Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth

2025-03-08
As an extremely handsome and autistic man who wears shirts with ruffles myself, I always related to Miles Edgeworth far more than Phoenix Wright. Thank god Capcom grew the spine to toss out that gullible, spiky-haired simpleton and give us an entire game focused on Edgeworth's "charms". Every episode focuses on a different woman becoming obsessed with Edgeworth's good looks and also he solves a crime. Reader, it's exactly as good as it sounds.

At its core Investigations is just Ace Attorney but with just enough extra gameplay tweaks to make it far more of a game than it's "little more than a visual novel" progenitor. Instead of just using a magnifying glass on a set of fixed screens you can move around the different areas to gather your evidence. And there's a portion where you need to combine various pieces of evidence in your mind to reach conclusions. It's pretty basic but it adds just enough extra "game" to the proceedings to keep it from feeling like the pixel-hunting of the original trilogy. The actual "trial" portion is the same as Ace Attorney only 1) you're not just stuck to that stuffy old courtroom and 2) you get to play as Edgeworth bullying people and sneering at them as he outwits them like the absolute bastard he is.

The rest of the strengths of the original series return in full strength as well. You have absurdly dumb character names like a murder victim called "Mr Deid Mann". The insane character designs with the ultimate payoff of seeing their meltdown animation when you fuck 'em up with Edgeworth's patented Logic Beatdown™. Paired with their absolutely banging themes like ol' Wolf Boy's or Calisto Yew's had me groovin' the whole time. And of course the immaculate vibes and heart and soul that won me over in the original trilogy. Shu Takumi and co at Capcom are so good at churning out great characters especially their penchant for Bad Guys Turning Into Good Guys and Good Guys Who Are Actually Bad guys. I mean I think I liked every major character in this game, with personal standouts being: Shi-Long Lang, Tyrell Bad, and Calisto Yew. Nevermind the team's ability to weave it all together into a set of mysteries and then further into an overarching narrative.

It's funny it feels like people looked down on this entry as being inferior from the original trilogy or at best as a stepping stone for the superior sequel. But there I was instantly hooked and lowkey having a lot more fun than I ever did playing the original trilogy. Really I was probably sold as soon as Edgeworth hit 'em with one of these.

2025-03-09
Note though my review is glowing I'm dinging it down due to some of the cases being pretty obtuse. I dunno I think every game has this problem tbh but it IS really frustrating especially in the final case (which goes on forever).