Tuesday 30 Oct 2007

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice for all is a really long winded name for a game. In spite of this, Capcom have produced another gem, one which is close in quality to the first one in the series.

Charming characters and conversations

Justice For All is the second in a trilogy of games starring ace attorney, Phoenix Wright. You play as Phoenix, who along with his assistant Maya is a defender of the truth and a truly upstanding defense attorney. The charm of the series is in the dialogue and the characters; most of the cast are highly eccentric and very entertaining in both their on- screen animations and the personality that comes through in talking to them. For the most part you are simply reading conversations, but if you’re not the bookish type don’t let that put you off – there are still puzzles to solve and cases to crack.

The Ace Attorney series was originally released on the Gameboy Advance in Japan under the name Turnabout Trial, and the games are at heart point-and-click adventures. You are presented with a hand drawn scene at each location, and you can either talk to the person at that location or examine the area. At the beginning of each case Phoenix is usually completely in the dark as to what’s happened, so you’ll need to talk to the defendant and to the police detective (the absent minded but lovable Gumshoe), as well as examine the scene. Once you have all the evidence you need to find, you’ll be whisked to the court case, which in this amazingly efficient world takes place the day after the arrest.

Crazy courtroom capers

The courtroom shenanigans are truly hilarious – there’s a judge who doesn’t ever seem to have a handle on things and is pretty much told what to do by the prosecutor and, at times, you. Then there’s the prosecutor, always a source of much amusement. The main prosecutor in Justice for All is Franziska von Karma, the daughter of Manfred von Karma, the legendary prosecutor whose perfect track record was broken by Phoenix in the last game. Franziska, a child prodigy, has brought her whip from Germany to avenge her father’s loss, and she uses it every chance she gets, on Phoenix, on the Judge, on the witnesses, all the while berating everyone for their foolishly foolish foolishness. No one can confuse the crazy cartoon world Capcom have created for real life, and thankfully many changes are made in the alternate reality to help game play rather than courtroom authenticity.

Contradictions, the ace attorney’s life-blood

In court the process is simple – the prosecutor calls a witness to testify. It is then up to you to cross examine the witness and attempt to find a contradiction in the things they say. This is done by presenting the right piece of evidence (or the correct character profile, a new feature) at the right time in their testimony. By poking enough holes in the witness’ testimony you slowly get to the truth of the matter. If you present the wrong evidence at the wrong time you will quickly annoy the judge with your useless posturing and the defendant is going to have their life cut short (yes, the death penalty seems like the standard sentence for murderers in Phoenix Wright-land.) This is sometimes a problem because the game is quite picky over when a certain piece of evidence is produced – if some evidence contradicts an entire testimony, it’s still important to select the correct sentence to present it against, and at times this is easy to get wrong. Fortunately there is a convenient Save option so you don’t have to redo an entire chapter if you let your client down.

Cracking clever cases, channeling dead people

Most of the cases run multiple days, so once court is wound up for the day its back to investigating for the next day. In Justice for All a new element is added to the investigation in the form of Psyche-locks to make them a little more interesting. The plot of the series involves your assistant, Maya Fey, who is a spirit medium who can channel dead people, taking on their physical form when doing so (it was explained that the plot is not meant to be hyper-realistic right?). She gives you an item called a Magatama which can tell you when a person is trying to hide something. While talking to a character, all of a sudden they will freeze and a number of padlocks will appear on screen indicating this. It is your job now to present the right theory or evidence that will make them confess. It’s a great idea, but at times the evidence or profiles you’re supposed to present are not very obvious at all, and sometimes you have to resort to random trial and error.

The most important part of a game like this is the plot and the cleverness of the scenarios presented. The overarching plot from the first game is continued well – Phoenix visits the village Maya comes from and meets her cousin Pearl, and in the process discovers a lot about the family of his former boss and friend, Mia (the sister of Maya). Some other characters make a welcome return, but giving that away would be spoiling, while the new characters are mostly interesting (in other words, crazy). There are four cases, and while the last one is really clever and arguably the best case so far in the series, the second and third are not quite up to the standard set in the first game. This is mostly evident in the stretching you have to do to figure out what piece of evidence could possibly be relevant to the witness’s testimony or psyche-lock.

Justice for All is a fantastic adventure game with funny and well written dialogue, top notch character designs (but for a few bland ones), and solid cases. Fans of the first game will enjoy this one too, and newcomers won’t be lost due to the very clever first case in which Phoenix has lost his memory and has to quickly learn the ways of court again. I would still recommend playing the first one first to meet all the characters and follow the overall plot, but this is a really solid follow-up.

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Contributor:	Peter

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