seventeen years later apollo justice is a capital CG Cursed Game. harbinger of a new age which never really came- the apollo justice trilogy as a complete package is plainly awkward in how it languidly, disinterestedly follows its namesake. of course you can’t blame apollo justice for the decisions the IP made after it came out but apollo’s role in the franchise absolutely colors how this game is played now. now the game is a thracia 776-like experience, a darker, more punishing, more inconsequential story in the face of a broader conflict, except the two generations of warriors that flanked thracia 776 are both replaced by the one and only Phoenix Wright™.

it’s honestly doubtful that AJ receives the sheer abuse that investigations 1 or dual destinies does online, but it feels like the only game in the series that has yet to find a strong niche. the old guard has always held it apart from their beloved trinity, but yamazaki’s growing base of defenders doesn’t want to claim it either. its fans are often colored as the most vapid, rabid fans in the fanbase, relishing an imagined dynamic between klavier and apollo.

and certainly it’s not a difficult game to poke holes in. the game’s infamously fraught middle cases, regardless of how you view them, just don’t click together. yeah yeah, there are a lot of cinemasins “ding!” issues, but the cases also fall limp dramatically. in court there are scenes and even whole witness interrogations that don’t materially contribute to the core narrative of the mystery, as takumi envelops the player in minutiae to fill space. while both cases are about noble thieves and rotten cops, the game seems to shy away from its own subject matter at key moments. klavier, the series’ most passive rival, completely disengages from the injustice at hand when the corruption of law enforcement is exposed, even when he has a personal connection with the people at stake. apollo’s unique “gimmick” mechanic is also very weak, a task of observation that doesn’t engage with puzzle-solving in relation to the case at all.

but the game’s most glaring sign of incompleteness is the complete epic fail of an ending. the game goes out on a long limb to ground the player lucidly in this entry’s grand, time-spanning mystery. and the gamble pays off! there’s a lot of momentum that gets built up, all for the most bafflingly anticlimactic final day in trial of the entire series. i do not actually have much objection to how phoenix intrudes on the case, it’s not really revolutionary to have the mentor set the stage and deliver a couple pieces of evidence that help you clench the case. but the game completely fizzles after this. it’s so bizarre. for a franchise with so many infamously persistent final bosses, it’s insane how trivial the proceedings of the final court segment of this game are. right after managing a perfect passing-of-the-torch moment in AA3, they completely bungle it here. somehow.

but it’s inaccurate to label apollo justice a failed experiment, the tone and ideas the game is going for are still deployed and in place, if not exactly intact. right out of the gate apollo justice asks the player to consider possibilities that would be considered downright heretical in the rest of the main series. in the original trilogy, the shounen-like, operatic approach to good and evil is striking, but it often drains the game of moral dimension. sure, the games often flirt with the idea that maybe the protagonist would have to make a moral sacrifice, or that an antagonist was a profound victim before lashing out, but you’re always able to manage a perfect victory, in the end. every antagonist unilaterally goes too far in their plotting, even if they were hurt by the world or the people around them.

apollo justice dares to challenge this. the perfect victories that define the original trilogy are nowhere to be found. your catharsis is impeded as each subsequent not guilty verdict represents a new threshold to which you’re forced to subvert the justice system in order to free your unjustly accused clients. for the first time, it seems that the rot in the justice system might not just be a few corrupt Bad Men led by Wrong Ideologies, but instead a set of systemic failings, that the mechanics of justice itself might be at fault. for all of the games that have been centered on the expansion of the wright anything agency as a found family, apollo justice is the only game to lucidly cope with legacy, and how values, practices, and patterns of behavior are passed down (or often, more interestingly, withheld from being passed down).

the game’s final decision feels almost insulting given the current state of the game’s ending but i applaud that the final action the player takes is rendering an explicit moral judgment on a character. it’s an empty choice, but it demonstrates the strength of even the most trivial and obvious decision a person can make. more importantly, it invites every player, even the lowly klavier-apollo shipper, to consider the ethics of what actually happened here, that they are a creator of justice and not just a subject to it.

this attitude pulsates through the entire game. miraculously, ace attorney’s signature attention to detail when it comes to staging and presentation adapts perfectly to a more grounded, desperate story. the soundtrack is much more subdued overall but constantly poised to summon that classic pursuit cornered momentum. the animation maintains its expressive power while respecting and communicating the humanity of its subjects. all in all, apollo justice acquires a unique electricity no other game in the series has. this electricity carries you through even as you’re arguing about the location of a trash can a witness threw a pair of panties into or whatever

i’d consider myself something of an ace attorney superfan. this series’ creative calculus has a way of wringing out pathos that draws my focus to the screen unlike any other franchise. but i can’t deny that after having loved the series for so many years, it can feel weary in how it tells its stories with the same cadence, with the same structure underlying every case. even on the fiftieth replay, apollo justice still feels untamed. never definitive but always suggestive, my heart pours out for ace attorney four.

Dos jogos de NDS de Ace Attorney, esse jogo é a melhor definição de 8 ou 80, uma hora tu tá jogando um dos melhores casos já escritos, outra hora tu tá jogando um dos piores casos já escritos. Dito isso, pra mim é impossível descrever minha experiência em menos de 400 linhas cada caso, então, vou resumir o que eu senti com emojis de texto.

1 caso: :0
2 caso: :/
3 caso: antes do plot: :/ // depois do plot: :0
4 caso: :0000000 e :,)

(Nota: A música de pursuit desse jogo é absurda, a melhor dos jogos de NDS)

My first introduction to the AA series - having now played all of the games, it doesn't live up to the original trilogy, but generally outdoes the later games in the Apollo Justice trilogy. It manages to feel both a little too short (only 4 cases) and also a little too long (2 of the cases are mostly filler), and it doesn't seem willing to commit to Phoenix no longer being the protagonist (as the later games fully back down on). All that said, I still enjoyed it enough to get into the whole series and I still appreciate it for what it is. Also, Klavier is best prosecutor.

WARNING: MINOR SPOILERS
I really adore this game and I wish I could've given it a higher grade, but it still has way too many problems (that are mostly contained within cases 4-2 and 4-3). So here's my review of each case with a score attached to each one of them.

4-1: Feels the most similar to the trilogy with its writing (probably, because Payne is the prosecutor in this case). The mystery and the story are brilliantly crafted and the twist on the mentor character is pretty cool. It's also the case that uses the newly added examine mechanic to its fullest potential. It's not my favorite of the game, but it's still pretty good.
4,5/5
4-2 The first half of this case isn't really that fun to play around in and becomes boring at some moments, but the rest of it kinda makes up for it. The investigation segments drag this case down a lot, but the court segments are still pretty fun. This case expands on a mechanic present in the entire game, which I don't quite like: The Precieve ability. It might be a skill issue from my side, but I can never see the nervous habit and after a while of searching around witnesses torsos I just give up and look up where the nervous tick is.
Anyway, the villain is pretty ok, the defendant is just fine and the witnesses are mostly alright (except Eldoon).
3/5
4-3
The only thing I'm gonna say about this case is that everyone including your character thinks an untrained child can shoot a 40' caliber pistol. The ending trail kinda saves it, but this case made me put the game down for a few days, so... NEXT
2/5

4-4
It's one of the absolute best cases in the franchise (in my opinion). The slow uncovering of an entire conspiracy that made two people lose their lives, because a person was THAT petty and sociopathic, it's just written perfectly and I wouldn't have it any other way. Also, the case contains Gumshoe's only appearance in this Trilogy.
4,75/5