The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles: “This will be my game of the summer “
Opinion: The two previously Japan-exclusive lawyer games The Great Ace Attorney Adventures and Resolve are finally coming to the West after a four-year wait and are an absolute summer highlight for Mary.
For me, summer means one thing above all: taking a breath. On the one hand, it’s until the long-awaited summer holiday and on the other hand, all the big trade fairs like E3 are now over. For us, this means that the excitement about all the new blockbusters dies down a bit. So there’s finally some time for smaller games off the beaten track.
So while I’m recharging my batteries and clearing my head a bit, I also finally have time again to devote to games that would otherwise unjustly fall by the wayside in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Games like The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, for example.
Until now, they were only available in Japan. Now they’re finally coming to us in the West on 27 July 2021 and I’ve already had a chance to play them in advance. It’s already clear: thanks to the light-hearted humour, the exciting setting and the fantastic criminal cases, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles will be my game of the summer.
Like a good book – only better
Just like its predecessors, a chain of circumstances lands you in court in Ace Attorney Chronicles – on the defence lawyer side. From there, it’s up to you to use witness testimony and evidence to prove your client’s innocence.
That’s us: Ryunosuke Naruhodo. More or less involuntary junior lawyer. By the way, his later descendant Phoenix Wright is called Ryuichi Naruhodo in Japanese.
So you spend most of the game reading and examining your evidence. From time to time, however, you also have to go in search of clues yourself and examine the crime scene or the surrounding area. The whole thing reads and plays a bit like an interactive crime novel, but you have to find the right clues and solutions yourself.
A breath of fresh air in the 19th century
Like all Ace Attorney games, Chronicles brings a bit of variety into the lawyer’s daily routine with new features. This time, the setting is particularly exciting. Instead of hunting criminals in the 21st century as usual, this time you find yourself in the 19th century.
The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles is set in the Meji era. The style of dress was a little different there. Does Auchi-San look familiar to you? This is the ancestor of Winston and Gaspen Payne, whom you may know from the other Ace Attorney parts.
Not only does the courtroom change, but also the entire police work is turned upside down. Video recording, mobile phone tracking or high-tech forensics don’t exist at this point, and autopsies aren’t performed on corpses in Japan yet. So you have to rely mostly on physical evidence and photographs that don’t yet have a dab of paint on them.
The legal system is also quite different. Instead of just presenting your evidence and reasoning to a judge, in Ace Attorney Chronicles you have to go before a jury. You can see exactly how this works in the feature trailer:
As you’ve probably realised razor-sharp, a second feature is also introduced in more detail in the embedded trailer: The Dance of Deduction, which you perform with your new friend Herlock Sholmes. However, dear Herlock lacks a little precision. Luckily, he has you and your powers of deduction, so that you can make a course correction following his findings and together determine the true course of events.
Both new features fit wonderfully into the setting and provide enough variety. Not only fans of the series but also newcomers who haven’t yet stuck their nose into the lawyer’s files will be wonderfully picked up here.
You will find all the evidence in the case file. You should examine each one of them for additional clues.
More than just silly lawyer games
For all the humour and wacky cases and characters, Ace Attorney Chronicles proves one thing above all: it can be more than just silly. Behind all the wordplay and over-the-top characters, there is always a really exciting detective story, where in the end nothing is what it seems at the beginning.
Due to the many twists and turns and the revelations, I was surprised again and again and had to overturn my previously formed thesis without the underlying idea being taken ad absurdum. The level of difficulty also continues to be appropriately challenging and increases with each case.
If you do get stuck somewhere, you can also switch to the story mode, which takes all the puzzle work out of your hands.
Together with the wonderfully written characters, who often have a heart of gold beneath their eccentric appearance, the Ace Attorney Chronicles develop a depth that is not apparent at first glance.
All of these points make Ace Attorney Chronicles not only a truly wonderful game, but also my game of the summer. I can’t wait to lie in the hammock soon and think about murder cases rather than work.
