I gave up on an official translation of Ace Attorney Investigations 2 some time ago. The game, released in Japan for the Nintendo DS all the way back 2011, seemed like the one title in the series that would simply never get an English release, even after the miraculous Great Ace Attorney Chronicles release for modern systems in 2021. The continued adventures of Miles Edgeworth, the dapper, goofy-serious prosecutor who I'm pretty sure has a huge following on Tumblr, were denied to us. It's unlikely, I reasoned, that it would happen 13 years after the fact.

I'm very excited to have been wrong. Ace Attorney Investigations Collection finally brings the sequel to modern consoles with an official English translation, distinct and different from the (reportedly quite good) fan translations. The game has been jazzed up with new HD art, and tweaked to work on a single screen. Having received a preview code I'm finally able to play the spin-off, which, many fans contend, stands tall as one of the great games of the series.

After all these years, I can finally play Ace Attorney Investigations 2. I could stop writing this preview, step away from the computer, and finally see what all the fuss is about.  But I'm not playing it yet. Instead, I've been replaying Ace Attorney Investigations, a game I already finished in 2010.

The embargo stipulation for the preview session allows me to discuss the first three cases of the original game, as well as the first two of the sequel - and for a moment, I considered getting through those first three chapters and jumping right into the game I haven't played yet. Ace Attorney Investigations is, after all, often talked about as a lesser game in the Ace Attorney canon - a cute adventure for Edgeworth that, in my memory, was a pleasant but slightly meandering distraction. The thought of playing it again first felt like (and please forgive this extremely Australian simile) eating the lumps of raw capsicum and rubbery tomato in a pub side salad before digging into the schnitzel I'd ordered. I like the side salad just fine! But it's not what I'm at the pub for. 

But having revisited the first three cases of the game - which, as it turns out, I remember very little of - I can say that I was wrong again. Ace Attorney Investigations isn't an inessential spin-off. It's another properly wonderful Ace Attorney game.

Ace Attorney Investigations is a slightly different style of game than what fans are used to - there are no courtrooms, and you control Miles directly as he wanders through environments. The new chibi art style is a huge improvement over the DS pixel art original, even if a few of the animations have translated to it a little awkwardly. The narrative thrust of the whole thing is the same as the other Ace Attorney games - there's a series of murders to solve, and you need to investigate areas, talk to witnesses, present evidence, and eventually untangle testimonies to get to the truth.

But having revisited the first three cases of the game - which, as it turns out, I remember very little of - I can say that I was wrong again. Ace Attorney Investigations isn't an inessential spin-off. It's another properly wonderful Ace Attorney game.

A new mechanic, unique to the Investigations series, is the ability to deduce. Edgeworth collects facts as he investigates, and two facts can be snapped together in the deduction menu at any time to form a new piece of information. Miles is a prosecutor, but this is really a game about detective work, even more so than the other games in the series. Instead of surprise witnesses in the court, interviews are carried out in the field. Finding important clues  often yields immediate results, and the cases aren't protracted over several court days. This game still has that incredible user experience touch that all the games in the series have, where a successful objection during a testimony leads to the music immediately cutting out. Even without a courtroom or a judge, it still feels like Ace Attorney. It's never quite as exciting as that feeling of stepping into the courtroom, but those court battle elements - the back-and-forth of dissecting a testimony - can pop up at any time in a case.

The first three cases of Ace Attorney Investigations, which ease you into the new gameplay concepts and characters, are great fun. Each one is more isolated than the sprawling investigations of the mainline series - you travel from room to room rather than location to location. They're also jam-packed with easter eggs and fan-favorite characters, all of whom show up to play on their pre-existing relationships with Miles. It's fun to see some of these characters again, even if I know, on some level, I'm being pandered to. Ol' Edgy is a delight, too: the character has always projected a sense of seriousness and competency that might collapse at any moment, and seeing him get flustered by the other characters is always so much fun. Playing as Edgeworth humanizes him a little bit.

The third case also introduces Kay Faraday, the fan-favourite new addition to the cast, and her ability to recreate holographic simulations of crime scenes with her super-fancy phone - the exact kind of silly science this series excels at. The third case uses Kay, and a handful of other new characters, to facilitate a great series of twists and turns. It's one of those cases where the broad shape of what happened becomes clear early, but piecing together all the specifics is quite thrilling.

This game still has that incredible user experience touch that all the games in the series have, where a successful objection during a testimony leads to the music immediately cutting out.

After digging into these cases, I can't help but wonder why I didn't remember it more fondly. Ace Attorney Investigations is the first game in the series directed by Takeshi Yamazaki, who would go on to direct its sequel and the 3DS games in the mainline series, Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice (Shy Takumi, the director behind the first four games, helmed the incredible Great Ace Attorney titles, as well as Ghost Trick). It's possible that my memories of Ace Attorney Investigations have maybe been tainted by my opinions on Dual Destinies, the only Ace Attorney game that I flat-out do not like.

Beyond that, I think time has been good to the Ace Attorney series, and the slowed release schedule lets a game like this one breathe. When Ace Attorney Investigations originally released in 2009, it was, for those of us in the West, essentially an annual series. There had been a new Ace Attorney game on the DS every year since 2005 - and Investigations, as good as it is, wasn't as exciting as the bold (and slightly divisive) Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, not to mention the series highpoint Trials and Tribulations.

Now, releases have slowed - there have been five new games in English since 2009, one of them a crossover with Professor Layton. Revisiting a game like this means revisiting old friends, characters that the series has moved away from in more recent entries. If we ever see an Ace Attorney 7, Edgeworth could, theoretically, put in an appearance - but Dick Gumshoe has not shown up in one of these games for a long time, and neither have many of the side characters from the original trilogy who pop up in here. If there was a time where I felt like there were too many Ace Attorney games featuring these characters, it has long since passed.

Revisiting a game like this means revisiting old friends, characters that the series has moved away from in more recent entries.

Even with my renewed vigor, this isn't as good as peak Ace Attorney. The logic in the solutions isn't always as strong as they are in the best main series games - a few times in the third case I felt like my reasoning for presenting items on certain lines of testimony was just as solid as the actual answer. And for my money, the localization of this game - which is carried over exactly from the DS version - is not as strong as the other games in the series. There are more grammatical issues, more comma splices and run-on sentences, than you'd expect from an Ace Attorney game.

But these are minor quibbles, and I love this game. These characters, these cases, the feeling as the pieces start to fall into place: it's all vintage Ace Attorney. This just makes me all the more excited to move onto the sequel - the one I've been hearing good things about for over a decade now -  for my upcoming review. Ace Attorney Investigations 2 is the headliner of this release, but - judging by the first three cases, at least - the first game is well worth your time, too.

Ace Attorney Investigations Collection releases for Switch, PS4/PS5, Xbox, and PC on September 6, 2024. SUPERJUMP will be publishing a full review, focused on the sequel, at that time. 

Ever thought to yourself that Ace Attorney, as a series, has far too much courtroom shenanigans and that the investigation segments felt bland and formulaic? Well, if you’re this very specific and hypothetical person, boy do I have the games for you: Ace Attorney Investigations Collection

The latest remastered game bundle, Ace Attorney Investigations Collection’s twinned games star fan favourite and cravat enthusiast Miles Edgeworth after the events of the third game in the main series, and they off with an investigation of several cases around an underground smuggling ring. As this is set in the same continuity of the main series, mainstays such as Dick Gumshoe return to support our prosecutor protagonist, with the addition of new characters such as the plucky “master thief” Kay Faraday.

Instead of trying to win a court case, the focus of the gameplay in each case is to unravel the mystery through a variety of investigative techniques. The simplest of these is exploring the crime scenes to gather evidence and talking to witnesses and your allies to uncover facts or questions about the case at hand. This evidence will then either take the form of tangible evidence or clue-like prompts, but more on those in a moment.

Some interactions with characters result in Rebuttals that see you hear a character’s testimony about the events, which can be a witness statement or a character’s opinion on what happened. You can press individual statements to garner more information, and then expose contradictions between what they say and the evidence by presenting the correct evidence. Do this successfully and you can garner more information and inch ever closer to the truth. Get it wrong and your little life bar in the top right takes a little hit while you regroup to try again.

If this sounds familiar to you that’s because it is essentially a cross examination from the main series right down to the similar aesthetic flair of the cut-ins focusing on the eyes. But, if it ain’t broke, does it really need fixing?

Where the Ace Attorney Investigations games deviate is with the Logic mechanic. As I mentioned, you gather a variety of clue-like prompts related to the case as you investigate, which often relate to elements of the case that stand out oddly or question other aspects of the facts. Using Logic, you can piece together two of these clues to gather new information, which is a clever little wrinkle on Ace Attorney’s gameplay.

Like the Rebuttals, you get a penalty for getting these links wrong, but it’s incredibly satisfying when you nail it. Also, some of them lead to that classic Ace Attorney mainstay of turning your thinking entirely on its head. The only criticism I have from the early cases I’ve been able to play for this preview is that these do tend to be a little easy to work out.

This criticism – in fact – I would extend to the whole experience so far. It might change as I go deeper into each game, but nothing I’ve seen so far hasn’t really been a challenge to get through. Though, I must admit, sometimes an easier game is hugely welcome.

A big thing for this release that I have made a concerted effort to check out is the revised visuals and sound. The collection has had new HD visuals of the characters created, and you can switch between the original sprites and these new models in the Options menu. To be honest, the sprites have held up well and I find the chibi-like style of the HD models a little off putting, but the option to switch between the styles is great.

The revised soundtrack is also pretty good and allows the same option to switch back and forth between it and the classic version for the discerning gentleman prosecutor. Also, this collection has the trimmings that these collections have generally had, such as a Gallery, but I’ve not delved too deeply into the bonus content here to avoid spoilers on how to receive the accolades for achieving specific criteria in the games.

At my current point in the games, this shaping up as another excellent collection from the Ace Attorney series, especially as it brings the first of the two games to the West for the first time. It’s also good to see Edgeworth display the discerning eye and quick wit that was only hinted at with a superb (but unevidenced) ego in the main series. I’m looking forward to getting deeper into the core mysteries of both Ace Attorney Investigations games and – hopefully – I’ll have more of a challenge getting to the truth of them.