Preview: Perfect Prosecutor

Ironic, this. We’ve just got our hands on a new version of Ace Attorney, which is less Attorney, and more hands on it’s self. Now we’ve played through a significant chunk of the first case, we can deliver a definitive non-review verdict.

We somehow managed to bluff our way through the first few puzzles, which where all in Japanese, what we did pick up was as follows:

There’s been a murder. In the office of the great Prosecutor, Miles Edgeworth. Taking on the role of Phoenix Wright’s rival, Edgeworth himself, you play through a more in-depth version of the Ace Attorney title’s detective modes. Instead of just selecting an area to look at, here you genuinely run about. This is done via. A pad on the bottom screen that controls your movement, whilst the actually action is no the top screen. We have no idea why Capcom have opted for this system, but hopefully things will make sense when we’re more use to it. We still think it’d be better if you just controlled Edgy’s movement as if he was Link in Zelda or Neku in TWEWY, mind.

Next to this pad is a picture of your current ‘Partner’, which was the good old AA detective, Gumshoe, when we played, but no doubt this will change later on. The funny thing was, though, when we pressed this, the DS went to a still picture of Gumshoe and Edgeworth, and just froze, and lead us to skipping the text from the beginning again. This had better be fixed before realise…

Speaking of funny, the typical Wright humour appeared to be missing in Japanese, although we spotted a couple of recurring jokes, such as Stepladders and the Steel Samurai, the latter of which Edgey himself has a figurine of on his window ledge.

We found a fan translation from the Tokyo Game Show online after guessing our way through it, mind, and there already appeared to be some funnies, such as Miles’ almost encyclopaedic knollage of the Samurai and the way Gumshoe panics, and better yet, a bit where Edgeworth finds his teacups have been smashed in the incident. (“How dare you…!! I’ll get you a guilty sentence just for my teacups!”)

The new tiny sprites are also surprisingly detailed, with careful animation.

Edgeworth also bumps into many characters from previous cases in the main series. We encountered Mike Mekins the police officer, Detective Dick Gumshoe (As mentioned) and even Maggey Byrde, the so-called unluckiest person on earth, (And also the love interest for Gumshoe) who’s managed to land a job as head of security in the Prosecutor’s Office.

In the remainder of the game, we’ll meet the likes of Wendy Oldbag, the other security guard, Sal Manella, the TV Director/Writer, and then one of the game’s main characters in the form of Fransiska von Karma, Phoenix’s rival in the second game, and Edgeworth’s half-sister. Quite what role any of these will play, we don’t know.

The game also features a rather nice ‘Logic Mode’, in which you piece together bits of evidence, in a similar way to Wright’s Magatama and Psyche-Locks, or Justice’s eagle eyes and wristband. You just tap various bits of evidence you want to link, and the game does the rest. We, again, bluffed this in our play through, but no doubt when we get our hands on an English version, we’ll be through it like an Edgeworth in a crowd of Oldbags.

We’re still getting worried as we see the evidence comes pouring in against the defendant, and while many interfaces may be the exact same as in the main series, it’ll plug the gap until Apollo Justice 2 nicely when it hits Japan in May.