"Don’t let the name fool you – this is still very much Phoenix’s story."

We've been getting inundated with Capcom's Ace Attorney games the past year or so. Barely twelve months ago, Justice For All – the second game in the series – came out on our shores. And then, about nine months later, Trials and Tribulations was released, rounding out the three game chronicling the story of Phoenix Wright. Now, not even 4 months later, the fourth and most recent game in the series, Apollo Justice, hit our stores. The game takes a new focus, bringing in a brand new defense attorney (Apollo) to pick up the reigns as the main character as the series begins a new story arc.

If you're a fan of the previous three Ace Attorney games, you should know what to expect here. The core gameplay remains virtually unchanged. Cases are still split up into two sections – investigation and trial. During the investigation portions, you'll lead Apollo around the crime scene and other pertinent areas, talking to witnesses and gathering clues and evidence to use in court the next day. In the trial sequences, you'll be pitted against a prosecutor (who goes by the name of Klavier Gavin this time around) and have to pick apart various witness testimonies, using the evidence you found the previous day. It's still just as fun as it was the first three times around, but the same flaws are there, too. You'll often find yourself thinking one step ahead of the game's logic, and as a result, you may over think certain parts of a testimony and press the wrong piece of evidence. There will also be other portions where it seems like two pieces of evidence will work for the same purpose, but the game is really only looking for one. Thankfully, the number of times this happens seems to have trimmed down from the previous game, which is a nice change. There are probably only two or three times over the course of the game where this becomes a real problem. Annoying trigger pointing during investigation scenes is still prevalent, however, and that problem doesn't look like it will ever really go away.

There are, however, a few new additions to the gameplay, which are welcome changes. Apollo Justice, unlike the first three games in the series, was built from the ground up for the DS and makes better use of the system's functionality. If you're a fan of the series, you may remember the fingerprinting from the DS-specific case in the original game. That has been brought back, as well as a few new touch screen activities like footprint molding and x-rays. These are great additions, but unfortunately they're not utilized as much as they should have been. You'll really only get one chance per case to use these tools, and after that, you won't see them for the rest of the game. It's good that they tried to make use of the hardware, but it's just a bit too sparse. The other new – and best – addition is the new ‘perceive' system. This one takes place in court sessions and has you examining a witness up close to find a nervous tick of theirs while they're giving a testimony. It's pretty neat, but much like the detective work, it's only utilized a few times throughout the game. Apollo Justice does, however, take a few steps back in gameplay, oddly enough. You can't present profiles as evidence anymore unless prompted to, and psyche-locks are gone from investigation segments (except for one bit in the final case). Story-wise it makes sense, but they didn't really fill the gap as well as they should have.

If you've been following the news about the game, you've no doubt heard some unsavory things about the story. Phoenix is still present in the game, but has since been stripped of his attorney badge and makes his living playing piano in a restaurant. Up until the final case, there's not really much to complain about story-wise. The new characters are just as great as the old ones (which may be directly related to the fact that some of them carry nearly identical personalities to their AA1-3 counterparts), and even Phoenix's new personality is an interesting change of pace. The first three cases of the game are well put together and plenty interesting. Everything you'd except from an Ace Attorney game. The problem comes when the final case of the game rolls around, much of which revolves around how Phoenix lost his attorney badge. The finale cases for the previous games have always been really exciting and tense, and always led to a satisfying conclusion. Nothing like that happens here. There's no sense of urgency, and it's hard to care that much about anyone involved. To top if all off, the ending is extremely anticlimactic and doesn't leave you feeling like you accomplished much. It's really too bad, because the rest of the game is very enjoyable, but that last case just doesn't pack the punch that fans have come to expect. The case itself isn't really bad or anything, it just doesn't have the feeling or atmosphere it should.

The other story-wise blunder is how Apollo gets pushed to the side for a good portion of the cases. He almost takes a backseat and has everyone else do all the work for him. Yes, he's new to the job and it's understandable that he's not going to be able to hop in there by himself and solve every case flawlessly, but the show is very often stolen by Klavier or Phoenix himself. Even Trucy, Apollo's sidekick, jumps in to pull him out of trouble numerous times. The idea of brining in a new attorney to take up the reigns is all fine and good, but not if he's not actually doing the defending. Even though the name of the game is Apollo Justice, this is still very much an extension of Phoenix's story and only a mild introduction to Apollo. Hopefully Apollo will come into the forefront in the next game.

As far as production values go, everything has gotten a nice facelift. The new sprites are in a higher resolution and have more fluid animations. The new tunes are pretty good as well. They aren't quite as catchy as the ones found in games one and three, but a few of them (Apollo's Objection! theme being one) are great. There are still silly typos strewn about the game just as there were in the first three games. They aren't as frequent, but they are still there. Thankfully, none of them really affect the game or make any dialogue overly hard to understand. The game is pretty long too, which is nice. Even the tutorial case is pretty beefy this time around. There's a good 10-15 hours of gameplay here, depending on how fast you read and how long it takes you to figure out the logic puzzles. The length is good because the replay value is virtually non-existent, as you'd probably expect. Once you've solved a case, you won't have any trouble remember how you did it – and knowing how everything turns out in the end doesn't make replays all that much fun.

If you've been a fan of the series and are worried about what you've heard about Apollo Justice, know this – the game is just as enjoyable (if not more so) than the first three from a gameplay standpoint. Story-wise, you might be disappointed with the finale, but everything leading up to that is classic Ace Attorney. If you're someone who has too much invested in the older characters and can't bear the though of playing the game without them, you may want to steer clear unless you really need a courtroom fix. If you can welcome the cast change and let go of the past, you'll find a fantastic game ripe with potential for the remainder of the Apollo arc.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/26/08

Game Release: Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney (US, 02/19/08)