The 2001 murder mystery visual novel series known as Ace Attorney is highly influential and maintains a strong cult following. It inspired a slew of more stylish games, but I haven't yet played any that can match it for substance.

The trilogy takes place in an exaggeration of the Japanese legal system, in which trials progress at hyper-speed, and defence lawyers are marginalised and downtrodden in the face of perfection-obsessed police and prosecutors. The jury is a formality; the verdict is all down to evidence and testimony, both of which can be manipulated. Phoenix Wright is a rookie lawyer who establishes a talent for wringing the truth from the most unlikely circumstances, with more than a little help from friends, uneasy allies in the legal system, and beyond. The bewildered everyman struggles to navigate the bizarre people around him, numerous abuses of the legal system, and each trial’s surreal developments, while being hilariously belittled at every turn by just about everyone in the room. However, Wright always keeps his head above water just long enough to piece together the truth and wrench the trial back in his favour. You generally already know whodunnit; the joy of the game comes from methodically punching through every lie so that the judge has no room for doubt - you don't get points for guessing the murder method ahead of time!

Outside of court, you prepare for trials in a rudimentary investigation mode, fading between still environments and talking to one character at a time, examining the scene and confronting people with evidence you've acquired. The courtroom
battles, composed like TV legal dramas, are usually more exciting. Wright’s main weapon is doggedly cross-examining a witness' testimony, pressing them for information where necessary (or unnecessary) and presenting contradictory evidence with a dramatic OBJECTION!. It is a simple and perfect mechanic with the occasional twist to keep you on your toes. The games are mostly not that difficult, but with no text history, it can be easy to get stuck if you miss something while investigating, or load the game after a break and forget what you were doing. The toughest parts of the game will ask you to remember details you might easily have forgotten some time after they came up, or make a creative leap to turn the case on its head. These moments are especially cathartic if you can pull them off, but that wasn't always the case for me. In short, there's no shame in taking notes for this game (but if you can't work out the answer, look at a walkthrough and spare yourself the hell of trial-and-error).

The first Ace Attorney game was built for the Game Boy Advance by a team of only seven people in ten months, and written by series creator Shū Takumi in just three months. There are maybe five animations per character, and they might speak about twelve words per text box - and yet the game conveys complex, affecting, immersive and memorable characters and stories with the best of them. Text scrolling matching the pace of characters’ natural speech is a really immersive touch more VNs should use. Whenever I play I happily spend ages trying incorrect options, trying to ferret out all the little jokes and details the writers have concealed. Not every case feels like a masterpiece - some characters outstay their welcome a bit, and the more “episodic” cases not tied to the main story sometimes feel weaker, but they're probably just overshadowed by the excellent main story cases. The iconic soundtrack covers a wide range of genres; its sad music sounds a bit daft with the chiptuney instrumentation but otherwise it nails the atmosphere of each scene.

This trilogy was the first port of Ace Attorney to modern platforms as well as PC. It contains all trials from the first three games, including Rise From The Ashes which first appeared in the DS release. The HD art is very easy on the eye and faithful to the original, to the point where a couple of facial expressions that looked a bit off before also look a bit off here. These games deserved more than this by-the-numbers affair, though. The new UI does the job and is less brown, but still quite bland. There are no special features included, not even concept art (and I miss the microphone support the DS games had). The DLC is merely a collection of rearranged pieces from the soundtrack. Most frustratingly, there are still many uncorrected typos after all this time, especially in games 2 and 3. Later ports do a better job on these fronts but Capcom should have shown more love to the original trilogy.

Takumi intended for the series to end with the third game, and though he tries his level best to wrap everything up, the series feels like it could go on forever. Thankfully, he came back to write more games in the series, and I hope he'll continue to. I would unhesitatingly recommend Ace Attorney Trilogy to any fan of visual novels, particularly mysteries.