Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (DS) – Review Repost

For those that miss text adventures or LucasArts style games, or like anything offbeat, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attoney for the DS is definitely a fun, strong plot and character-driven game that can fill the niche with some pretty good brain-teasing puzzles.

Phoenix Wright, simply, is one of those odd Japanese games, based weakly on their classic dating sims, that has been translated to English and brought onto the DS platform. In Phoenix Wright, you play as Phoenix, a just-off-the-bench defense attorney on his first 5 cases in court, defending the innocent of murder charges. The game is set in the near future, where the justice system has been radically revises as to have all criminal court cases take at most 3 days, thus requiring a significant burden of proof on the defendant. As the player, you have to work your lawyer-y skills in court to disprove witnesses’ testimony with evidence and information that you collect, and prevent the prosecution from overruling you. The game, while based on the idea of Japanese dating simulations, feels that it has strong comedic influences from the Adult Swim show, “Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law” in that shouts of “Objection!” and “Hold it!” stand out like the cartoon onomatopoeia effects from Batman, key points are punctuated with fighting sound effects, and the bumbling attitude of Phoenix, though the game’s plot is still (mostly) firmly grounded in reality. I think it’s more that stateside, without the popularity of Harvey Birdman, this game would have had little chance to succeed without a major media push, but with it, the game can easily become popular by word-of-mouth.

Phoenix Wright Defends the Wii…

Found the following off of LJ (TracyModo on LJ), on why there must be a Phoenix Wright for the Wii…

Review – Phoenix Wright – Justice for All (DS)

Phoenix Wright – Justice for All (DS)
“Phoenix Wright – Justice for All”, produced and distributed by Capcom, is extremely well done sequel to the previous DS game, maintaining the same style of play, humor, and courtroom drama while adding a few new twists to the game to make it even better than it’s prequel.

Phoenix Wright: Justice For All – Mid-game thoughts

If you’ve not been paying attention, Phoenix Wright: Justice for All was released recently in Japan, but as it came with both the Japanese and the English translations (switchable at the menu), I would have been stupid to pass up getting this as soon as possible.

The game definitely does not disappoint for fans of the first. The translation is likely the same one that will be used when the game is released in the States come about January, as it includes the same localization approach that the first title had (that is, the game is set somewhere in the United States). The characters are just as interesting, strange, or eccentric as well. I think the cases are a lot more interesting and well-thought out from the start – the twists in the various cases (I’m in the middle of the last case) are pretty good, though if you’re paying attention, they are obvious from about halfway through each case.

The use of the Psyche-Lock which is necessary to get key evidence from certain people is pretty good – it’s like trying to present evidence in court, but you can back off if you don’t think you can break them. Additonally, the health meter, which you get penalized with for wrong steps, is also good – some steps aren’t as bad if mistaken, while a few points you can lose the whole trial if you’re wrong, even if you have full health. Of course, right now I’m stuck at one point where I can lose the whole trial if I’m wrong, and the answer is no where obvious and you’re not give a chance to double check your court records past a certain point. But that’s part of the fun.

Trust me, if you liked the first, it’s almost worth it to get the import – Play Asia had it for cheap on first day release. While the NA release is just around the corner, I just couldn’t wait that long.