by It's finally here and no thanks to Capcom that Miles Edgeworth 2/ Ace Investigations has been played and reviewed by yours truly! Ace Attorney Investigations is a "spinoff" series regarding the games second-most popular character, the titular Miles Edgeworth, and does things a bit differently than its main series, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. In the Investigations games, you do not defend or prosecute suspects in court, rather, you investigate crime scenes, have "Rebuttles" against police or witness testimony, and of course find the truth; well I guess it is kind of like Phoenix Wright, but played from a totally different viewpoint, you can walk around come on!
Disregarding information we should all know, as Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, is/was a localized game let's jump into how this game was made available for people like us and of course the review. For the past two years, members of a site known as GBAtemp.net have been trying to translate the game and give us a patch in order for the game to be available to non-Japanese players. Updates were constant and was in fact stuck from a release of only the first two cases, until finally a year after that update, the English patch was made by a large team of fans. Kotaku, a video game news site, was one of the first and only to report on it as the patch was done a few summers back! The patch came out nearly four years after the game's release of course; while it may not be an official translation, it may be the only way we will ever play Gyakuten Kenji, unless we learn Japanese.
Review
Ace Investigations 2 is a direct sequel to the first game and the story continues off about a week after the end event of the first Ace Investigations. Edgeworth and Detective Dick Gumshoe are called over to investigate a crime scene of an attempted presidential assassination of the president of the Republic of Zheng Fa (hints). There they run into Kay Faraday, another main character from the first game, and thus the game truly begins and brings you only closer to the truth that lie far away.
During the course of the game, you of course meet new characters, and Ace Investigations 2 adds three new main characters, all which have a great impact and are great additions to the cast. Sebastain Debeste/Yumihiko Ichiyanagi, Judge Justice Courtney/Hakari Mikagami, and Raymond Shields/Tateyuki Shigaraki, are characters that not only bring Edgeworth to the man we know him as in Phoenix Wright 5: Dual Destinies, but also tie up Edgeworth's past; which leads to his father, Gregory Edgeworth, to have a bigger impact on the game than in previous ones.
If you've played any of the Ace Attorney or Investigations games you should be down with the core gameplay that the series has to offer. The game is consistent with all its series, as you must investigate, remember key facts (read!), and of course listen to testimony and find falsities in their claims. What Investigations 1 & 2, do differently that than the Ace Attorney series, is you control Miles Edgeworth (as in you can see a character model and travel around) instead of just moving from area to area while touching points of interest. Investigating is still the same, just the manner of travel is different, as well as interaction with NPC's.
Now, the differences Ace Investigations 2 brings from Ace Investigations 1 is just one thing (to its gameplay), however, it plays a key part in the entire game; and that is: Logic Chess. Logic Chess is a type of interrogation Miles Edgeworth does against persons of interest, in order to lure out more information and/or crack them. It does not require evidence and is based off a time scale, in which wrong answers take away from your set amount of time asking the person questions. Most Logic Chess matches require you to get your information off slip-ups the character will say during the talk, and you must backtrack your statements to find where these "clues" will fit into place or contradict what they say. In these matches you also are given a list of answers/questions to tell the other person and if you go to far off base, you will be penalized by losing time. In addition, each character has a different personality, so if you are too aggressive or passive, you will be penalized as well!
A bad change Investigations 2 had was the they got rid of the "freedom" that you had investigating in Investigations. In the first game, you can travel area to area if you were missing something, and kind of let the game feel more "open". However, not once in Investigations 2, were you allowed to travel outside the investigating area, leaving each area as more of a 1-part kind of place. While that does let the game progress quicker, most of the time a player will not leave an area until they are sure they got everything, it simplified the missions just a bit. In addition, Logic is used a lot less in this game, as well as Edgeworth's "EUERKA" call from Investigations 1. This may be due to a fan-work rather than the game changes though. Another change I bring up, not knowing the source/reason why, is that when you get a Game Over (your bar runs out), the ending scene is always the same. But in Investigations 1, when you would die, you would get an alternate scene/follow-up scene of your loss, with your characters interacting. In Investigations 2, you always get the same screen, which makes me wonder if this was a fan-problem or the game had changed it? However, everything else from Investigations remains the same, even the hints of Phoenix Wright (and a great hilarious one-shot/examining a useless area in the final case, similar to the time you see him in Case 3 of the first game).
For those wondering about the graphics, then be happy! Every character has gotten new character model updates and look fantastic (Kay Faraday looks the best), but other than most of it seems the same. The new music added fits each characters motif perfectly, though I would have to say, the new music, personally, it is not as suspenseful for the revelations of cases or interrogations of bad guys.
I would say replay-value wise, this game is low compared to the first game (which I replayed before playing this) and the first three Phoenix Wright games. While the cases were good and heartfelt, they didn't have the kind of terror, shock, excitement, and awe as the cases in the previous games I mentioned.
Overall
Score: 8.0/10
Investigations 2 is a good game and Miles Edgeworth is a great character. However, this game does not live up to the hype the first game set for us and is a bit disappointing with its end results of the cases. I was genuinely shocked for a few of the cases, but I always felt something was missing while playing the game. In addition, I hate how Raymond Shields always used the "Defense Lawyers always smile at the worst time and turn things around". NO, you aren't Phoenix Wright and Mia Fey, Edgeworth's dad didn't make those mottos, those are just personal grievances but still come on; they forced this so much and it annoyed me a bit. Otherwise I enjoyed my time with Investigations 2 and definitely recommend it to fans of the Phoenix Wright series.
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Michael Troina is a Nintendo enthusiast and lover, who also has a soft spot for Sonic the Hedgehog and anime. When he's not out saving people from bad games as Spiderman in Queens, NY he can be found at his Youtube Channel: GAMEMEN / SNBGaming64 or his Twitch Channel: troyfullbuster. You can also follow his twitter at Troyfullbuster.
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