"A nice try at revitalizing the series, but it's the mediocre characters that drag this down."

Something just felt...wrong about this game. I didn't think much of the last game, Trials and Tribulations, but I had high hopes for Apollo Justice because the DS exclusive case for the first game was easily my favorite in the series, and I was hoping since it was the most recently written that their newest game would live up to that quality.

However, while the whole time it never felt like a played out slogfest like Trials and Tribulations, it was never a joy to play, and I've finally figured out why.


It's the characters.

More specifically, all the main characters have middle of the road, piecemeal personalities.

The fun of the characters in the old games was watching them oscillate between two extremes: Phoenix goes back and forth from trodden upon milquetoast to invincible agent of JUSTICE, Edgeworth from cool fop to insecure perfectionist, Gumshoe from tough guy to clueless goof, etc.

Here everyone shifts from one mild demeanor to another. Apollo is only a slightly bumbling fool that sometimes goes to a slightly righteous attorney who slightly nails the slightly evil bad guys caught in slight lies. Ema (taking the place of Gumshoe) is grumpy woman who turns into slightly less Grumpy woman. Phoenix just cruises along stoned. Instead of exploding into a panic attack mushroom cloud when you finally convict them, suspects just shrug their shoulders with a "meh".

Then there's the biggest failure: Prosecutor Gavin. The man has no qualifying personality traits to speak of. Godat was a lame coffeehouse hipster, but at least he had that trait.

The rival prosecutor in this game is a rock star. Quick, take 10 seconds and come up with a list of all the awesome things you could do with this character in a court of law. Go!


Time's up. Pretty neat list huh? Pyrotechnics in court? Band drama? I bet your awesome list goes on and on.

Now, here's what Capcom came up with:

-Dress him like...Devil May Cry's Dante(???)
-Have him use three German words in every day speech.

That's a wrap! Everyone go home! Paycheck---->earned

If you were to just read a transcript of Gavin's dialog with no other knowledge of him, you'd swear he was a kindly German professor or something. He's only a rockstar because the game just says so, not because of his character.

Even worse, he spends every case guiding Apollo's clueless self until you solve the blindingly obvious case. This was annoying when Mia did it in the older games, and it's even more annoying here coming from the character that's supposed to be your rival. There are no insurmountable obstacles, just suspects shrugging their shoulders, characters shrugging their shoulders, and an antagonist that just wants to be a sweet guy and do your work for you. At no point do you feel like you're struggling against all odds only to turn everything around with CRUSHING LOGIC FOR JUSTICE.


Then there are a bunch of lesser complaints:

- the music quality is technically superior than the Gameboy titles but the actual tunes are mediocre (I can't remember a single one whereas the old ones were all memorable). Sometimes the music doesn't even match up to the mood of the scene.

- the magical lie detecting gem was an awful mechanic of the last two games (why even bother with courts?), but they've replaced it with something worse. Now you have a magical lie detecting BRACELET that uses a tedious mechanic (go through every court conversation in super slo-mo to spot the 5 pixel difference in animation). At least the gem was trying to spice of the investigation portions, the bracelet gets used during the court sequences which were not the area that needed spicing.

- Flashbacks! There are literally HUNDREDS of flashbacks to obvious points made less than five minutes ago. Remember two minutes ago when the judge explained to you in a lengthy speech which cards make a full house in poker? Let's revisit that in a flashback! Yes, I remember. Can we please just move on?

- The killer in every single case is wildly obvious from the start, except in the first case and the only reason that comes as a surprise is because it's completely random with no logical evidence to back it up. You must pick out the killer from the profile lineup and I bet that every single player had to guess at this point because no way did the "clues" given to you make any sort of sense. The "evidence" that reveals the killer is harmless information with an easy explanation, yet this is good enough for an arrest.

- The neat forensics from the DS exclusive first game are back, but the game waits way too long to present them, takes way too long explaining them, and never lets you use them them often enough (only 3 times by the halfway point in the third case!).

- The much lauded 3D crime recreation scenes are nothing special. In fact, they're the exact same recreations from the older games. Remember the old diagrams marking "killer", "victim", and "witness" and you had to point out their locations? Well it's the exact same thing here, only with crude 3D models instead of sprites. You only use this feature once per case, and the solution is always quick and obvious.

bleh. Overall Apollo Justice is an acceptable way to pass time for fans, just don't expect any sheer joy doing so. Here's hoping the upcoming Ace Prosecutor game will revive the series.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 04/21/08

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