[Review] Ace Attorney Investigations Collection – Nintendo Switch
Developed and Published By: Capcom
Categories: Adventure
Release Date: 09.06.24
Price: $39.99

Capcom has done it, by god they did it. Every Ace Attorney (not counting the Layton crossover) is now on modern consoles, and better yet, in English! What this means, is I finally have an excuse to play the Investigations games. Time to get inside Edgeworth.

Facts and logic do not care ab-I’m not going there. While the mechanics of figuring out contradictions in someone’s arguments or speech is still very much a part of this sub series, it’s not much the only one. Your key goal is to well. Investigate! Each chapter will have a crime scene, which should be familiar. But here, you’re a bit more incentivized to check the whole room, speak to everyone, put the pieces together from all of this. From observations, to evidence, to perhaps reasoning a motive. Once you do all of this, you might need to go into a rebuttal phase.

Rebuttals work much like cross examining. Find out the flaw in this person’s explanation of events and get to the bottom of this and the truth. You’re gonna have to use your brain, and sometimes things can and will seem very tricky or like you’re just guessing. But give it a few more reads. Dig through your evidence, it’ll all make sense. The satisfaction of always wiping the smug look off of the antagonist of each chapter is always a joy too.

Little Thief, a mechanic introduced in the first title makes me feel a bit like a real detective and I love it. You have some info right? Just jam that right into him and he’ll recreate the crime scene as it happened. I always enjoyed stuff like this in the Batman games, so I’m glad to see it here.

I think something I enjoy about the Investigations games is being able to freely move around the crime scene. It’s superfluous and the point and click styling of every other game in the series honestly gets the job done the same, but it’s gives everything a bit more humanity? Everyone has a sprite for these scenes, full body. Despite having so much in common with the mainline games, it’s details like this that do make it stand out.

Can I talk about how much I will forever love the goofy cast of this series? Pun ridden names, overtly flamboyant personalities, over animated breakdowns. God bless the series’ many artists and character designers. But then again, the writers are holding much of that weight too. Lets bring up an example from chapter 1. Jacques Portsman the prosecutor who accuses Gumshow of Buddy Faith’s murder, keeps calling Buddy; Jim. Because it just sounds better to him. The third of a group of men he decided to just name Jim. Jacques and Jim. Kind of makes you just writhe at having a conversation with his coy, backhanded self. He’ll get what’s coming to him, thankfully.

As typical of many a Capcom collection, regardless of the series, we have a nice gallery to give a gander at. Art, sprites, concept art, music. Much of which is needed to be unlocked this time around, which personally, I find good. While I enjoy the museum aspect some collections have on the onset, I feel things like backgrounds and character sprites/animations being unlocked after their chapter is a good approach.

Quality of life changes? Lets talk about those. Game selections, chapter selections, new music, new sprites. A Story Mode that allows for you to just enjoy the story, letting the game’s more thought provoking parts play themself. While I can’t personally say I’d use or recommend this, I do find options like this important, if not for accessability, but for making it so people who just really enjoy the story and characters can *just* enjoy the story and characters. There is absolutely nothing wrong with games having these options.

Final Thoughts

If Capcom just up and decides (they won’t, don’t worry) that they’re just going to make retro collections and place them on the Switch, I can die happy. It’s one thing to just bring older games back, especially harder to find or emulate games. It’s another to put in the effort into localizing games for these releases. That’s invaluable. I love and appreciate that. Do that more please. Also, here’s a dream, I’d love if the last Ace Attorney game, the Professor Layton crossover was ported to modern consoles.

6 Sep, 2024