I’m back once more with another Ace Attorney review! This time I’ll be looking at Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. It’s the 4th game in the franchise and is the first Ace Attorney game to get released only for the Nintendo DS back in 2007. The story takes place 7 years after the original trilogy and features a brand new main character, Apollo Justice. Like Phoenix in the original game, Apollo has just gotten his Attorney Badge and is about to start his first trial. Unlike Phoenix in the original game, this one wouldn’t be so easy. But I’ll get back to that later.

Enjoy!

Sound - 10/10

This is a rating that will never change no matter what game of the franchise you throw at me. The music is fantastic and actually sounds a lot more clean thanks to the DS’ capabilities, with there being a lot more instruments included as well. Some shining examples of this are the Pursuit theme or the Prosecutor’s theme song. Other sound effects remain as funny as they have always been. Great job to the artists!

Graphics - 10/10

The graphics take the same style as the original trilogy but with a lot more focus and way less visible pixels. Thanks to the higher limits of the DS you can even look through good looking security footage frame by frame or while it’s on loop. The characters you meet get more frames of animation so they look way more realistic and still evenly cartoony. Lastly I noticed that the color pallets used for this game look a lot less rough than they used to which is pleasing to the eye.

Depth - 5/10

The game is easily the shortest up until this point, even shorter than Justice for All. It has the same amount of cases in 4, and while the first case of this game is by far the longest first case in the franchise, the others are all relatively short when compared to their counterparts. The second and third cases are also complete filler so it’s not even like there exists one big plotline for the whole game like in the original or in Trials and Tribulations.

Addictiveness - 7/10

Being so short, there really isn’t much incentive to play it all over again so this game has the least amount of replayability of all of them. While you could realistically play through the entire original trilogy and view it as one big story, this game is its own separate thing with a new main character and almost no recurring characters.

Story - 10/10

The story starts out like every other game, you get thrown right in court without a clue of what’s going on. This time you’re a rookie again though as you’re playing as Apollo Justice instead of the usual Phoenix Wright. Much like in the original game, you meet your mentor, Kristoph Gavin, who will oversee your first trial. And your defendant is …. a hobo. Yeah that’s right, you’re defending a guy who looks like he has been living on the streets for years. Not a good start. You’re once again up against “Rookie Killer” Winston Payne who looks as fabulous as ever. It isn’t until the trial starts that you find out that your hobo client … is really Phoenix Wright. The guy you used to play has. What on earth happened to him, and why is he being accused of murder? You’ll find those answers as you progress through the game. And while half the game is technically filler and not related to the overarching plot, it’s still good filler with interesting crimes and some characters you’ll see again in future installments.

Difficulty - 9/10

I’m rating this slightly lower than the trilogy as I found myself getting really frustrated at how needlessly difficult some parts can be. I vividly remember a witness testimony that was like 20 lines of text long, which is a pain to press and present on without getting penalized. Other times my logic would be spot on but I needed to present the picture of the car instead of the car itself, for example. I still highly enjoyed the game but it has more flaws when it comes to these kinds of things compared to the others.

Overall - 8.5/10

The lowest score so far for an Ace Attorney game but it’s fair. It’s easily the most flawed game out of all of them. Personally I still enjoy it and it’s not my least favorite in the franchise, that honor goes to Justice for All. It has one of my favorite prosecutors and I personally really enjoy Apollo’s character (as can be seen through my profile picture and post layout ). Though I will give sour points for also having my least favorite character of all, Spark Brushel the toothbrush man. God he was annoying.

Anyway, that’s it for this review! I’d love to hear any feedback you may have, positive or negative, as it will help me become better at writing these reviews.