The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles
THE GREAT ACE ATTORNEY CHRONICLES is a pair of adventures with a flair for the dramatic
When Capcom announced that The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles would be coming to Steam on day one of its overseas release, the eruption of joy PC players felt was like hearing the words ‘not guilty’ after a long, fierce trial. The original trilogy released in the 2000s only made their way to Steam in 2019, so we’re used to waiting a bit longer.
Not this time, though. The international versions of The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures and The Great Ace Attorney Adventures 2: Resolve are available right out the gate, neatly bundled together in this double feature.
The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles keeps up much of the melodrama and flair from previous games in the series. If you want backstabbing, tragedy, and lawyers slamming their hands on desks, aggressively pointing and shouting— it’s all here. But, after playing all ten cases across both games, I never felt like the story reached the dramatic highs of its predecessors. The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles has all of the drama of a telenovela, but at the heart of the series is its mysteries, and in that respect both games in the bundle are lacking.
The story of the two prequels follows Ryunosuke Naruhodo, a young Japanese lawyer who has travelled from Meiji period Japan to Victorian England to learn about Britain’s legal system—touting itself as one of the greatest judicial systems in the world. Together with his legal assistant Susato Mikotoba, Naruhodo helps defend those in need of legal assistance in a series of dramatic courtroom battles.
Although Naruhodo is Phoenix Wright’s 19th-century ancestor, there’s no connection to the previous games whatsoever, and London as a setting provides a fresh slate for new players and seasoned fans alike. It’s a clever choice of location, and not just because British caricatures are easy pickings. Victorian London is a city with lots of thematic threads, and an important part of the story is the way that Naruhodo has to grapple with London’s seemingly flawless judicial system and the heinous crimes that are lurking in the city’s underbelly.
We’ve seen this with characters in previous games—individuals who seem to place truth and justice above all else, when they don’t really believe that—but this is the first time this duality has been explored on a societal level. It’s an underlying tension that plays out across both games, each case revealing more about London’s superficially pristine way of handling the law, and it’s completely new to the series.
COR BLIMEY GUV’NOR
With this new setting comes a wealth of flamboyant characters. Among them is Susuato, the legal assistant whose impressive knowledge of Britain’s legal system helps stop our leading lawyer floundering on the defence bench more times than I can count. She may be softly spoken, but she’s got a secret martial art move she calls the Susato Toss where she’ll flip Naruhodo off his feet and onto his back when she’s pissed off. There’s also Barok van Zieks, a ferocious prosecutor known as ‘The Grim Reaper of the Old Bailey’, but is really just a big diva. He drinks wine throughout courtroom sessions, crushes his golden chalice in his fist with dramatic flair, and occasionally pounds his boot on the prosecution table when he gets annoyed.
I love how far Capcom has pushed London stereotypes with some of the characters, to the point where it’s completely farcical. Helping you investigate is Tobias Gregson, a Scotland Yard officer who is constantly eating fish and chips wrapped in newspaper (even when he’s been summoned to court), or the lovable street urchin named Gina, whose London accent is so thick I have to slow down my reading and try to decipher what she’s saying.
There’s no connection to the previous games whatsoever
Cases are filled with Victorian London archetypes, and you’ll see a fair share of cabbies, coppers, street peddlers, top-hatted gentlemen, and corseted ladies. And who can forget the addition of the great detective Herlock Sholmes?
Long gone are the days when Sherlock Holmes was an up-tight, stuffy detective. If Frogware’s younger and ‘cooler’ take on the famous character is not your cup of tea, then Capcom’s Herlock Sholmes will have you smashing the tea set. Sholmes leans heavily into the eccentric side of ‘eccentric genius’ and helps Naruhodo with the investigation parts in between trials.
Instead of just collecting witness statements in these sections, you’ll also be helping Sholmes with his less than astute deductions in a new minigame. It involves looking around a scene and picking out clues that help correct Herlock’s erroneous deductions, putting the detective back on the right path.
This deduction minigame does liven up the investigation sections, letting you move the camera through the 3D space instead of just clicking the flat image looking for clues. It feels like you’re properly snooping through an area. But it does pull away from gathering evidence for the trial. Story-wise, these scenes do relate to the up-coming trial in some way or another, like introducing characters who will be taking the witness stand, but it takes up more focus than simply collecting evidence.
I understand Capcom’s desire to shake up the investigative portion with more hands-on deductions, which also makes sense when you’ve got a Sherlock Holmes analog lending a hand, but I miss gathering up all the evidence—there’s not nearly as much to find. There’s a missed feeling of showing up to court with a bag full of mysterious objects, wondering how each one is going to fit into the wider case. There’s no real sense of build-up to the trials here.
The courtroom system has also had a refresh thanks to the new setting. Trials now have a lot more dimensions than just witness testimonies and presenting evidence. Instead of convincing the judge, you now have to prove your client’s innocence to a six-member jury who all have their own thoughts and opinions that you’ll need to crossexamine. It’s a system inherited from the Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright spin-off, and breaks up the mid-trial monotony, ensuring that you won’t be going through the same motions that we’ve seen in every other Phoenix Wright.
If the courtroom wasn’t busy enough with six new jurors, you’ll also have to deal with multiple witnesses taking the stand simultaneously, all of them able to react to each other’s testimony. The focus on one witness is now split between three or even four different people, and you’ll need to keep switching between characters. If one person behaves weirdly to another’s testimony, you need to poke them and find out why.
Together with looking over evidence for clues, dealing with prosecutor shenanigans, and pressing witnesses for more info, there’s a lot to winning a trial. It’s noticeably more dynamic, and I didn’t think that was possible for an Ace Attorney game. And then at the end the jury launches fireballs into an enormous judicial scale to give their verdict.
TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS
This is the first time in the series that it’s delved into a historical setting, exploring the relationship between Japan and Great Britain during the Meiji and Victorian eras. The British Empire is portrayed as imperialistic and arrogant, a view ballooned by the characters banging on about the country’s technological advancements and pristine judicial system. As a result, there’s a lot of racial discrimination toward Naruhodo and other Japanese characters.
It’s a completely fair depiction of Victorian Britain in the 19th century. The fact that the games are made by Japanese developers who want to comment on the social, racial, and class discriminations of the era is a refreshing change in tone for a series that had a whole case about a pair of magical polka-dot bloomers. But the way that the British cast treats the Japanese characters is uncomfortable, and creates jarring tonal shifts in scenes. Japanese characters are described as ‘sneaky’ and ‘shady’, and there’s just a general distrust of anyone who doesn’t have a thick London accent or isn’t shovelling fish and chips into their mouths.
Both games also fall into a lot of typical mystery traps. Surprise conclusions and left-field explanations are prominent in a handful of the cases, which takes much of the fun and dramatic detective work out of the story. During some trials, I felt baffled until the very end, only to be frustrated as an important bit of info was flung into the courtroom for dramatic effect. It often feels like the game favors an outrageous twist over creating a solid, clever plot.
I love the melodramatic theatre of the Ace Attorney series, and choosing to focus on the conflict between London’s orderly reputation and the grim reality of a city full of secrets, with criminals underneath its floorboards, is a welcome addition to the series. But I really play these games for the mystery. There have been cases in previous games where I’ve felt completely involved, making sure all the clues are meticulously analysed and putting all the pieces together for a final, satisfying revelation. I didn’t get those moments in The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles. With all the new systems and scandalous story twists and turns, I think that important feeling is ultimately lost. There’s lots more to do and the game’s presentation is gorgeous, but the mystery of just finding out ‘whodunit’ gets a little buried in all the drama. ■
Surprise conclusions and left-field explanations are prominent