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Excellent production values, including character designs, graphics, and catchy music; great narratives that keep players guessing; gathering clues and using logic to figure things out is always entertaining; lot's of great extras
Sometimes real-world logic and game logic don't line up; Mind Chess is more frustrating than it should be; if you don't know Ace Attorney lore, the narratives won't be as rewarding
The Ace Attorney series has officially been put in its entirety onto Nintendo Switch with the launch of Ace Attorney Investigations Collection. All of the mainline games and the two spin-offs contained within this compilation represent everything Capcom’s odd little series of legal dramas and murder mysteries has to offer. In Investigations Collection, players will get to take on two remastered Nintendo DS-era games: Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth and Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosector’s Gambit, which heretofore had never been localized for the West. Now, fans get to play both with various nips and tucks on Nintendo Switch.
So, what makes the Ace Attorney Investigations games different from the Ace Attorney series proper? Well, Investigations has the elaborate, dialogue-driven back-and-forths between lawyer and suspect that fans expect, but with the twist of being from the prosecutor side of things. The biggest deviation is the ability to roam environments from an overhead, 2D perspective. This level of direct control over a player avatar is pretty different from the Ace Attorney series’ first-person, adventure game-style exploration, where players traverse screen-to-screen via a menu system. I adore this change, myself, but can admit that things don’t feel quite as free-roaming as the Ace Attorney games, with a lot of time spent locked into a single room or area before Edgeworth moves onto somewhere else.
Edgeworth is very hands-on in Investigations Collection, looking for clues, examining evidence, and talking with witnesses and suspects. As is the series’ penchant, environments are resplendently detailed and full of color. Looking around at each new locale is half the fun of these games, and spotting potential clues is akin to spotting Waldo in a Where’s Waldo? book. Albeit, rather a lot easier to do than spotting Waldo, but nonetheless, there’s a decent amount of challenge in putting together all of the clues and sussing out how a particular dialogue exchange needs to play out. As ever, it can be frustrating when the real-world logic of the player doesn’t totally match what the game wants to get across, but these moments are relatively few and fleeting.
Edgeworth has a handful of abilities at his disposal in Investigations, namely Logic, where the player connects facts about a given case to produce a new deduction, Little Thief, where the player recreates and examines crime scenes, and Deduce, where the player must highlight contradictions using evidence. Logic is fun, though never very challenging, and Little Thief is highly entertaining if somewhat underutilized. Deduce might frustrate some players as, on occasion, it isn’t always easy to, well, deduce what the contradiction is that the game is hoping the player will spot. Regardless, all three of Edgeworth’s skills help to spice up the gameplay and keep things interesting.
Mind Chess, however, which is introduced in Prosecutor’s Gambit, is less enjoyable and can become frustrating as it’s overly fastidious in its demands of the player. One wrong move and the game forces a restart, which rapidly grows stale. I can defend a game being hard, but in this instance Mind Chess feels unforgiving for no particular reason, especially when the rest of the challenge in these games isn’t all that high. While it can be satisfying to work out these elaborate dialogue exchanges, they’re not the best and take away a tad from the overall experience in Prosecutor’s Gambit. Not ruin it, mind you—just frustrate.
Both Investigations and Prosecutor’s Gambit benefit from the Ace Attorney series’ exquisite writing and character design. Although over-the-top more often than not, that’s the charm of the various people that Edgeworth (himself included) encounters throughout both stories. Alas, there are some notable typos littered throughout Investigations Collection, which is a shame, but for the most part the localization is handled well. The second game is especially masterful in its storytelling, providing various “ah-ha!” moments at all the right times. For those who have been waiting to play Prosecutor’s Gambit for years since it was released in Japan, it was worth it.
It’s necessary to mention that both of these games are steeped in Ace Attorney lore. This will be wonderful for series fans, but perhaps less so for those who are coming in having never played any of the other games before. I think that for those who have no Ace Attorney knowledge, it might kill some of the impact of the narrative in both Investigations and Prosecutor’s Gambit, especially as it pertains to things like the DL-6 incident, which can be confusing without any context. I would recommend at least familiarizing yourself (or refreshing your memory if it’s been a while since your last playthrough) with the Ace Attorney narrative across the first three games of the original trilogy before launching into Investigations Collection in order to get the most from the story.
One thing that is lost in all of the Ace Attorney collections is the fun of playing with the dual screens on Nintendo DS and 3DS. The touch-less interface in Investigations Collection works just fine, but as someone who played all of these games on their original hardware, I must confess that something is lost in the translation. Manipulating elements using the DS stylus in the original Investigations always felt like a treat, where here using a cursor in its place is simply not as impressive. Still, there’s not much to be done about it, and for those who never experienced it (or are less picky than I am), it’s not going to make a lick of difference.
Another nitpick: I wish that the original pixelated graphics were more authentically portrayed than they are here. Players can choose to toggle pixels on or off, but I felt like the backgrounds are still too smooth no matter which option is picked. Maybe I’m just imagining it? I can appreciate the work that went into modernizing the visuals by properly hand drawing everything for today’s HD consoles, but as someone who adores pixel art, I’m much more impressed with what the designers were able to produce with more limited technology. Maintaining that as accurately as possible is, I think, very important for game preservation and providing players with an authentic playing experience.
There are all sorts of extras in Investigations Collection for those who want to go beyond the games themselves. There’s an animation gallery, a music player, achievements, and concept art to pick through at your leisure that help to enrich the experience even more. For those who aren’t into such things, it might not mean much, but for fans, especially longtime ones, this attention to detail has been a big part of the pleasure of all these Ace Attorney compilations. Those with an interest in game design would do well to take a look at the concept art and soak in the work of true pros.
Ace Attorney Investigations Collection represents the culmination of years of work remastering the entire Ace Attorney series for modern consoles. The love and care can be felt throughout this compilation. While it isn’t perfect, whether it’s the reworked localization and its spelling errors, or some of the quirks of gameplay, these remain two incredibly strong adventure games nonetheless. They’re expertly designed, with gorgeous graphics, catchy music, and fun, engaging gameplay. The stories will keep most players guessing until the end, and those with knowledge of the Ace Attorney series will get the most from them. Definitely consider adding Investigations Collection to your Switch library.
Nintendojo was provided a copy of this game for review by a third party, though that does not affect our recommendation. For every review, Nintendojo uses a standard criteria.
