I Wish I Liked Ace Attorney Investigations More Than I Do
My list of qualms with Miles Edgeworth's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week
Let me just say that, as of right now, I have only played the original Ace Attorney trilogy and the first Investigations game. Actually, I still have about two and a half hours left of AAI. In fact, that’s part of the problem:
My god, this game can drag.
Don’t get me wrong, I am enjoying this game, and I do think it’s a good game overall, but alas, I’m me, and I need to get these thoughts out there. Needless to say, there’ll be spoilers, so look away if you want to figure out all the murderers for yourself.
Again, overall, it’s a good game. And I know that once I play Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice, those two will absolutely be my least favourite instalments in the series. But out of what I’ve played so far, that title quite unfortunately belongs to AAI.
My problems with Ace Attorney Investigations, although I say they’re numerous, can really fit into one of two categories; pacing, and characterisation. I’m going to start with the pacing issues.
Unlike the majority of Ace Attorney games, Investigations does not divide into alternating investigatory and trial sections. Instead, as the title implies, the entire thing is, well, investigations. Each chapter spans a single day, rather than the typical three or four, and there is nowhere near as much moving-between-locations as in other games. There are still moments that feature the cross examination game mechanics, but these aren’t formal witness testimonies, they’re impromptu arguments between characters.
These facts all make perfect sense for AAI, both because of its focus on investigation rather than courtroom affairs, and because the entire game (with the exception of a flashback to 2012) takes place across not even a full week. I do think that this formula on its own is not inherently doomed to cause pacing issues, however, this formula does majorly contribute to the game’s pacing issues.
I think the worst offender here is the lack of moving between locations. Everything begins to feel so… the same. Especially when you end up spending an entire section in the same place, with the argument/rebuttal moments (this game’s equivalent to the testimony/cross-examination) also happening there. Especially especially when you then start the next section of the chapter and you spend yet more time in that same location. It makes it feel like there’s just the one continuous thing happening, and that thing is taking far longer than it needs to.
However, when it comes to frustrating pacing, nothing comes close to the final chapter, Turnabout Ablaze. As I said at the start, I am currently halfway through part 5 of this chapter, also referred to as “End - Part 1”. Of three.
It’s standard procedure for Ace Attorney games to have a double-length final chapter. But the ones from the trilogy - Rise From the Ashes, Farewell, My Turnabout, and Bridge to the Turnabout - all felt worth it. They used every extra second wisely, to tell stories that could not have been told in the average chapter length, in ways that clearly and impactfully tied together multiple of the game’s running themes.
Turnabout Ablaze, on the other hand, feels like it’s the length it is because it knows that the final chapter is usually a long one.
At first, I took no issue with this, because things began at a good pace, by this game’s standards. But then Agent Shih-na’s true identity as Calisto Yew, and as an authentic member of the Yatagarasu, was revealed in part 4: Middle - Part 3. I adore Calisto, and I could not help but feel like she was being built up to be the big villain of the game, like Dahlia was to Trials and Tribulations. And yet, she was being semi-calmly walked off in handcuffs only halfway through the final chapter. Hell, even when she literally holds Kay at gunpoint, it feels anticlimactic. Like it’s a hollow action movie moment instead of something to the same scale as Maya being held hostage in Farewell, My Turnabout, or even to the same scale as when Calisto had her gun pointed at Edgeworth and Franziska only one chapter (and seven years) prior to this moment.
Once she had been arrested, her backstory had been divulged, and Detective Badd had turned himself in, all that was left was to work out who had killed the second murder victim. I distinctly remember thinking “No, there’s no way that will take an entire three more hours.”
And then, of course, it doesn’t.
Barely half an hour of gameplay later, and we know that Ambassador Alba is the murderer.
In fact, we - both the players of the game and Edgeworth - barely do anything to figure this out. After briefly accusing Franziska to throw people off their rhythm, our dear furry friend Agent Lang reveals that he’s known it was Alba for some time now. This leads to Alba calmly confessing to the crime. So now, all that’s left is to… prove that it was in fact him? I mean, I’ll find out what’s left, I still have two and a half hours to play. But whatever is left does not need to take two and a half hours.
Personally, I feel that this chapter would work far more effectively if the two reveals were swapped. In my ideal version of events, Alba would have been revealed as the second murderer at the end of part 4, he would say that he never set foot in the other embassy that night and therefore wasn’t the first murderer, and everyone would nervously glance at each other as they realise they still haven’t found Calisto anywhere despite signs pointing to her presence. Cue a race against time to track down the alleged fake Yatagarasu and prove she’s the murderer before she can escape the embassies, only for the grand reveal that she’s been hiding under their noses as Shih-na the entire time. Of course, this would require a lot of other elements, such as when bits of evidence are revealed and how, to be reworked, but I’m working mostly in the hypothetical here.
As controversial as this may be, my other major issue with AAI is the characterisation. Like the game itself, it’s good for the most part. The detail put into the body language of the little full-body pixel sprites is fantastic, the random tidbits about various characters are incredibly interesting, the ways that Edgeworth’s PTSD affect his day-to-day life are present and not laughed off, and Turnabout Reminiscence in particular had some brilliant characterisation.
As for the chapters which take place in the present day, however, there are quite a few moments where the game falls into the trap of reducing them to somewhat stereotyped versions of themselves.
Maybe it’s just because we’re viewing things from his perspective, and therefore spend the most time with him, but Edgeworth seems like the main victim of this. Sometimes he feels like a natural progression of his trilogy self, sometimes the game has really insightful things to say about what type of person he is, but every now and then, it feels like Yamazaki was sitting there in front of a blank document, thinking to himself “Okay, what would Edgeworth say now? He’s uhh… he’s the serious one, right?”, and as a result, we end up with the occasional line that makes me say “Why is Edgeworth being so stoic and clueless? He absolutely would’ve understood that joke/reference/etc that just got made.”
I think what I’m trying to say is that I miss Edgeworth’s sense of humour. It’s not entirely gone, but it’s definitely not what it could be. Because he does have a sense of humour. He didn’t lose his snarkiness and wittiness when he became less arrogant at the end of the first game. And he, canonically, textually, knows far more about pop culture than most people would assume of a guy who wears a cravat and passed the Bar at 20.
This is why, in contrast, his Turnabout Reminiscence characterisation feels so right. He gets to make many a witty remark, while the plot also feels deeply tied to him, allowing for some really poignant emotional moments, acknowledgement of the DL-6 incident and how he was handling that trauma at 20, and for the stakes to feel genuinely high the way they do in the trilogy. At the same time, he is also meaner, more desperate for perfection, and more soldier-like in the presence of Manfred von Karma, exactly as he would have been at that age.
(Side note: another bit of characterisation I loved was the moment in The Kidnapped Turnabout when Lang made a joke about his “jabot” and Edgeworth responded, aghast, with “It’s a cravat, and it’s a fashion statement”. Even if, technically, it is a jabot, I’m willing to believe that in the AACU - Ace Attorney Cinematic Universe - the names are swapped for the sake of preserving this hilarious scene.)
Aside from Edgeworth, oddly enough, I think the character whose characterisation bothers me the most is Kay’s. This game is her first appearance, so really, it should be the flagship for her personality, and yet it somehow feels… inaccurate. It’s as though I can see her actual personality, and then I can see two specific things that cloud it.
The first thing is the fact that they couldn’t make her too much of a thief, what with her being part of the main cast. Sure, she’s The Great Thief Yatagarasu Jr, and she’s more or less a vigilante as a result, but it feels like they’re hesitant to go any further than that and make her the mischievous little kleptomaniac she’s destined to be, in case it sends the wrong message or something.
The second thing is her youth. Kay is 17, but occasionally she’ll say something that feels like it should belong to a much younger character, whether it be because of naïve syntax or because of an innocent lack of knowledge about something. Once again, I feel inclined to compare her to Maya, who is 17 at the start of the trilogy. As a former 17 year old, I really felt like Maya was an excellent depiction of her age. Kay, on the other hand, not so much.
I do think Kay being a bit of an immature 17 year old would make sense for her, given her energetic and optimistic do-first-think-later personality, and her childhood, but whenever there’s a moment that makes her feel really young, it seems to come more from a place of not-quite-understanding-what-17-year-olds-sound-like-and-know-about. I think it will be very interesting to see the way she evolves in the second game, which I’ve heard is much better, and to compare this with the characterisation of Sebastian Debeste, who is the same age and is meant to be immature and a bit naïve.
There is much I enjoy about Ace Attorney Investigations. I cannot wait to begin the second game and discover what all the hype is about. But for now, I will turn on my 3DS with a sigh as I wade through the remainder of this final chapter, and I will daydream about all the things that could elevate this game from “good but slow” to its true potential.