There are a number of legitimate complaints you could make about Spirit of Justice. The fact Phoenix, Apollo, and Athena, despite their cases worth of experience, are all written like this is their first time in a courtroom. The fact that the writers forgot to give Nahyuta any redeemable character traits until the last hour of gameplay. The general absurdity of the DC Act in premise alone. These are all rather major detractors, and in a weaker game they might be deal breakers, but here they are at best mild irritants and distractors from the things Spirit of Justice does well.
Trials and Tribulations may still lay claim to the title of best overarching narrative in an Ace Attorney game, but Spirit of Justice undoubtedly has the best set of individual cases in the mainline Ace Attorney series. Cases two through five all have wonderfully layered plots that emphasize the series’ mystery element in a way no prior game does and all choose at least one character from the game’s main cast to highlight and flesh out in a manner usually reserved for final cases. Admittedly, the tutorial and DLC cases are pretty mediocre, but being the game’s bookends, they don’t really interrupt the flow of the game’s narrative in any significant way, and so I’m willing to be more forgiving towards them.
Spirit of Justice is also the first game in the main series since Trials and Tribulations to feel confident in its direction, both in terms of its themes and its characters. You may not like the direction it chooses to take, but I would much prefer any sort of confident direction to Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney's identity crisis or Dual Destinies’ timid testing of the waters. Replaying the Apollo games as a trilogy, I’ve begun to get the distinct impression that nobody, not even Takumi, really knew what to do with Apollo. Three games after Apollo’s introduction, and finally Spirit of Justice is willing to give the man a proper character arc.
I will say though, as much as I love Spirit of Justice, I do wonder where the series will go from here. Apollo has been effectively written out of the story without either of the two major plot threads from his debut title having received any form of resolution. I suppose they could bring him back for a single case just to wrap things up, but it would feel like a bit of an awkward move. Then there’s the issue of having Phoenix remain as a playable character in the series going forward. Personally, I thought that Phoenix was actually used really well in both Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice; his character arc more or less having been completed already, he acts in these games as an impartial observer who enhances the arcs of other characters not necessarily suited for playability—Athena in Turnabout for Tomorrow and Rayfa respectively. This worked in those games, but with there no longer being three lawyers in the picture, I can’t help but feel it would sharpen the focus if they cut the number of playable characters all the way down to one. The obvious solution is to make Athena the main character going forward, and this is what Turnabout Storyteller and the final scene of the game both seem to be pointing towards, but with Yamazaki now out of the picture, I wonder if whoever the next main series writer ends up being would care enough to continue the arc of a barely-developed character in favor of just writing something involving the ever-popular Phoenix Wright. I’m really rooting for Athena Cykes: Ace Attorney, as the dynamic between Athena and Simon in Turnabout Storyteller has a completely different energy to anything else in the series that I think would make for a fresh new start, but I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.
Trials and Tribulations may still lay claim to the title of best overarching narrative in an Ace Attorney game, but Spirit of Justice undoubtedly has the best set of individual cases in the mainline Ace Attorney series. Cases two through five all have wonderfully layered plots that emphasize the series’ mystery element in a way no prior game does and all choose at least one character from the game’s main cast to highlight and flesh out in a manner usually reserved for final cases. Admittedly, the tutorial and DLC cases are pretty mediocre, but being the game’s bookends, they don’t really interrupt the flow of the game’s narrative in any significant way, and so I’m willing to be more forgiving towards them.
Spirit of Justice is also the first game in the main series since Trials and Tribulations to feel confident in its direction, both in terms of its themes and its characters. You may not like the direction it chooses to take, but I would much prefer any sort of confident direction to Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney's identity crisis or Dual Destinies’ timid testing of the waters. Replaying the Apollo games as a trilogy, I’ve begun to get the distinct impression that nobody, not even Takumi, really knew what to do with Apollo. Three games after Apollo’s introduction, and finally Spirit of Justice is willing to give the man a proper character arc.
I will say though, as much as I love Spirit of Justice, I do wonder where the series will go from here. Apollo has been effectively written out of the story without either of the two major plot threads from his debut title having received any form of resolution. I suppose they could bring him back for a single case just to wrap things up, but it would feel like a bit of an awkward move. Then there’s the issue of having Phoenix remain as a playable character in the series going forward. Personally, I thought that Phoenix was actually used really well in both Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice; his character arc more or less having been completed already, he acts in these games as an impartial observer who enhances the arcs of other characters not necessarily suited for playability—Athena in Turnabout for Tomorrow and Rayfa respectively. This worked in those games, but with there no longer being three lawyers in the picture, I can’t help but feel it would sharpen the focus if they cut the number of playable characters all the way down to one. The obvious solution is to make Athena the main character going forward, and this is what Turnabout Storyteller and the final scene of the game both seem to be pointing towards, but with Yamazaki now out of the picture, I wonder if whoever the next main series writer ends up being would care enough to continue the arc of a barely-developed character in favor of just writing something involving the ever-popular Phoenix Wright. I’m really rooting for Athena Cykes: Ace Attorney, as the dynamic between Athena and Simon in Turnabout Storyteller has a completely different energy to anything else in the series that I think would make for a fresh new start, but I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.