opinion: For years, ~ Dani has raved about the trilogy, which may be a bit dull gameplay-wise, but has such an engaging story and great characters.
You know when you”ve played a book, movie or game and wish you could forget all about it and relive it all over again? That”s how I feel about Stephen King”s Dark Tower, Lord of the Rings and Phoenix Wright.
Okay, I think you can understand what a famous horror author and one of the ten best role-playing games of all time have in common. But how does a Japanese adventure game fit in? To explain that to you, I”ll probably have to go a little further. But maybe let me sum it up briefly:
Phoenix Wright is one of the best story games I”ve ever played. Rarely has a trilogy kept me glued to the screen so consistently as these lawyer games. I highly recommend them to anyone who appreciates good stories and is willing to get into them. Yes, you have to look behind the silly facade first. But I promise you: it”s worth the look.
What”s it all about?
In Phoenix Wright you play the freshly minted lawyer of the same name, who defends his clients in court as a criminal defence lawyer in order to bring the truth to light and win acquittal for his innocent clients. In doing so, he uncovers contradictions and lies in cross-examination or reconstructs the course of events with the help of evidence.
He collects this evidence beforehand by questioning witnesses and examining the crime scenes. Most of the time you move through the static settings by point and click or work your way through the individual testimonies in court, which you can rewind and fast-forward again and again. You can see what this looks like in the trailer:
All three games are episodically divided into individual cases. The entire trilogy comprises 14 cases (approximately 60 hours), none of which is like the other. Each of these cases tells a unique storyline that will leave you open-mouthed more than once. And that”s where the excitement from me and over 12,800 Steam reviewers starts.
More than murder, humour and anticipation
Every, really every single case comes with a plot twist. But it”s not like a classic TV thriller, where you can usually tell who the murderer was right from the start. On the contrary: sometimes you really don”t know until the scales fall from your eyes. Sometimes, however, the question is not who did it, but what exactly happened. The cases don”t always revolve around murder, sometimes it”s also about fraud, theft or simply accidents. This makes the plot twists all the more effective, because at the beginning of a case you don”t know what to expect at the end.
Phoenix Wright, in addition to more humorous and absurd cases, also repeatedly takes on serious issues that are not easy to answer: Can I represent a client who is a proven murderer? How credible are statements by the media that speak for dead people? How much truth can a person bear and is truth always the key?
Don”t be fooled
This balancing act between humour and bitter seriousness works because the characters, who are so wonderfully written. Yes, they seem very silly and overdone at first glance, but if you spend more time with Larry, Edgeworth, Maya or Gumshoe, you will find deep and truly emotional developments behind the flippant façade.
For example, in one case we represent our rival and former childhood friend Miles Edgeworth, who usually stands on the opposite side of the courtroom as the prosecutor and tries with all his might to get a guilty verdict. Suddenly, however, he himself is accused of murder and needs our help – against his will.
As the case progresses, we not only get to know the prosecutor better but also understand how the two former friends shaped each other and the role their buddy and philanderer Larry played then and now. Themes of trial fraud, childhood trauma, vindictiveness and friendship all play a supporting role in making you think.
If you love thrilling crime stories and great character development and also can”t resist a good plot twist, I really recommend the (Phoenix Wright Trilogy) to you. Rarely have I been so excited about a game or taken a character to my heart as I did here.
