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- Capcom
- Capcom
- Capcom
- Capcom
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice
3DS
Released On: Sep 8, 2016
81
7.8
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 66 Critic Reviews
81
88% Positive
58 Reviews
58 Reviews
11% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 66 Critic Reviews
81
88% Positive
58 Reviews
58 Reviews
11% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
It’s hard to find much fault with Spirit of Justice. Dramatically improving upon its predecessors’ storytelling and varying the familiar gameplay elements, this game gives the trilogy – and series, for now – a more-than-polished conclusion that engages the brain as well as the heart.
Can't topple the original trilogy, but as a straight-up mystery game, Ace Attorney has never been better. [Nov 2016, p.66]
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 158 User Ratings
7.8
78% Positive
123 Ratings
123 Ratings
8% Mixed
12 Ratings
12 Ratings
15% Negative
23 Ratings
23 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 158 User Ratings
7.8
78% Positive
123 Ratings
123 Ratings
8% Mixed
12 Ratings
12 Ratings
15% Negative
23 Ratings
23 Ratings
Khura’in is a compelling setting, and Spirit of Justice does a good job of building a world rich with history and lore. Learning about the culture and what led to its corrupt legal system is both fascinating and riveting. While Spirit of Justice brings little novelty to the series and relies on a familiar gameplay system, it nonetheless offers a story full of intrigue and puzzles that are satisfying to solve.
Spirit of Justice is a must-play for fans of Phoenix Wright’s continuing adventures. Though some minor mechanical quibbles remain, this is, by far, the most intuitive and visually engaging entry in the series. The amount of innovation and genuine humor found throughout paint a rosy picture for the future of the franchise and make Spirit of Justice the freshest courtroom since the first.
A solid addition to the franchise. At times, it feels like it's more of the same and just spinning its wheels, but even at that point, it's charming and fun to play. The cases are strong, the characters are funny, and the visuals are delightful. It doesn't reinvent the wheel or drastically change up the series, but it doesn't need to. The title provides enough satisfying payoff for long-term subplots that it carries itself through the weaker moments.
Spirit of Justice is exactly what you're expecting. The merits and the flaws the series is usual to embody are massively present, so you know what you're going to buy.
There’s enough snappy dialogue and silliness in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice to satisfy long-term series fans, and the conventional courtroom sequences still feel rewarding when you get on a roll and a witness starts to unravel. But the heavy-handed mysticism of its bloated middle act and the general lack of innovation makes for a less than essential entry in the Phoenix Wright saga on the whole.
Perhaps a controversial opinion, but this is easily the best game in the Ace Attorney franchise. The Ace Attorney games have all been fantastic, and I love each one of them very much, but in my opinion this one has the best plot, characters, and music out of all of them. All of the cases are fun (even the ones with less plot relevance), which is not something you can say for all the games in the franchise. I certainly recommend you play the other 5 games first (or at least 4 and 5), but this game is an absolute must-play in my books.
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3DS
If you do not like Visual Novels, you will not like this game. Period.
That being said, this game sets the bar incredibly high for the Visual Novel medium in the English speaking world, a bar which was already hard to match considering the previous quality of the series. Gyakuten Saiban 6, known as Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice somehow manages to continue the high standards of writing that the previous 5 titles in the main line series had managed, and excel in in the presentation of the narrative.
The music is superb. The game is full of contextual clues and foreshadowing for plot points that are sprinkled all over the narrative. For the first time in the series, the game has clues that the in-game characters do not point out, but you as the player can find and make a mental note of, which can provide clues for future plot progression and plot twists. Even the English title of this game has a double meaning. This title would seem to the first time player to play off the mysticism aspect of the new setting, however the title also represents Apollo Justice himself, as he grows and finally surpasses Phoenix Wright.
The 3d engine this title runs is a reworked Dual Destines one, and is far more optimized for this game. This allows for full in engine cutscenes using the in game models. They look fine for the most part. It is a 3ds game, so don't expect anything too realistic looking.
The complaints for this title are fairly minor. Case 4 is somewhat weak and there are less animated cutscenes than in the previous 3ds title. That's really it honestly.
The only thing I can say to people looking to jump into this game is that this game, unlike Dual Destinies does rely on the player having some prior knowledge of the previous games. Jumping into the Phoenix Wright series blind with this title is not recommended.
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3DS
I'm a huge fan of the Phoenix Wright series: I own nearly all installments of the franchise (including Vs Layton) and I practically love every single one of them - maybe AAI a little less - and while I don't own all of them because of external reasons (PLEASE bring dai gyakuten saiban and gyakuten kenji 2 already PLEASE!), I constantly replay each one of them once a year. For over 10 years.
So it's no surprise if this game will get a 10 out of 10 from me. To be fair I was nearly going for a 9 for a pretty small reason, but then I thought that this game deserves all the love it can get. And the reason is, this game's true name should be Apollo Justice 2.
Yep, remember that pipsqueak that nobody cared in that supposedly new installment of the franchise? the one that apparently nobody liked and forcing them to make Phoenix return? Well I do because I loved Apollo Justice and he had quite the potential to become a better character, and in Dual Destiny he was mostly a side character where all the developed was for Athena instead. And even then Athena is still quite anonymous if you ask me.
But in Spirit of Justice, Apollo is the main protagonist. Sure, Phoenix and Athena are still there and the first case it's one of the best of the series so far (with only Apollo Justice's first case being, in my opinion, still the best for story importance), but Apollo will soon steal the scene and, at long last, he'll get his deserved backstory filled up and going as we finally know what happened to his family and what this will mean for him.
I can't spoil the game for obvious reasons however I can say a few things that make this game good.
For starters, this is (I think) the second game in the entire series that has a story that is straightforward and doesn't jump all over with its chapters, with only the first game doing the story like this. Basically, each chapter pushes the story forward without jumping back and forth between them, which became quite the common thing since Justice for All (I'm not lying: the first case in JFA is actually the second, and only the third and fourth cases are chronologically correct). This makes the story feel more tense and you'll always want to see what's gonna happen next.
Secondly, the setting of the game is different but not just that: the mentality of the people will make you, the player, feel in danger: you'll soon discover that whoever tries to help the defendant gets the same punishment as them, including death. So from the very beginning, you'll feel underpowered and I never felt that way in a long time, but in a positive way. It's just good story writing and dialogue that helps you immerse into the setting and it's amazing.
And third, while the story is good, It's the characters that definitely make the game worth it: apollo becomes a better leader, Trucy is back and we get to see her weak side for once - which is something that was never shown to this day - and we get to see Maya **** for some reason she just feels as bland as she was in the original trilogy. Yeah, I wasn't a big fan of her but only because she just feels bland and very uninteresting, but this is just my opinion.
There is more to be said but it would go into spoiler territory, so I want to tell you why this game nearly got a 8-9 **** that is, the game is underwhelming in some parts. Very, very underwhelming.
For one thing the game has 5 cases (6 with the dlc) and only 3 of them are really relevant to the main story, with the other 2 being completely unrelated. However, while the 2nd case was good because it was very well done and it had trucy in it, it's the 4th is just bad and feels rushed as it doesn't even have an investigation scene and has Athena in it (the only case where she is in the game). They are not terrible by all means necessary and while I could defend the 2nd case for its quality, it's the 4th case that ruins it for the wrong reasons: if it was removed nobody would miss it. And the 6th case, while a nice throwback to the original games thanks to Maya being the assistant again, it wasn't very spectacular at all and it's definitely inferior to the 6th case of Dual Destinies. In other words, they went with quantity rather than quality and among 6 cases, only 3 are just the "best" ones.
Also the new seance mechanic is a nice touch, but it's not easy to get used to it and you might fail quite a lot of times before understanding how it works.
So do I recommend it? If you're a fan of the series you probably already have it but if you don't, I highly recommend it without restrictions: sure half of the cases aren't great but I never thought to quit because of them and even if underwhelming, they were still fun to play. And the fact that the story is played throughout the entire game instead of few parts is a nice touch that really helps making this one of the game chapters.
Also, enjoy the first case's ****'s amazing.
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3DS
As a long Ace Attorney fan, I think this is the vote I'd give for this game. A not full 5.
Let's start witht he basis:
1) Gameplay: It's overall ok. It's good to see a comeback of some features from the old 4 games like the full examination of an area, the usage of cameras, Ema's forensic abilities, etc. I also liked the divination seance (as gameplay), so there is a somewhat level of challenge.
But
Except for the cross-examination and the divination seance, the rest of the old/new features don't have any kind of penalities, just like in Dual Destinies. Why doesn't the Mood Matrix have penalties? Why doesn't the magatama have penalties? Why does the bracelet a Magatama 2.0, with no real purpose in terms of challenge at all? Why doesn't the Thought Route have penalties like the Logic in AA Investigation series?
Bonus Magatama: between the other "powers", this is probably the most present in the game. And still, its challenging level is zero. In Trials & Tribulations, when you investigate, you find more than 1 person to have red psychelocks, and before to unlock them you're forced to find new clues elsewhere.
In Spirit of Justice everything is guided: You see someone with psychelocks, you're just ready to unlock them. This isn't how features like magatama, mood matrix, bracelet, etc... should work in a game where the player's logic is needed.
2)
Multimedia: This is probably what saves the game more. Graphically there is a big improvement from Dual Destinies, and the music is overall in the standards of the other Ace Attorney music.
My only critic point is how they used the motion capture. Each case has some parts where a character uses them. Unfortunately you notice the quality drops because they look unfitting with the models and the characters. The worst case scenario is during the case 5, in a particular moment a certain character acts like a child because of how unwell they used this feature in the game.
Plus, on 3DS the framerate drops to 30fps or less.
3)
Story: It's a mess just like Dual Destinies.
Again, they used the main characters and tried to connect them somehow, even if the possibilities that that would happen are less than zero. In short, I'm talking about retcons. And unfortunately some characters are victims of this in the game. The presence itself of a country like Khura'In is interesting IF it was placed with other purposes, like, for example, a game where Phoenix is the only character playable, and characters like Apollo, Athena, Trucy, etc weren't connected with the game at all, because they don't have to. But, in this case, Khura'In has just ruin any expectation in a bad way.
And I'm not talking about the characterization of the people in Khura'In, but the motive Khura'In is present in the game. Just like the motive Maya is in the game. This motive is weak and not even explained in the game. Capcom released a "prologue" animated trailer of about 10 minutes where shows why Phoenix traveled in Khura'In, which is because Maya dropped the phone during an attack of a "rebel". But in the game, that video isn't canon. So we don't even have a good start of the game.
Speaking of rebels, I find all this very annoying. Let me explain why.
It's true Ace Attorney isn't meant to be realistic. The law itself in the series is a joke, it's meant to be as simple as possible so that could be understandable for the player.
But I noticed in the last Ace Attorney games they tend to exaggerate all their topics.
In the previous games, you could somehow see that some topics were close to the real life, for example, the role of each character during the crime.
But in this Spirit of Justice, they treat lawyer like gods and demons. Like if they only exist in a fantasy world. "The law system decided to kill all the rebel lawyers" are we serious? How can you compare this to a real life fact? You can't, because it's unrealistic. And so is unrealistic most of this game.
It's this game meant to be fun? Yes. But I remember when Ace Attorney was also serious.
4)
Storytelling:
Short message about how they wrote the cases: three writers devided 6 cases (including the DLC), and you can easily see who wrote what. The first two cases have a large amount of gallery speaking. In the first case, in particular, it's very annoying.
The third and fifth case are known for the veeery long pauses with dots. You only read dots everytime they have to say something. It's really annoying in the game.
The fourth case is probably the best written case in the game, and personally maybe the best case in the game, even if I didn't like it so much due to some motives.
In conclusion... Spirit of Justice is a fun game, somewhat, but with Dual Destinies they just don't work like the previous games.
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3DS
Summary This narrative adventure stars beloved defense attorneys Phoenix Wright and Apollo Justice and sees the return of many familiar faces alongside some exciting new additions. Filled with puzzling cases to solve, the new game also brings popular investigative techniques from previous installments, along with brand new mechanics such as the ...
Platforms:
- 3DS
- iOS (iPhone/iPad)
Initial Release Date: Sep 8, 2016
Developer:
- Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Genres:
