Ace Attorney Apollo Justice

Ace Attorney Apollo Justice
Adventure - Nintendo DS
Battery Backup - 1 save, 1 quicksave
1 player

The latest game in the series, Gyakuten Saiban 4 is the first entry to be made from the ground-up as a Nintendo DS game. I enjoyed the inclusion of DS features in the DS-exclusive case 5 of the first game, so I had high hopes for this one. Unfortunately GS4 not only has the worst gameplay of the entire series, but the plot is so full of holes that the entire game just felt messy.

The new main character that you control is Apollo Justice. Phoenix Wright is definitely still a part of the game, although he has a different role. The first case starts off with a much older Phoenix. Apparently somewhere down the line, he lost his attorney badge. With a promising start like that, you'd think there'd be more to back it up. Thankfully, none of the cases feel like filler. But perhaps that is part of the problem. The thing is, while the first case gives you a lot of questions, and the rest of the game fills in the gaps with answers, the outcome makes less and less sense. First of all, it almost seems like Capcom tried to tie everything together in the most ambitious, but contrived way. I felt the same way about the last case of GS3. But worse than that, when the revelations are made, behaviors are so contrary to the personalities that have been built up, you can't help but to think that the writers missed something.

One thing I'm glad they got rid of was the horrible mysticism of the first 3 games, where Mia would appear out of nowhere and give you the answer when you were stuck. In its stead is "Perceive". Apollo Justice has this power to sense when someone is nervous. Then he can activate "Perceive" and look for any strange habits - perhaps a witness will scratch their nose when they're unsure about something, or they'll look away when they lie. The perceive system, when activated, will analyze a witness' testimony in slow motion. You'll get to zoom in the witness to look for signs of nervousness during key phrases. Find the habit, and call them out on it.

Here's the problem though. It is purely guess and check. Every line of testimony dialog will have 3-4 phrases in it. Not only do you have to be looking at the right place for the nervous habit, but also the right time, when they speak the phrase they're lying about. There is no skill. There is no logic. It is simply a matter of pointing your field of vision at the right zoomed-in location, at the right time. At least with evidence, it's possible to think about and logically deduce testimony contradictions. But Perceive is purely guess and check. Another problem is that it isn't really realistic. If I were lying in a courtroom, and a lawyer said to me, "Wait... I saw you twiddling your fingers. You must be lying!!!", I certainly would not admit to it. Here, many of the witnesses will. There's just too much suspension of disbelief.

And then there's the DS-features. Ema Skye returns from the first game, and she seems to only exist as an opportunity to do stupid forensic tasks. When you need to get a fingerprint, you poke the screen a few times to spread powder, then you blow in the mic to blow the powder away. When you need to compare footprints, you poke the footprint a few times to inject a mold, slide the stylus back and forth to flatten it, then rub it with a stylus, acting as a blow dryer. While these segments are interactive and provide a break from typical j-adventure monotony, the tasks aren't all that enjoyable and just felt thrown-in just because. The only use of the touch screen I liked was a sound mixer you receive in Case 3. It allowed you to play around with equalizer settings to analyze music tracks. That was a creative use and definitely had a role to play in the case itself. But this is an exception rather than the rule.

All in all, Ace Attorney Apollo Justice was still very much like the other games in the series. It has similar humor and tone. Its characters are similarly memorable. It has the same pitfalls. But it adds some new problems as well, due to the gimmicky DS features and poor continuity in the writing. Fans of the series will still enjoy it, but it's still a sloppy Capcom effort.