The first Ace Attorney game is timeless in its charm, and generally what it's known for is exactly that plus the concepts it sets up for the rest of the trilogy. Some of it holds up to scrutiny, but there are certainly cracks and dusty structural issues in the writing mold.

Primarily, AA1's biggest issues are pacing and the investigations. It's endemic to all but the fourth case, that the pacing will be bloated in ridiculous filler that adds nothing, and goes far too slow working on red herrings and trivial information that most people could easily glean to be falsehoods or fucking about. The investigations are also just never fun, the railroading structure is fine but having such obtuse event triggers that don't make sense or just information drips that only end up making a difference at the trial kind of leaves it with a hanging half that could use trimming.

But, I'd still say AA1 is goodish, and that's primarily because of my feelings with Case 3 and 4. Case 3 may be a terribly paced, contradictory plot mysteries (the head blocks everything BUT THE VAN???? what??), and frontrunner for worst event triggers, but it offers such a strong message on deconstructing idol culture tied to a goodish villain, interesting motive, and humanized people surrounding the villain. Case 4 on the other hand builds off the previous by working on "dealing with the past", with multiple characters all stemming from one incident that are characterized by their relationships between each other. It really works best to the entire game, and while 1-3's final day is my favorite moment, 1-4 is genuinely the best constructed.

The charm as I said is also really beneficial, with each emotional hype moment resonating probably due to how much condensed Capcom energy it is. The music is also excellent, with each time something like Cornered playing firing on all cylinders, getting me giddy every time.

Overall, it's a goodish start that I still recommend trying if you can get past the blech stuff. The series (to my memory) gets better from here anyway. (6.5/10)

The first AA game is one that requires patience. The first case does its job and nothing more. The second case feels rushed and ridiculous, as if it were supposed to be something much more. The third case is fun, but its conclusion leaves a lot to be desired.

It's almost always the finale which makes an AA game. If you can make it through the warm-up zone, you'll get that here too, and thankfully you'll have the bonus case still after that. This isn't one of those situations where you have to tell somebody to "skip the first game", but you do have to go in with some patience and ride it out a bit.

For what it is, this is a good game. For what it sets out to do and achieves, it's a 10 out of 10. I defiantly enjoyed myself. But I have problems that bring it down a lot. Investigations kinda suck and are pretty boring most of the time, this becomes even more of an issue because the court scenes are so awesome. I struggle to see the replay value in it? If your gonna play this game really savour it because I doubt you'd wanna replay it. Again it's not a bad game, far from it. I just feel there are a few problems that effect it. However I will never forget those court scenes, OBJECTION! Also the music is really good.

I think my only exposure to Ace Attorney prior to this was from the Takashi Miike movie and the memes that have come out between Phoenix Wright and Miles Edgeworth - but I think that if anything else does make this game every bit as fun as it is, it's the way in which the courtroom setting also fits too perfectly well with the anime silliness. There's never a moment where it's not funny, but it also mixes perfectly well with how dark some of these cases can be by nature.

If I ever did have any sort of complaint, it's a tad too slight - but I do know for sure this is a game series I'll be playing through a lot if I want to pass the time.