Pace Paw Print

Media Credit: blog.wired.com

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations, the third and final installment in the Phoenix Wright series, continues the same unorthodox courtroom simulation that fans have come to expect from the series, but fails to improve upon and of the problems its predecessor's had.

The player once again controls Phoenix Wright who, along with his assistant Maya Fey, defends people falsely accused of murder. This time Phoenix must deal with the new prosecutor: the mysterious, coffee drinking, visor wearing Godot.

The game continues with the same gameplay that the previous two games had. The game is broken into cases. One half of each case is dedicated to collecting evidence to prove the innocence of the client. The evidence is collected by looking around different areas for clues and talking to people who have some connection with the crime. Talking to people and collecting evidence makes more evidence appear and opens up new topics of conversation. Eventually all the necessary evidence is collected and the case proceeds to the second part.

The second part of the case is where the game is the most entertaining. It takes place in the courtroom where Phoenix listens to the testimony of a witness. Then, using the all the evidence that was collected in the first part, Phoenix points out parts of the testimony that contradict the evidence. It is also sometimes necessary to press the witnesses on parts of their testimony to get them to reveal extra information..

The most enjoyable part of the game is pointing out the contradictions in the witness testimony. It is always fun to see the barely noticeable discrepancy in the testimony and pointing it out. It feels like doing actual detective work.

The characters themselves are the other most memorable part of the game. All the characters, from the main characters that Phoenix interacts with regularly to the characters that are only relevant to the cases, are memorable or at least interesting enough and make the investigation part of the game a lot less tedious then it would be otherwise.

The only character that is not really likable character is the new prosecutor Godot, whose personality traits are limited to his obsession with coffee, his excessive use of metaphor, and his mysterious past; all of which get tiresome quickly.

The only really big problem with this game, and the series as a whole, is how linear the entire game is. This is not a big problem during the investigation part of the game, but becomes a big problem during the trial.

The testimony given during the second part is broken up into different segments. Each segment can be presented with a piece of evidence to show there is a contradiction. Unfortunately only one piece of evidence can be shown for only one section of the testimony to proceed in the game. This causes many annoying situations where there are multiple pieces of evidence that contradict one part of the testimony, or one piece of evidence that contradicts many parts of the testimony, or a piece of evidence that would expose who the real murderer is but cannot be used until that part of the story is reached. There are even times when the contradiction is based on something the witness said earlier, which is not really fair for anyone who is not playing the game in one long session.

This means that there are a number of times when the player has to guess what piece of evidence the creators of the game thought fit best with which part of the testimony. Thankfully at least two thirds of the contradictions found are not like this and can be solved using logic. What is even more annoying is that this was the biggest problem for the first two games and nothing was ever done to fix it.

The story itself is not particularly great either. The game is broken up into five cases. The second and third cases are their own independent stories, but the first, fourth, and fifth cases are linked together in an overarching plot. The first and fourth cases are not too bad; but the fifth case tries to tie the entire series together and eventually begins using secret conspiracies, people coming out of comas looking for revenge, evil twins, and using ghost as witnesses as part of its story. It destroys any illusion of being in a remotely realistic courtroom setting and might make anyone who decided to only play the third game wonder what exactly is going on. It does bring back a number of the characters form the previous games though.

Next year a new game in the series titled Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney is supposed to come out. It stars a whole new cast of characters and is the beginning of a new chapter in the series. While it will be sad to see all the old characters disappear, this franchise really does need a retooling to some degree. Hopefully the new game will fix all the problems the series has had up until now. C+

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