until they get it right. This also plagues the new “deduction” and “logic” mechanics introduced in the game.

Despite these flaws, Miles Edgeworth is worth playing to fans of the series. The story in this game is one of the best yet. Each case plays in to an overall story, and the situations surrounding each individual crime will have you scratching your head or feeling clever in figuring them out. The game also draws upon many of the characters and aspects of the world created by the franchise. While this will satisfy long time fans, it could certainly confuse players inexperienced with the other games.

The new girl is super moe though ^_^

GAMEPLAY
The new mechanics add a little variety, but this boils down to the same game as the others in the franchise

AESTHETICS
The new sprites and environments work well, and the characters art is memorable

OVERALL
Despite being essentially the same game as the others, the story and new mechanics still make the game enjoyable