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)

I find the game, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney,
A STEP IN THE WRONG DIRECTION.

Apollo Justice or AJ for short, is the fourth game in the Ace Attorney franchise and the first game to feature a protagonist that isn't Phoenix. As a step away from the interconnected and woven-together plotline of the first trilogy, AJ seems to try and be a starting point for new players as well as a new story to try and capture the hearts of said players. And while this goal is mostly achieved, the blemishes of the larger sprawling narrative rear their head enough that it can be frustrating to call this a "fresh start". For a good fresh start, one would expect a decent spread of cases with a clear and concise difficulty curve, alongside a new mechanic or two, something to keep long-time players invested in this "new direction". Unfortunately, that new mechanic is so poorly designed within both the context of the story and gameplay that it almost beats the Psyche-Locks from JFA in just how much it sucks. AJ does a lot right, and a lot wrong, keeping the series from besting its previous highs or even coming close to matching them. AA1 this is not, and T&T this isn't. Yet even with all that said, AJ has some stand-out moments making it worthwhile to play and experience.

As per usual first case fashion, we are introduced to the court system via a tutorial case which gets the player acquainted with the game. It wasn't until T&T that for the first time, these first cases actually mattered to the main plot, but luckily it wasn't the only one either. AJ keeps up and starts a newly born tradition of giving the player breadcrumbs of the overarching story during the tutorial case to get them hooked and invested. Now, considering the fact that AJ intends to be a "fresh start" for the franchise, it isn't a wonder that many characters from the previous games are forgotten in favor of new ones. In fact, the whole plot of Apollo Justice takes place seven years after the trilogy. So, now with this tutorial, we the players are being introduced to all of the new faces as well as any prospective returning ones. AJ uses the tutorial to introduce us to the protagonist of the game, Apollo Justice. This is Apollo's first case, so in typical Ace Attorney fashion, this justifies giving an explanation of the mechanics of the Court Record, Cross-Examining witnesses, and Presenting Evidence. However, unlike previous games, you don't have to actually get taught again! They finally learned after three games that maybe not everyone is new to the series! So for the first time, a returning player can skip the tutorial nonsense and get straight into the story and I can really appreciate it. And boy oh boy, that story sure is something.

However, more important than the story is that new mechanic. Let's talk about Perceiving. In case 2, Apollo suddenly learns he can focus really hard on the statement that a witness is making and perceive it in slow-motion. What this does is slow down the witness giving a statement in their testimony and allow the player to look at the witness for any small, normally imperceivable nervous ticks. This ranges from quite noticeable comically large gulps of nervousness to the tiniest fucking twitching imaginable in places that Apollo physically cannot see normally. Here is the problem with this. Most of the stuff that was pulled off in the previous titles that seemed unexplainably bullshit happened out of the court. The court was where facts, logic, and evidence shine brightest. And even the systems that employed bullshit such as the Psyche-locks of JFA still required evidence to prove their bullshit! What AJ gets wrong with the Perceive system is taking the agency and cold hard truth out of the player's defined grasp. Ace Attorney is defined by its gameplay experience being dictated by the same core principles regardless of which facet of the game you currently embody. Whether you are in court or out, the same actions will lead you to continue the story and the case at large. But perceiving doesn't fucking do that! For a good portion of the game you are handheld on being able to perceive on statements where there is something to perceive. Then once you are in the perceiving state, you must look around at the witness for some unknowable sign that they are lying and point it out when it shows up as they are saying the lie itself. The problem with this is that before you bring up the perceive menu, the game makes it physically impossible to catch this shit! The animations that play in the perceive vision do not exist under the confines of the normal testimony gameplay. So if you can't naturally see it, but the game only lets you choose specific statements does that make it fine? Of fucking course not. After a certain point, the game takes the gloves off and now only certain testimonies have the ability to perceive something. The issue with this is that now I know have to perceive something in this testimony, removing any sort of confusion or misdirection that could be placed within the writing itself and instead placing it in a wild goose chase unconnected from any semblance of real puzzle-solving. Ohhh, but it gets worse. So not only do specific testimonies have perceivabilty, and the things that you can perceive are genuinely invisible to the player normally and even to Apollo, but also the actual diegetic reasoning for the system breaks apart the court system en fucking tirely. When you correctly perceive a nervous habit, Apollo breaks the court system and says "Ah ah ah fucker, you bozo, you absolutely fucking nimrod. You thought you could hide your nervousness from the great Apollo Justice, gumfuck? Well, I can see it, you are lying FUCKER." And then for whatever reason, the rest of the courtroom just accepts this?! Rarely, if ever, does the player need to present any actual evidence to verify or back up their claim on this. The real, genuine court proceedings at this moment are a secondary act to Apollo's mystical powers of vision. Ok, now with this, surely that's all of the problems, right? No, of course not. This is the smoking gun of the whole system. You never perceive outside of court. That may sound like a minor problem, but trust me, it's the biggest yet. The two things that I have touted in each and every review that I have made on the Ace Attorney series are Player-Character Immersion and the Perfect Gameplay Cohesion. Perceiving is the system that cracks both of these eggs at once. The player and character physically can no longer intertwine perfectly with their thoughts and actions because Apollo has powers we do not have and can see things we cannot. Through this power, Apollo cracks the law in half and bends courts to his will in a method so fourth-wall breaking we might as well say he has reached the fifth-wall. But, more so than that, the gameplay cohesion is split. In Ace Attorney, the two halves are Investigating and Trials. However, at its core, the fundamental mechanics of talking and evidence reign supreme REGARDLESS of which part of the game you are currently engaging with. However, you never once perceive someone lying outside of court. Not a single time. This boldly forces a new mechanic that shows up distinctly only in one of the two gameplay types that along with every other issue it has, does not fit in with the rest of the game. Perceiving is a step in the wrong direction, and it's this game's biggest flaw without a doubt.

Coming off of that is the best change that AJ makes, fixing the health system. In JFA, Ace Attorney introduced the Psyche-lock system, and with it, they broke the perfect synergy that the health system had with AA1. Now, the health was designed in a way where it would only fully restore after every case was finished, making any mistakes in specific parts of the case a permanent blemish making it that much harder in court. While the supposed remedy was with the same system that caused it to break in the first place, it made the courtroom-exclusive mistakes a problem in the case at large, turning players from good samaritans into save-scumming freaks. Apollo Justice on the other hand, just about fixed this! Just like AA1, mistakes cannot happen outside of the courtroom, keeping the gameplay of investigations precise and unique from the courtroom counterpart. And, just like before, mistakes refill between parts of a case, making each trial segment have more structural integrity from a gameplay-first perspective. There is one part of the game where this isn't the case, and where mistakes return to outside of the courtroom, and while that segment should indeed be put down for it, the mistakes do not carry over to the next court segment making it self-contained. This is a great thing and almost fixes the Psyche-lock problem, though not entirely.

Here is where things get a little...varied. Difficulty is pretty hard to judge in AJ. Even the tutorial case is more difficult this time around. While the overall difficulty of the game falls around AA1 level, most cases are about AA1 case 4 in difficulty. Never does the game push to case 5 levels of tough, though I can't necessarily call that a bad thing. The difficulty stays pretty consistent throughout the game, rather than having a more well-defined curve. A lot of that difficulty comes from a much larger player-character disconnect than from previous titles, but also just some weird out-of-the-box thought puzzles that simply don't make sense under normal logic. Questions are brought up occasionally that really throw the balance all over the place rather than a smooth ride. It's weird, and never really hits a true sweet spot at any point. And speaking of AA1 case 5, let's talk about characters. While JFA was very bad when it came to most of the characters, the main cast was pretty distinct and well put-together. T&T had Godot which was a large step up from JFA, and in general, T&T had a lot of pretty well-written and unique characters. Well-written enough for me to basically not mention it at all in my review. AJ...falls in a pretty weird spot comparatively. Apollo Justice is not nearly as interesting a protagonist as Phoenix Wright is, just flat out. But to his credit, stepping into Wright's shoes is even harder when he is in the fucking game. Wright is easily the most interesting and best character without a doubt. That's a big problem when you are trying to promote an almost entirely new cast! Trucy is the new Maya and she is certainly...a Maya-like character. I'm sure with some more time Trucy can become a pretty good character, but Maya takes the cake from personability and characterization coming from the story of even just AA1. But the combined weight of the trilogy makes it impossible to beat Maya. Klavier is the new prosecutor and man...he just isn't that great. I really wanted to like him but it feels like his role is more of a spectator than a court combatant. Compared to Godot and Edgeworth, Klavier just isn't interesting. He doesn't have a personality that is all that enjoyable to engage with, and he mostly just spends his time patting Apollo's back so he can find the right answer. Very little time is spent trying to get in Apollo's way which leaves me...conflicted. As a final note, a couple of characters come from AA1 case 5. It's pretty cool to see the grown-up version of Ema Skye as the detective of the game and she is a pretty cool character! But, each time they reference AA1 case 5, it slowly dawns on you that the devs wanted to push players who never saw case 5 (Japanese players who got the original Gyakuten Saiban on GBA) to go and play that.

Speaking of case 5, let's talk about Apollo Justice's game-solve case. Case 4. Man... What a letdown. Here's a quick rundown of why. Leading up to case 4, you solve three cases that feel very unharmonious in nature while in the background the game shouts at you that all will be explained in due time. And then, finally, in case 4, all is explained. Yet, somehow, there is a lot of build-up towards the final conclusions and final solving of the whole game that just falls flat. Some pieces of the puzzle are genuinely thrown out during the rush to the conclusion that I was left baffled. This game obviously, once again, attempts the AA1 case 5 pants-pissage, but without any of the fanfare and elegance that even JFA tried to have. The thing about a game-solve case is that the player should have questions sparingly, but never should these questions be shouted at them. AJ makes a big blunder by constantly wagging its finger, stating "Ah ah, not yet, this a piece of a much larger puzzle you have yet to solve". The reason this is a problem is that when the player finally comes to these conclusions, they don't feel justified or earned. They feel forced. But worse than that, is that the actual elements that define each case don't feel like they connect in any meaningful way to actually game-solve. Story-wise, the puzzle pieces are put together, though not very elegantly. Gameplay-wise? I can't believe that Shu Takumi wrote this. The elements don't add up and somehow the game manages to come to a conclusion that both feels undeserved and unfulfilling. With no spoilers, I can say confidently that Apollo Justice misses the mark to confidently piss my pants AND to conclude its very own self-contained storyline.

Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney is not a bad game, but it is a large step in the wrong direction. Whether it's poorly crafted systems, unbalanced difficulty, or a rushed ending, Apollo Justice misses the mark on what should have been a great new beginning for Ace Attorney. While I can confidently say that much of the gameplay and style of previous titles is here, the new stuff can't compare, and that is partially its very own fault. I wanted to praise this game more, and while I don't think it falls to the depths that JFA did, it's all the more unpleasurable for giving me an ultimately unsatisfying experience. Hopefully, the next Ace Attorney can correct the mistakes that this one made, because if not, a dark path lies ahead for this series.

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

He jugado este juego por primera vez, usando el escalado HD que ofrece la Trilogía de Apollo.

No está... mal. El problema con este juego es que plantea conceptos muy interesantes, pero luego no sabe o qué hacer con ellos o cómo relacionarlos con Apollo, el cuál el pobre se siente como una tercera rueda al verdadero drama que es la historia de Phoenix y Trucy, ¡Y eso me fastidia porque me gusta el personaje de Apollo y cómo está escrito!

Aparte del primer caso, creo que ninguno de los otros dos me ha llegado sorprender demasiado, ni siquiera el final. Viniendo de The Great Ace Attorney, es un poco injusto quizás mi manera de juzgarlo así, pero se nota que aquí Takumi andaba quemado y solo quería terminar de una vez por todas.

En general me lo he pasado bien, el juego es gracioso y entretenido, pero sigo sintiendo que le falta esa chispa de magia que tienen otros Ace Attorney, te deja un poco frío con el resultado (sobre todo el caso final siendo todo tan obvio que apenas hay misterio alguno).

Trucy my beloved.