[Review:Game]Ace Attorney Investigations - Miles Edgeworth

It's time to put our thinking-caps on once more, and get our murder on with the next installment in the Ace Attorney series! This time around the shoe is on the other foot as you play the role of Miles Edgeworth, a highly sucessful prosecutor or in past games Phoenix Wright's arch-rival, as he unveils the truth using his trusty logic and hard-hitting evidence in a new perspective. Does it stack up to previous games we all know and love? Let's find out.

One of new features Capcom brings to the table is the new drawn-back third-person perspective; now you can see Miles as a pixelated avatar as you navigate from scene to scene talking to NPC's and looking for evidence. This would have added a nice mini sandbox for the player to explore, and also gave the developers a chance to woo the player with a varity of areas for Miles and his partner to explore during a case so they could conduct cool investgation stuff. Sadly that is not the case, most of the time you'll stay in the same area for a long time until you have figured out everything that needs to be answered before you can even think about moving to somewhere new.



Another feature in Edgeworth's tool belt is the logic system. To put it simply, logic is where you'll find two contradictions that relate to each other, and combine them to make one solution and/or a line of new logic to help you later in the case. It's a nice addtion from the mundane routine of looking for just evidence, and it also gives you a way to keep your thoughts in order. On the opposite side of the coin, the system acts too much as a clutch for players who can't connect two and two together. On that note, I can't shake the feeling that this game is way too easy to figure out, or maybe thats just me.



The last fresh new add-on is a partner button. Now, I find this button to be the most useless button in the whole game, because your partner has nothing to contribute to your current situation. The only thing you can get out of using the partner button is a quick laugh, I suppose.



Several characters make a return from previous games from Detective Dick Gumshoe, a gaint air-head who is oblivious to whats going on and acts as comedic relief, to Wendy Windbag, a 65 year old woman who sees young people as impolite and stupid. Along with returning characters we're introduced to some new characters like Kay Faraday, the successor to the legendary thief known as the Great Yatagarasu, and Agent Shi-Long Lang, an Interpol investigator who holds the record of the highest number of arrests.



As always the writing in the game is spot on. Characters will otfen express their feelings through funny jestures and sound effects making it hard to not be amuse. As for the overall story, the order of events seems abit off. It's like Capcom shuffled the episodes around and place them in a random order. For example, the first episode has Miles returning home only to find a dead body curled over next to his bookcase; only to later find the dead body alive in the third episode, and the only thing that binds all of these episodes together is the mention of the Great Yatagarasu.

In conclusion, despite the game getting the step-child treatment, the game still holds its charm and great storytelling. I give this game a 8 out of 10.