Phoenix On Your Phone! – Ace Attorney Trilogy Review

The Phoenix Wright series has a significant fan following these days.  With 11 games spanning over 20 years, it’s hard not to have at least noticed our favorite spiky blue lawyer.  For those of you who haven’t though, Phoenix is a bumbling defense lawyer that manages to come out on top through careful attention to detail and a lot of blind luck.  The games are fairly tongue-in-cheek and fun and have spawned manga, plushies, an anime, a crossover with Professor Layton, and even a live action movie.

In short, the entire series has a long and venerated past.  It’s even been released on multiple consoles as the Ace Attorney Trilogy which includes the original three US DS games in one collection.  Previously this was only available on Switch, PS4, Xbox, and PC (only, right?).  However, Capcom has finally decided to port the Ace Attorney Trilogy to mobile platforms and frankly, it’s a heck of a good idea!

Phoenix Wright is, at its core, a series of visual novel stories.  Each one focuses on a murder in a fictional land that may or may not be part America and part Japan.  Due to the laws in the court system there, you only have three days in court for any crime, including capital ones.  Phoenix must investigate the crimes, interview the witnesses, and prove his clients are innocent, even when the odds are stacked against them.  To do so, you’ll have to pay close attention to the evidence, people’s statements, and even your intuition.  Each game ups the complexity of your investigations and success simply depends on objecting to the right responses.  It’s a fun recipe for light gaming that has entertained gamers worldwide for over two decades.

But let’s be honest, the 14 cases that make up the Ace Attorney Trilogy (and yes, there is a good 50-60 hours of gameplay here) have been reviewed to death.  If you’re looking to see whether Phoenix Wright games are worth your time, look no further.  They’re fun and worth playing.  What you’re really here to find out is if the mobile port is worth your time, especially for $19.  Sure, you’re getting three games but that’s a pretty premium price for phone content so why play it?

It turns out that the mobile phones are pretty much the perfect platform for Phoenix Wright.  While the games have a light, cartoonish feel, they’re not highly detailed and you’re not missing out on anything on a smaller screen.  With the primary interface being touch-based on phones, the parallels to a DS are clear as well.  This is literally a series that was designed with touch screens in mind and putting it onto a touch-based platform is an exercise in common sense.  But there’s more going on here than just a straight port.

Just like the console version of Ace Attorney Trilogy, the mobile port is in full HD with cleaned up menus and the ability to save and switch between games at any time.  Additionally, the new menu options make the Ace Attorney games even more approachable.  In the original DS versions, you had limited save slots, text options couldn’t be clicked through at higher speeds if you hadn’t read them before, and the game was in standard definition for the much lower resolution DS screen.

Now things are looking much crisper and more modern, more like a cartoon than ever before.  You can save any of the three titles in the trilogy at almost any time with multiple saves and you can even adjust the text window transparency in order to make the visuals look more modern.  Screen flash and shake can be toggled and a strong vibration mode is available as well, adding punch to every exclamation by rumbling your phone.  Even Phoenix’s life bar has been modified to a more modern look and subtle tweaks make the entire experience feel markedly more streamlined.  While those that have played the console version of the remastered Trilogy won’t be surprised by any of this, it’s still nice to see that the port is just as clean and smooth on phones as it is on consoles.

Speaking of smooth play, it’s a rare premium phone game that doesn’t have any significant load times.  The Ace Attorney Trilogy boots up fast and loads almost immediately.  There’s no lag, no weird glitches, and every game in the trilogy runs smooth as silk.  It’s surprisingly rare to have a phone game run this smoothly, especially one that’s been ported from a remastered port to begin with.  This is exactly what we should be expecting from phone games and Capcom’s mobile division has done an absolutely outstanding job here.

The soundtrack for the trilogy is also perfectly preserved here.  The music for the Phoenix Wright trilogy is iconic with actual CDs being released including full jazz and orchestra remixes (some of us own them and legitimately listen to them in our leisure time…).  Honestly, most of the tracks are glorious earbugs that will have you tapping along or whistling randomly while your friends or relatives stare at you in thinly veiled confusion.  It’s just a great-sounding game and the over the top Objections, whipcrack arm pointing and other nonsensical fun is perfect from both visual and audio standpoints.

Ace Attorney Trilogy isn’t a small game however.  If you’re strapped for drive space on your phone, be aware that the game takes up 1.06 GB on an Android device.  Sure it’s a big game, but if you’re only running 8 or 16 GB that might be a bit of a deal breaker for some players.  It’s still a reasonable size for a 50 hour game though and phones have been gaining more storage the last few years so chances are that size won’t be a major problem for most players.

There are only a couple of other negatives here.  It should be noted that you cannot play the Ace Attorney Trilogy offline.  For some reason, there’s a cloud server check that forces you to have an internet connection in order to boot the game up on your device.   Why this can’t be an entirely offline game is rather unclear, but that’s just how things are.  If you live way out in the mountains and don’t have internet or something, maybe consider buying a different version.

Additionally, for a visual novel, there’s one thing that the Ace Attorney Trilogy lacks.  That deficiency is a dialogue log.  The original series never had one and unfortunately, neither does the remaster.  Accidentally tap past someone’s dialogue and there’s no way to go back and read it unless you reload your game from the last save.  There’s really no excuse for not including a text log that lets you read back these days and if you’re a visual novel reader, you’ll know that basically every modern VN has them.  That being said, the originals didn’t have one and not adding it isn’t a complaint per se, it’s more of a quibble that you should be aware of.

For just under $20, it’s hard to argue with the value you’re getting with the Ace Attorney Trilogy on mobile.  Three good sized games that are all fun and well-designed, a ton of silly, over-the-top caricatures, some interesting murders and cases, and honestly a whole lot of fun.  Wrap that up in a slick, modernized package that fixes a fair number of the issues with the original game and toss it in your pocked with fast load times for easy play anywhere you have an internet connection and it’s portable Phoenix all day long.  This is the perfect pick-up-and-play VN and with multiple save slots included and save anywhere functions, it’s a fantastic addition to the Play Store and your phone.  Simply put, even if you’ve already played the Ace Attorney Trilogy, it’s still worth your time to grab the Ace Attorney Trilogy on mobile and if you haven’t played them, Capcom has made the right choice in making the entire series available to a much wider audience by moving to mobile.  This is what our games should be like if the future of gaming is moving towards mobile!  No objections!

This review is based on a digital copy of Ace Attorney Trilogy provided by the publisher.  It was played on a Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus.  Ace Attorney Trilogy is also available on mobile on the Apple iStore and is also available on all major consoles and PC.