Ace Attorney Investigations Review

Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth for the Nintendo DS

My life, much like this site, is pretty binary. It seems like everything I encounter, parodixically enough, is either the best or worst in whatever category it belongs. I love this. I hate that. This thing is excellent. That thing is terrible. Part of why I started this site is because I wanted to see whether any game I played could be put into one of only two categories: good or blog, errr... bad.

And as if on queue, along comes Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth with not only one of the most cumbersome titles of almost any game ever (I mean, shorthandedly you could refer to others in the series as Phoenix Wright or Apollo Justice, Miles Edgeworth is just a clunky name to say out loud (go ahead try it, I won't mind) (or I guess you could just call it Ace Attorney Investigations, except that's even worse! (Also please excuse my excessive parenthesis, I guess you could say... I need parenthetical supervision))) but also by challenging this site simply by being average. Not just average but exceedingly average. I would even go so far as to call it the MOST average.

Where does the title even START!?

But I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth (I'm using the full name just to accentuate how ridiculous it is) is a spin off from the original Phoenix Wright series of Ace Attorney games, following the inhabitant of the other side of the courtroom, the titular prosecutor Miles Edgeworth (so you aren't even really an attorney, making the title even more dumb (I have GOT to stop using parenthesis)). Still, you rarely ever see a court room, and never really prosecute anyone as the game is basically just the investigation half of the other games.

Investigations is less visual novel and more point-and-click adventure (similar to Monkey Island or Syberia), so instead of moving from static screen to static screen you can actually flaunt your crushed velvet suit around the crime scene like you own the place. The new perspective certainly grants credence to these locations being actual places but the flow of the game is as restrictive and rigid as ever. You still need to find the right clues, talk to the right people, and pursue the right chain of logic. It's the same visual novel style with just a little bit of explorative flair.

Believe it or not, this is the Japanese version.

Still, the whole game seems kind of middling. The ratio of old to new characters is dissappointing given the original series' track record, and it seems to me like there are more outrageous leaps of logic than the before (though it has been a while since I played the other games). But I think the biggest issue is that Edgeworth just doesn't make a good protagonist. He was originally intended as a foil to Phoenix Wright's goofy demeanor by being a very proper and competent gentleman. While Phoenix flies by the seat of his pants, Edgeworth uses his brain to stay grounded. He just doesn't have enough quirk to stay entertaining the whole game.

Rather, it would have been interesting to see your rival, the animalistic Agent Lang, as the main character. He's quirky, has resources, and even has his own sidekick. What's more important, he's actually an investigator, instead of just an idealistic prosecutor with a chip on his shoulder.

Much like Edgeworth, the moment to moment plot doesn't feel like there's enough there. New characters come and go to make room for fanservice returns and haphazard plot devices. Old characters are hollow rehashes of their former selves. The only real new addition is a criminally underused 3D recreation device that lets you explore a virtual recreation of the crime scene. It's used about three times.

But the game still retains some modicum of charm throughout. It's still generally interesting to get to the bottom of things and see the story through to its conclusion. Revelations are rather delayed but hit hard when they show. And some of the sprite animations are actually quite well done.

I could watch her talk all day long.

So what does this leave us with? Competence I suppose. Mediocrity if you wanna be mean about it. But it's something that I neither love nor hate. Which presents a conundrum. Is this a zero or a one? Is it ultimately good or bad? Does being the worst game in a series of great games make a bad game? Does being the best anime-style cartoon investigation simulator on the DS count for anything? I know you're waiting with positively bated breath, so here we go.

Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth gets a zero out of one. Just go play those other great Ace Attorney games instead.