With this being Shu Takumi's return to directing an Ace Attorney game, I'm left racking my brain as to why exactly this one feels so much less engaging than the original trilogy. Could it be the slower pace, the fact that all the dialogue feels unnecessarily verbose, especially in the early cases? Is it the character dynamics, which are less fleshed out than their counterparts in the first game? Maybe it's how the music, while pleasant and appropriate for the setting, lacks the same punch as the original trilogy's. Ultimately, it's really that a combination of these factors and more that end up making the entire game feel like one long tutorial. Takumi's ability to wrap a disjointed story up in a tidy little bow remains as strong as ever, but it's getting there that's what I'm more interested in. Ace Attorney is at its best when it combines its simple contextual mechanics to create complex sequences. Pressing to have a witness adapt the testimony in a specific way before presenting evidence, for example. Save for the end of the final case, here you're never asked to do much above the minimum. Press on every statement, flip a piece of evidence to discover a note on its back, shift focus to a different witness when the game tells you to. The new bells and whistles, both deductions and juries, while undeniably entertaining, fail to require any foresight as well. Foresight- this word, to me, is why the series' apex represents a potential new evolution in the field of detective fiction. Not only encouraging but requiring the player to be one step ahead of the proceedings is the genius that made the original trilogy so immediately and lastingly appealing. Where'd it go?