I know I normally don’t review games on this blog, but I just finished the Great Ace Attorney (GAA) Chronicles and it’s so good that I HAVE to talk about it and try to convince you to play the game. I’m going to be a bit rambly in this review, so I’ll provide some headings if you want to skip to my actual thoughts on the game (which I will try to keep as spoiler-free as possible)

Background: What is the Ace Attorney series?

If you haven’t heard of the Ace Attorney series, it’s basically a mystery visual novel game where you play as a defence attorney and try to prove your client’s innocence (normally from a murder charge). You do this through:

1. Investigations – finding evidence and talking to people involved to get an idea of the truth behind the game
2. Cross-examining witnesses – find contradictions (backed up by evidence you’ve found in the investigation or given to you from the prosecution) to get to the truth behind the case.

The entire series consists of the original games (starring Phoenix Wright), the sequels (starring Apollo Justice), two spin-offs (one with Professor Layton and one where you play as the prosecutor and try to bring the culprit to justice), and now, the prequel (starring Wright’s ancestor, Naruhodo Ryunosuke).

Trivia: The difference between the family names for Wright and Naruhodo (a difference that doesn’t exist in the original Japanese games – they’re both “Naruhodo” there) comes from the fact that the original trilogy was localised and the setting changed from Japan to America, and from there, an alternate US had to be developed as more Japanese-culture was used in the later games.

Disclaimer: I’ve only played the Phoenix Wright games, the Professor Layton crossover, and some of the Edgeworth (Prosecutor spin-off) games so I’ll make no references to Apollo Justice here.

What is Great Ace Attorney Chronicles About?

Set around the turn of the 20th century, the GAA Chronicles follows the adventures of Naruhodo as he journeys to Britain as a defence lawyer. The GAA Chronicles actually consists of two games: Great Ace Attorney Adventures and Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve. Each GAA game has 5 stories, so there is total of 10 cases for you to solve in the duology.

There are three key features in the GAA cases:

1. Herlock Sholmes (apparently, there was a copyright issue when localising the game so the name of this character is “Sherlock Holmes” in Japanese but “Herlock Sholmes” in English) – because of this great detective, there are now areas in the investigation portion that use deductions. Sholmes will make a deduction BUT there will be errors so it’s Naruhodo’s job to guide the great detective to the right conclusion
2. The jury system – The original AA trilogy (and in fact two of the cases in the GAA Chronicles) consists of trials that are presided over by a judge. In the GAA games, the outcome of the trial is decided by a panel of 6 jurors and you may have to challenge their conclusions at certain points of the trial.
3. Multiple Witnesses – I remember seeing this in the Ace Attorney vs Professor Layton crossover and it’s honestly quite fun. You’ll have two or more people on the witness stand together and they can react to each other’s statements – when they do, you have the option to pursue the line of questioning OR talk to the juror who reacted and see where that leads.

You can also unlock specific achievements in the game, but I didn’t really look at this part of the game so I can’t comment on it.

My review of Great Ace Attorney Chronicles

Honestly, I feel like the storytelling here is the best out of all the Ace Attorney games that I’ve played. Perhaps because this is a duology, but I thought that the overall story arc was very tightly plotted and I liked how the games built on each other to read one very thrilling conclusion. There was, perhaps, one plothole that I saw, but overall I adored how everything was related in a way that made sense.

There were also a lot of nods to previous games, beyond the fact that Naruhodo is Wright’s ancestor. I saw a few characters who resemble some minor characters in the original trilogy, which was fun to spot. Plus, some other famous people, like Natsume Soseki, also make an appearance. The Sherlock Holmes references were also pretty good, especially in GAA2: Resolve – if you read the original Sherlock Holmes stories, you may notice a few things!

It’s been a while since I played any of the Ace Attorney games, but I found it very easy to jump into this. The first case of each game tends to be shorter, to get you acclimatised, but I appreciated that they were still relevant to the overall plot and/or helped with character development.

If you’ve played the original Ace Attorney games and enjoyed them, I would highly recommend this. Since it’s a prequel, you don’t need to have played the subsequent games in the series. Even if you haven’t played the original games, I’d still say that these cases can work as a standalone and would highly recommend them.