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With the second installment of his game series, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney rises again, and presses through into our DSes and ultimately, our hearts. The second time around, Phoenix brings back pretty much everything we loved about the first game, and introduces a few new things which only help strengthen the enjoyment presented by this unique genre of courtroom simulation.
If you aren't familiar with Phoenix Wright, it's just that--a court simulator. The player takes the role of Phoenix Wright, a defense laywer with a knack for uncovering the truth behind the cases he takes on. Throughout the cases, you will investigate crime scenes, question witnesses, find evidence, and unlock the key to what actually happened while pressing into witnesses' testimonies and finding holes and contradictions.
If you haven't played the first game, it shouldn't completely disuade you from looking into this one. There are story aspects that do carry over, but more often than not, they are re-explained. After all, the first game is a pretty hard find.
Along with the original gameplay aspects--that is, the usual investigation and courtroom processes--a few new things have been added. Most notably, the psyche-lock feature that allows Phoenix to visibly see the lies of witnesses during investigations. Some people may have been turned off after discovering that this feature was going to be added, but it actually turned out really nice. In the end, it's just a way to break up the sometimes boring and tedious portions of investigation. The psyche-lock feature is incredibly similar to breaking through a witness's testimony in court, except the psyche-locks will always appear outside of court. So if you enjoy the court sessions, then the psyche-lock aspect is not at all something that should make you turn away from Justice For All.
The other thing that has changed is that you have a "health" bar (while in court, this could also be a measurement of the Judge's remaining patience with the defense). The health bar will decrease if you make a mistake when presenting evidence in court or during a psyche-lock session. It will usually always be 1/5 of your health at stake (which makes sense, considering that you had five exclamation points in the first game, which would resemble how many strikes you had against you); however, during crucial decisions, even more of your health may be risked--sometimes you entire remaining health will be put on the line. There are two ways to refill your health gauge: successfully unlocking all of someone's psyche-locks, or finishing a case in it's entirety. Overall, the new health gauge isn't necessarily a good or bad change. It's just a simple change.
The final primary change is that, while your main rival used to be prosecutor Miles Edgeworth, it is now a German prosecutor named Franziska von Karma; a woman who has come to challenge Phoenix Wright in order to achieve a mysterious revenge. As will become very clear soon enough, she really likes using her whip. Hot.
Other than that, Justice For All is more or less just like the first game, but with different cases and characters (though some of the old ones make appearances). While the first Phoenix Wright on the DS had five cases (the fifth case was added exclusively for the DS release, as these games were originally released long ago for the GBA in Japan--which should be remembered while playing Justice For All, as it picks up after the fourth case of the first game), Justice For All has only four. However, I must say that the last case is quite possibly the most intense case between both games so far.
That being said, if you liked the first Phoenix Wright, chances are very likely that you'll enjoy this one just as much. So seriously, go out and pick it up. Capcom isn't going to make the same mistake twice; there should be plenty of copies of this great game this time around. | | |