Ace Attorney Investigations Collection completes the series’ western localisation in style

It may be hard to believe, but the Ace Attorney series has now been going for 23 years.

Starting with the Japan-only original on the Game Boy Advance (it was later ported to the DS and given a western release), the series made its way through three generations of Nintendo handhelds, culminating in The Great Ace Attorney 2 on 3DS.

Fans of the games worldwide have lapped up every new instalment, because it’s one of those rare franchises that’s never delivered a bad game. As long as you can get along with the genre – it’s essentially a visual novel with deduction-based puzzle solving – a good time is all but guaranteed.

Despite its popularity, not every Ace Attorney game has made it to the west. Of the 11 entries released on Nintendo handhelds during the series’ first run, three of them – Ace Attorney Investigations 2, The Great Ace Attorney and The Great Ace Attorney 2 – were only released in Japan.

With the GBA, DS and 3DS now very much retired, in recent years Capcom has been re-releasing the games on modern platforms with enhanced illustrations designed to take advantage of their higher resolutions. Back in 2021, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles ticked off two of those three Japan-only games, giving them western localisations for the first time.

Now, with Ace Attorney Investigations Collection, Capcom has ticked off the last of them, ensuring that fans can finally play through the entire series in English for the first time. And it was worth the wait.

As the name implies, Investigations Collection is a two-in-one remaster consisting of two DS spin-off games – Ace Attorney Investigations (which did get a western release) and Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit (which didn’t, until now). In true Ace Attorney fashion, both titles are lengthy affairs, each containing five separate cases for a total of 10 in this compilation.

Naturally, given the heavy emphasis on narrative it would be entering serious spoiler territory to go into anything more than the vaguest of synopses, but over the course of both games you’ll be solving such crimes as a murder in the protagonist’s office, a fire and double murder at an embassy, the death of a president’s bodyguard following a failed assassination attempt, and a murdered prosecutor and defendant.

Rather than original protagonist Phoenix Wright or his eventual replacement Apollo Justice, the Investigations games instead star Miles Edgeworth, the fan-favourite prosecutor who started off as Wright’s rival and eventually turned good guy.

Edgeworth’s snobbish nature and lack of tact make him a fun hero and give the Investigations games a somewhat different tone to the main Ace Attorney series. He’s also usually accompanied by a partner, and while they differ depending on the case their interactions are usually a well-written joy.

Of all the Ace Attorney games, the Investigations entries are among the most hands-on when it comes to the actual investigation process (which is fitting, given the title). Rather than the series’ typical static first-person screens showing locations and NPCs, here much of the game is played in a sort of point-and-click fashion, with Edgeworth visible on the screen and actively walking around each location.

“Of all the Ace Attorney games, the Investigations entries are among the most hands-on when it comes to the actual investigation process (which is fitting, given the title).”

This enables the player to get a better feeling that they’re exploring crime scenes and the like, while discussions and interrogations still cut to close-ups, ensuring the zoomed-out view doesn’t have a negative impact on getting across each character’s personality.

Another key addition to the Investigations games is the Logic screen, which is a sort of second inventory screen that shows different pieces of information and thoughts. By connecting specific combinations of these – literally putting two and two together – the player helps Edgeworth to process the information and come up with theories or ‘gotchas’.

It’s another feature that gives a different feeling to the game. Whereas the other Ace Attorney games starring Wright and Justice often hit the player with a statement and won’t let them proceed until they choose one specific piece of incriminating evidence and whip it out with an earnest “TAKE THAT”, the Logic system feels like it gives the player a bit more freedom with the deduction process, even if behind the scenes it doesn’t really.

Both games are solid entries, then, but this would have been for naught if the remastering process had been handled poorly. Thankfully, Capcom has done a fantastic job here, giving players some freedom in how far the game goes in terms of remastered elements.

The sprites in the point-and-click exploration sections have all been redesigned and redrawn, transforming each character from their low-fi DS versions to pin-sharp recreations. If you don’t like the cleaner look, however, you can turn them back to the DS sprites should you wish.

Other quality of life features are optional too. A new Story mode essentially plays the game for you if you just want to enjoy the plot, while new additions seen in most modern visual novels – the ability to bring up a log of recent dialogue, the ability to autoplay text boxes, and so on – are in there too.

Ultimately, those new to the Ace Attorney series would probably still be advised to go with one of the other collections first. The Phoenix Wright Trilogy and the Apollo Justice Trilogy (the latter of which was only just released in January) provide a purer, more authentic Ace Attorney experience, and while Investigations adds some interesting new features to the mix, in reality the main games still have the slightest of edges in terms of overall enjoyment and dialogue quality.

For long-time fans of the series, however, this new collection is a no-brainer. Not only is each game a solid spin-off expanding the lore regarding Edgeworth and his past, but the fact that the second game is making its debut outside of Japan – finally making the entire Ace Attorney series playable in English for the first time ever – means that in the absence of any actual new entries in the horizon, this will absolutely fill the gavel-shaped hole.