Why I'm Excited for Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney on 3DS
Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney is coming to 3DS very soon and I, for one, am excited. To most it's probably just a re-release of a 10 year old game but to me it's more than a little special. It's not a new game (nor one that I haven't played three or four times before) but I'll be playing it as soon as it releases, as if it were brand new.
Honestly, it's difficult to explain in words why I'm looking forward to this game so much. Is it the new features that bring Apollo Justice up to the standards of the recent games? Or the fact that the graphics and sound have been given a 3DS overhaul? Or maybe I'm just that big of an Ace Attorney fanboy? It's probably the last one, but let's ignore that and talk about the other reasons.
Capcom Unity recently published a charming blog post detailing some of the enhancements in the 3DS version of Apollo Justice. Titled "Trucy and Apollo's Excellent Adventure" (that should've been the game's tagline), the blog post, or rather Apollo and Trucy, talk about a few of the added features. One of these is the addition of Japanese, which allows you to play the game fully in Japanese. It's not much useful to someone like me, but a welcome addition nonetheless.
Something that is useful to me is the option to skip all text from the start, unlike games prior to Dual Destinies where text could only be skipped once you'd already seen it. I'll definitely be making use of that particular feature, as the original DS Ace Attorney games feel painfully slow these days. The presentation of the game has also been improved, matching Ace Attorney Trilogy's style. The art has been updated, sounds and music are much less compressed and the added 3D effect is a nice bonus (for those of us that still like using the 3DS' 3D effect).
A few other things have been changed, such as the addition of testimony page markers and an end of testimony arrow, as seen in post-Dual Destinies games. Those are less interesting, but I'm glad the developers were thoughtful enough to add them regardless.
Something interesting about this game is that, I believe, for the first time ever, an Ace Attorney game is being released outside of Japan first. This 3DS remake is being released in North America a day before Japan (and two days before Europe). As far as I'm aware (forgive me if I'm wrong!), this is also the closest that Japanese and western release dates have ever been for an Ace Attorney title. I'm aware it's a port of an old game that already has a localised version and likely not an indication of things to come, but it's nice to see nonetheless.
I've avoided it for a while, but one of the main reasons I'm so excited for this game is that it's personally one of my favourite games of all time. Likely because it was the first Ace Attorney game I played (I wasn't aware they were in any sort of order when I first bought it!), I love everything about it. Whilst I admit some of the plot isn't perfect (though I will try to argue against people that say it's inherently flawed), the music, characters and overall feel of the game is unlike anything I've ever experienced before or since.
Yes, it's an Ace Attorney game, but it feels different to the others. With Phoenix's trilogy done and dusted, it was time for Apollo to take centre stage. It was a fresh direction for the series. It's difficult to explain what I mean exactly, but take a listen to the soundtrack of any other Ace Attorney game and then compare it to Apollo Justice. It just feels... different. Phoenix was no longer the star of the show; it was time for an entirely different type of turnabout.
Things almost feel more serious and, to an extent, more dark than other titles. Of course, it's no 'dark age of the law', and there aren't particularly any huge stakes compared to other titles, but it feels a heck of a lot more tense (and I'm not just talking about Apollo's perceive ability). It still has its comical moments, yes, but it takes itself more seriously than other Ace Attorney games. I think Apollo does a good job of expressing this; we don't find out much about his story here, which makes him fairly straightforward. He has no hidden motives for becoming a lawyer, other than his passion for the law and wanting to find the truth.
Apollo seems like a shining ray of hope in the face of adversity, which in turn reflect in his relationships with other characters. Klavier, for example, is an entirely new character. We've never had a prosecutor quite like him, before or since. He's the only prosecutor not to belittle the defence, or physically harm them in some way. He's there to find the truth, with the help of Apollo, of course. I'm eternally disappointed this dynamic was exclusive to this game (though Turnabout Time Traveller could perhaps be seen as something vaguely similar), but that's one of the reasons why I love it so much.
Just because Apollo and his friends are on a quest for the truth doesn't mean it'll be easy. For example, things take a sour turn for Apollo in the very first case (which I stand by being the best first case in the entire series), where he's forced to cross examine his hero, Phoenix Wright, and then accuse his own boss of murder. Things aren't exactly taking a lighter tone here. Phoenix helps this by returning and being a shadow of his former self; when we last saw him he was on top of the world, and here he's lost everything. Whilst it might not be the darkest game or have the highest stakes, Apollo Justice feels like it's a true beginning; a pure Ace Attorney game, through and through.
Even though I'm a huge Ace Attorney fan, I do stop and think a lot about where the series would've gone if Shu Takumi had continued writing for the main games. It's impossible to explain without writing a 5000-word essay, but it felt like he had many more plans for the characters. Apollo, Klavier, Trucy... even Kristoph, perhaps. It's saddening to know we'll never really get to find out what would've happened. What trials and tribulations would Apollo have faced? How would his relationship with Klavier and Trucy have developed? I'd love to have known how his story would have unfolded. But perhaps we just weren't meant to know... and hey, at least Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice were still pretty good (even if Apollo's character kind of shifted slightly).
Anyway, that's why I'm excited for Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney on 3DS. I'm really looking forward to reliving the game that not only was the starting point of me becoming an Ace Attorney fan, but the game that felt like it should've been the starting point of an entirely different Ace Attorney, with its fresh, unique experience. Thank you for finally bringing this fantastic game to 3DS, Capcom. Now, about that Switch port...
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