Review: Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth

Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth is the latest game in the Ace Attorney series; a very amusing series of adventure games in which you play an anime-style defense attorney in search of the truth, which consists of both searching for clues in crime scenes as well as defending your clients in court. In this game, however, there is no court aspect; despite the fact that they mixed things up by have you play as the prosecutor from the first 3 games, Miles Edgeworth, you do not actually do any prosecuting. Instead, you simply investigate crime scenes and confront the criminals. This is my first complaint about the game - if a prosecutor is the star, then he should be prosecuting, not doing detective work.

In another change from the standard Ace Attorney gameplay, the investigation parts of the game are conducted from a third-person view, rather than a first-person view. This, I believe, was a good choice - it makes the game feel a little more open, which is something that previous Ace Attorney games lacked. However, it also removed the ability to move freely between areas, which I think was a poor move - when you're investigating an area, that's really the only area you can go to, and you very rarely have to move between areas in the middle of an investigation, though you may after talking to someone to get new information.

The interrogation/rebuttal portions of the game, where you accuse potential criminals or are generally trying to get more information out of people are basically the exact same as they were in previous games - you go through a series of statements, have the option to get more information about each statement, and when you see a contradiction between your evidence and the statement, you present your evidence to point out that contradiction and to advance the game. It's not a bad system, but it's basically unchanged since the first Ace Attorney game, and still occasionally has moments of unintuitiveness.

This game also included a "Logic Mode," which I really enjoyed - Miles Edgeworth is a lot more methodical and less slapdash than the usual main character, Phoenix Wright, for whom a logic mode would not have been in character. However, one of my complaints is that what became a piece of evidence and what became a bit of logic felt quite arbitrary - some integration between logic mode and your evidence would have been nice.

But the real reason to play Ace Attorney games is for the characters, who are universally entertaining, and often hilarious; as well as for the plot. The characters in this game definitely didn't disappoint - Edgeworth was his usual stoic, straight-man self, detective gumshoe was as lovably unhelpful as ever, and all the other characters filled their roles quite well. The plot of the various cases (and overarching plot) was quite entertaining as well. There were, of course, a few hiccups - the final confrontation with the main villain at the end dragged on for ages, for example. But in general, it was very well done.

All in all a good game, but not without its flaws.

Things to learn:
-Don't change things for the sake of change if something works.
-That said, don't allow something to remain stagnant over the course of 5 games.
-Entertaining characters and an intriguing plot can compensate for "eh" gameplay; similarly, gameplay can be relatively simplistic and still end up with an entertaining game.
-Giving hints to solve puzzles, especially puzzles of the "look everywhere until you find something" variety, is a good idea, at least if a player appears stuck.
-Make sure any logic that you require the player to use is sound.
-If the main character has a profession, make sure that he actually uses, especially in a story-centric game.