"It's a new era - but the roots are anything but forgotten."

Two floors below ground, an intense poker game is in progress. Suddenly, one man is smashed over the head by an empty bottle of grape juice and killed... as usual, enter Phoenix Wright.

Only, he's now the defendant - no longer an Ace Attorney.

Seven years after the events of Trials and Tribulations, the attorney's badge has been passed to Apollo Justice, a fire-tempered youth with a mysterious bracelet... and his first case is defending Phoenix Wright from his third accusation of murder. A wild trial ensues, and at the end... three more trials await Apollo's Justice. Two shootings and a poisoning - never a day's rest when he and Phoenix's daughter Trucy are on the case!

Graphics are much crisper than the first three games, a fact made crystal-clear late in the game when some of their graphics are intentionally reused. Everyone's animations are a lot smoother, with more frames, smoother edges, more vibrant colors, and more poses - rather reminiscent of PW's "Rise from the Ashes" case, the most recent one programmed for the series before this game. Like that case, the evidence can be examined in 3D and each 3D piece has at least one location where Apollo can make a comment on it, such as noting that the grape juice bottle is completely empty. The third case even features a 90-second full-color 3D music video for a special song related to the case, and the first two crime scenes are frequently explained in a 3D model that recreates the entire area, as well as having wonderful 3D intros to each case. Overall, a massive step up from the first three games, especially in the courtroom area. And it can never be omitted that the "I got you" animations for everyone are simply hilarious - especially Apollo's, which is good because his is the most common one.

The music and sound effects are also very well-chosen. From "Guilty Love", the rockin' theme for new prosecutor Klavier, to a relatively fast Japanese-themed tune for a mob family, to a truly downbeat take on the first case's opening theme, to the new Objection! theme, the many tracks are varied and a pleasure to listen to. One case even lets you take two of the songs and play with them on a sound mixer, selecting which of five instruments will be played and at what volumes to find at least three pieces of evidence. There's even a nice guitar riff when Klavier's playing an air guitar, and several people have their own themes. Sound effects are mostly the same as in the first three games, with a few amusing new ones added in. No complaints here.

The story starts simple. Just look at the first part of this review - a murder leads to a trial. That's the absolute most basic story for each case, naturally, but cases 2, 3, and 4 all have secondary questions raised before the trial, extra "why?"s and "how?"s to figure out. And the biggest "why/"/"how?" of all centers on Phoenix Wright - it's a "what the heck happened to him?". He sure changed... as did the other major returning character, Ema Skye from PW case 5. She's rather moody now, and prefers snacktime to worktime. But she's perfectly willing to watch in scientific nirvana as you do her work for her. Case 4 especially has a rollickingly tangled web of story - one that is almost too satisfying to unravel and reveal. Sure, some parts are foreshadowed a little too obviously, but a couple things still come out of left field for the proper "Wow!" effect.

The writing deserves its own seperate section, as the game is a text adventure at its heart. There are a couple of typos, but nothing so horrible as to distract from the game. Many characters have their own quirks to their speech, such as Klavier's use of a small amount of German, a reporter phrasing most of his text boxes as possible headlines, a punk talking in less-than-intelligible gangster talk, a Russian waitress interjecting "Da" and "Nyet" into her speech while struggling with grammar points, and even some characters who speak in symbols that represent the fictional Borginian language. The names of said characters also follow in the tradition of punning their names in some way, but most of them are much subtler this time - no clear ones like Detective Dick Gumshoe, Redd White of Bluecorp, or April May. Besides Apollo and Trucy, and perennial pushover prosecutor Winston Payne, there are only about five really obvious bad puns - a change, yes, but it gives the game another layer of intellectual depth. And all the bashing Phoenix took in his three games isn't much compared to all the verbal abuse directed at Apollo... or his gelled-up hair. Wonderfully witty.

Finally, finally, the gameplay itself. The other half of the game's meat. Almost completely unchanged from the third game, with the main difference being that in court, Apollo can "Perceive" witnesses' nervous habits at certain times, drastically slowing down time (represented by the Cross-Examination music slowing down to about 1/4 speed) and allowing him to catch such subtleties as a character playing with their ring or moving their eye. There's a new voice-recognition feature to allow for this, too - in addition to the old standbys of "Objection!", "Hold it!", and "Take that!", Apollo can now yell "Gotcha!" when nervous habits indicate an unwillingness to talk about a certain phrase's real truth. Out of court, the main changes are Ema's scientific tools making a return from PW case 5... there's a new toy or two, and they're spread around the three cases, so they have less of an overall impact. However, there are more places to zoom in on the background - not TOO many, but more than one total. Oh, and profiles can't be presented to people out of court, or in court as evidence anymore... but there's more than enough humor in the writing even without making Trucy comment on Apollo's hair spikes every three seconds. Also, Case 4 is nowhere near as simple as anything before, gameplay-wise... it's a grand experiment in more than one way, one I think works quite well.

There's also some replay value, in that earlier cases can be replayed to see the foreshadowing that was missed... or to see a new perspective on some early events, knowing more about them from later ones.

Buy/Rent/Avoid? BUY. This game doesn't require knowledge of the previous three at all to be a great story by itself - that alone shows great game design. Renting is iffy - if you don't know how the game works, it might not be completable in a rental. Sure, it's not as long as a Final Fantasy game, but there's still an amazingly large amount of straight-through start-to-end gameplay in here.

So... when all the games in the series deserve 10s, yet this one is a cut above in many ways, what can be done score-wise? Being at least the equal of the other three, I must give it a 10 as well until the 11/10 is invented and implemented. Which is about as likely as Phoenix Wright becoming a virtuoso piano player.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 02/27/08

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