Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth

Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth plays like a love letter to fans of the franchise. It is easy enough for a novice to get into it, but is most definitely geared toward those who have played through the other Ace Attorney games featuring Phoenix Wright. While the Ace Attorney series up to this point has focused on the defense side of the courtroom, we now get to play the other part of the field, taking up the role of Miles Edgeworth, Phoenix's old rival and one of the most skilled prosecutors in the business. For fans of the series, this is a long-awaited chance to play one of the most popular characters through a full game - Miles got a bit of play time as a defense attorney stand-in during Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations, but now we get to see him in his natural field as an investigator and prosecutor.

Of course, being a prosecutor makes the traditional courtroom formula a problem. The series so far has focused around a defender seeking to find a wrongfully accused client innocent. Since Edgeworth prosecutes criminals, it makes no sense for the turnabout to occur in the courtroom. As a result, the court scenes have been cut, although the fourth case does have a clever callback to the attorney duels of previous games. On the bright side, the game hasn't lost the over-the-top drama or the cross-examination duels; they've just moved out of the courtroom and into the investigation. Miles will have to break through lies and false evidence to prove the wrongfully accused innocent and find the true culprit behind each crime.

Despite the change in format, the game is definitely an Ace Attorney game, with all the melodrama and humor that entails. The cast of characters features old standbys like Detective Gumshoe, Larry Butz, and Franziska von Karma, but also has clever new characters such as Kay Faraday, an aspiring great thief who makes an unlikely assistant to Edgeworth, and Agent Lang, an interpol agent who hates prosecutors (not unlike how the original characterization of Edgeworth hated defense attorneys). The real highlight, though, not surprisingly, is Edgeworth. He really makes the game different. While Phoenix Wright and Apollo Justice are both bumbling, good-natured defense attorneys who bluff their way to success, Edgeworth is smug, clever, and driven by logic. The game mechanics reflect this, introducing a new logic system that allows you to piece together a crime scene through gathering facts as well as evidence, and the dialogue accurately reflects Edgeworth's personality, rather than making him another Phoenix Wright knockoff.

For fans of the series, the game is worth it for the chance to play Edgeworth alone. For newcomers, be prepared for a game that can best be described as CSI meets Abbott and Costello. That's a compliment - the weirdness, humor, and sheer fun of this game makes it well worth a play through.

I am writing this as a veteran of the series, I don't know how new players would fare here. This review is also spoiler free!

Now to start there have been some updates innovations and changes since Apollo Justice. Scenes are most of the time now played out with full pixelated characters on screen rather than the "from the waist up" view. It'll seem odd at first but it does seem to make investigating large areas easier and after a tiny bit it comes almost naturally. Note: during investigations you can move the little Edgeworth with either the control pad or the stylus.

Edgeworth, not being an attorney, also has a different flow to his stories and almost all scenes happen outside of the courtroom. Edgeworth's new tool is logic, wherein you take two nagging questions and link them together to answer them both. It's not a bad addition but is very simple compared to some of the previous puzzles of the franchise.

References to events and items from the previous games are at every turn, and I mean EVERY turn! So if it's been a while it wouldn't hurt to replay the others first. Jokes and humor are great, and in the usual style, and the characters are definitely Phoenix Wright caliber. Edgeworth himself has lost a bit of his gruffness, he feels like a watered down version of his previous self, but this is kind of inevitable as you didn't have to watch the poor guy screw up nearly as often originally when you couldn't control him. XD

As for the stories they're good, yet the murders tend to be a bit more graphic than in previous games. It's not overly graphic, more like it's finally showing the Teen rating. As good as the stories are, the puzzles are rather simple and feels like you're more following obvious connections until the solution is handed to you.

Overall I'm giving it a four because it really is a great Ace Attorney game with good graphics, writing, music, and stories, but it isn't quite up to the high points that Phoenix set for the series. It's still a must play for fans! :D

If you're a fan of the Ace Attorney series, you know that the pattern of point-n-click investigation and courtroom arguements was starting to wear thin. New characters and a few new gameplay options helped to buoy the setup, but after the prior volume, it seemed to have run out of steam. Enter Miles Edgeworth, with a rather impressive revamp.

Graphics and gameplay have rather improved, and the characters are crisper and better detailed. Also, a more interactive setup, including a large environment 2d character motion, has been added, rather than having to do a screen by screen analysis, allowing for more depth and a better feel to the story.

In place of the rather tedious courtroom tennis match that made up the majority of the AA games, the arguments are much shorter and separated, though the climax encounter tends to drag out a tad longer than necessary. Also included are logical jumps, which edgeworth uses multiple evidence pieces to piece together story bits to advance the plot, rather than relying on finding that last piece of evidence or wandering around looking for the new character interaction.

Audio still is a let down, in that theres little to no voice apart from the few cries of "objection" and "hold it," the mainstays of the series. I'm still puzzled that more can't be included, if only a few crucial snippets from the main characters.

Overall, this is a very good revamp. A lot of it is the same true, but the main meat and potatoes has been overhauled, and prevents much of the frustrated searching that bogged down much of the Ace attorney games.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 42 reviews  4.1 out of 5 stars