Capcom releases actual, real, new Phoenix Wright game

Anyone else playing Dual Destinies? So far (one 3DS battery charge’s worth) it’s very much a classic Phoenix Wright game gameplay-wise, though I’ve yet to do any crime scene investigation which may have changed. It’s remarkable how much actually developing a new game rather than porting a GBA game does to improve the experience, even if the changes are on paper very minor. The art style survives the transition to 3D very well, and while it’s still not exactly a graphical masterpiece, the fact that the characters are properly and charmingly animated (and the cutscenes are fully animated) really helps mitigate the shonkiness of the core Ace Attorney design. As does the fact that finally, after God knows how many games and ports, they’ve stopped insisting that you wade through unskippable slow-crawl text. Holding B to speed things up works properly now, including on stuff like the time-and-place stamps that were previously unskippable. I suspect that as I get further into it I’m going to run into some of the familiar frustrations with the design, but they seem to have made some interface improvements that will limit the impact, including being able to save anywhere. More than anything, though, it’s just great to have new Phoenix Wright.

I bought it but haven’t played yet, still too caught up in GTA fun. Definitely going to make time for it, if not by the holidays then definitely around end of year since I have a lot of travel coming up. Nothing like a handheld adventure for a cross-country flight or two.

I’m trying to take my time with this one, as I fear it’s the last AA game we’ll ever see in the West. I can say that there are mountains of little improvements that address some of the most obnoxiously persistent issues with the series, helping to make this a game you can pick up and play at your leisure rather than needing to dedicate yourself to it 100%. Examples include:

  1. Your character (or Apollo, at a bare minimum) keeps notes on what you’ve been doing in an investigation phase and has a checklist of things you need to do next. No more trying to remind yourself of what you were doing the last time you picked up the game a couple of weeks ago.
  2. When searching an environment for clues/evidence (in addition to being rendered in spiffy 3D, for once), you have an indicator on your cursor that tells you if you’ve already looked at an object before or if there’s something new to be found at a location. This is helpful if you save in the middle of an investigation phase or if you’re revisiting a location from earlier to try and find something you might not have looked at the first time around.

I’ve been enjoying it so far, especially the new prosecutor, and am frankly just glad to have another AA game to play. If Capcom can ever be bothered to go back and localize Investigations 2, then they’ll get back all of my good will. For now, I’m still not entirely thrilled about missing that chapter of the series, but life goes on.

One of my favorite game series of all time. I played the demo for this one a few weeks ago and was really happy with the graphical update for the 3DS. The speed-up the text is huge in this game. Usually when I get a new Phoenix Wright I sit down and play through it to the exclusion of all else. But I’m currently wrapped up in Pokemon, so it’s gonna be a bit before I can sink my teeth into this new one. I don’t want to be distracted by anything else!

I never played a Phoenix Wright game before, but I tried the demo for this release and found it interesting. Is it ok to start out with this one, or is it really recommended that I play the earlier games first for story, character backgrounds, etc?

Narrative-wise, which let’s face it is all there is to a Phoenix Wright game, I’d really recommend starting from the beginning. You’re not going to know who the characters are at all if you just jump into this one. That said, the inter-case story is probably the least interesting bit of the Phoenix Wright narratives. It’s all about the crazy twists during a case.

The first three games are also available on the Wii Shop, which ends up being cheaper than buying all the carts separately. Dunno how it translates to the big screen, though.

Thanks for the tips. Hm, from checking Amazon, the old DS versions are relatively expensive and from random third party sellers (might be counterfeits), and unfortunately I have no Wii. I did see that they released the first three games on iOS for only about USD $17 total, but the free base app crashes outright for me. Their store page mentions something about fixing support for iOS7, so hopefully this crash is related and will be fixed soon.

I may have to get this. The last game I played was Kara no Shoujo which had some similar elements to the Phoenix Wright series, but ultimately flopped on its face for me and ended up very unsatisfying. Been a few years since I’ve played a Phoenix Wright game. Next year we get Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright too!

After delving deeper into Case 2 tonight, I’m still enjoying things quite a bit. The ridiculous charm is applied heavily and frequently in the courtroom scenes, and the investigation scenes are a bit more directed than before (which is nice as it cuts back on pointless wandering). The localization has a number of bizarre grammatical errors and incorrect word use , more than I was accustomed to in the previous games, but is still generally quite good given the sheer volume of text involved. You know, as long as you’re willing to accept the conceit that this game is set in most-certainly-not-Japan-but-definitely-America and can make the necessary suspensions of disbelief.

the conceit that this game is set in most-certainly-not-Japan-but-definitely-America

Definitely the weirdest thing about the whole series. Look, it’s Japan. We all know it’s Japan. It has ancient mystic villages that are older than the country of America. It has live-action TV shows about samurai and ninja. The fast food is sushi and noodles. There’s kanji all over the place. And yet they keep insisting that it’s America.

So, I’m into the second case now. The investigation sections are much improved. It’s still a pixel hunt, but you no longer have to poke blindly at the screen and read the same text over and over again. Discovered clues are marked as such, and I really like the 3D crime scenes, even if it’s not in practice all that different to the old system of scrolling between screens. I’ve got to say, though, I’m beginning to feel like I should play through the Apollo Justice game again first - it’s the one I’ve played least recently, and I’m struggling to remember who some of the characters are and some of the things that have happened.

Really, the only important characters so far from AJ are Phoenix, Apollo and Trucy. The events from AJ that are relevant are mainly the overarcing narrative and a handful of random bits of dialogue that are callbacks to things from the earlier game. If you remember the basic plotline you should generally be fine based on what I’ve seen so far. I plan to finish up case 2 tonight and am really looking forward to the third one (which I hear is unusually good, as the third case in each AA game is almost always the weakest).

If you remember the basic plotline you should generally be fine based on what I’ve seen so far.

I don’t really. I keep having my memory jogged by things in the new game (oh yeah, now I remember the “magic panties” shudder), but other than that the plot is pretty much gone. Like I say, it’s the only game in the series I haven’t played since release.

Just a note that I got the older games to run on my old pre-iOS7 iPad, and this iOS version’s “HD”-ified graphics are terrible. They look as if someone took the nice pixel art from the original games and traced over them using MS Paint. I’m going to back to trying to get the DS versions.

I’m on to Episode 5 now and I have to say some of the initial shine has worn off. While I still love what they’ve done with the investigation side of things (though there’s only a handful of crime scenes to investigate), they’ve carried over some of the handholding/direction to the cross examinations, which I don’t like. Half the time instead of letting you make the breakthrough by finding a contradiction and presenting the relevant evidence, the game just goes ahead and blurts it out for you. Arguably the writing on the middle episodes is a bit half-hearted too, with rather lame characters for the most part, though this final one seems to be picking up.

Finished the DLC case earlier today (having finished the main game a week ago). Overall I liked it quite a bit, and I’m a bit more favorable on the middle episodes than Ginger is, though I will agree that there’s a bit too much handholding at times in the courtroom segments along with the obligatory few times where you need to be following the game’s very specific train of thought even when you’re three steps ahead of your character.

The DLC was fun for what it is, manages to work in plenty of characters and references to the franchise, along with a bit of old-school crime scene investigation. There’s nothing challenging in it at all, especially the second court day, but if you liked the base game then the DLC offers enough meat to be worth the asking price. It’s probably best played after finishing the game, though an argument could be made for putting it in the middle somewhere (though it’s the first case chronologically). Can’t get into that any further without entering spoiler territory, though.

I just finished the intro case and it feels like there’s too much “streamlining.”

That’s a reasonable concern. It’s the first Phoenix Wright game I’ve finished without once referring to GameFaqs. But I prefer to think it’s because I’ve become much smarter.

BTW the iOS version of the originals is on sale for $4.99 to unlock vs $16.99 regular.