Episode 66: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

Retro Spectives

The Ace Attorney franchise adds a twist to visual novels that has rarely been replicated. Instead of having you as a passive participant in the story, or making decisions through dialogue trees, you instead gather clues and cross examine witnesses to get to the truth. Its eclectic cast of characters all have some deeper truth to hide, and it's up to you to get to the bottom of it as you defend your client from the rapid passage of justice.

But just how well crafted are the murder mysteries that you unravel? Do you really feel like a defence lawyer as you gradually crack the case? And just how well does the gameplay of investigating and cross examining match up with the format of a visual novel?

On this episode, we discuss:

• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is zany, exciting and at times, rather silly. How does this affect the enjoyment of the humour, and the gravitas of its more dramatic moments?
• As the game continues, meta plot elements arise, and the individual cases you pursue start to become part of a larger picture. Does this add a deeper and more enjoyable layer to the story, or does it detract from the strength of the individual cases?
• Are the limited key frames that depict the characters in Ace Attorney (and visual novels in general) fundamentally poor, or stylistically dashing? Pat and James strongly disagree.

We answer these questions and many more on the 66th episode of the Retro Spectives Podcast!

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Intro Music: KieLoBot - Tanzen K

Outro Music: Rockit Maxx - One point to another

Ace Attorney: Phoenix Wright OST: Masakazu Sugimori & Akemi Kimura

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Next episode, we’ll be joined by Chris Durston, author and host of the Philosophiraga Podcast to play Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time! Each episode Chris takes a philosophical concept and breaks it down using video games as examples. It's a fantastic show if you’ve got an interest in philosophy but have always been put off by how complicated it all seems to be.

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Do the later Ace Attorney games dramatically change or evolve on the formulae of the first? What other games (apart from Paradise Killer) have taken inspiration from the series? Do you prefer the meta heavy later cases, or the more isolated self contained ones? Come let us know what you think on our community Discord Server!