Phoenix Wright Trials and Tribulations for DS

The Phoenix Wright series has been a great DS run that really goes to show that text-adventure on the DS can be a hit. Unfortunately though, I d have to say the third game of the series finally has the game s charm is starting to wear off. For whatever reason, Capcom has not made any attempts to improve the game engine in the slightest- and PW starts to suffer for that reason.

Back to the Beginnings

Phoenix Wright is an origin tale and rather than playing Phoenix Wright all the time, you go through him reminiscing about his old mentor Mia and play her cases out as she starts off as a rookie attorney. Phoenix Wright meanwhile has to deal with a new prosecutor now that his former nemesis Edgeworth is out of the way. The new mysterious coffee-fanatic, mask-wearing, Godot is his new arch-rival; an attorney who like Edgeworth, has never lost a case (but then again has never won one either).

The Mia storyline is definitely the shining gem of the series as Phoenix Wright s story begins to get a bit stale with the never ending banter with his sidekick, Maya Fey and the more recent arrival, Pearls. It s just too much of the same old stuff. Unfortunately also, new rival Godot presents a lesser challenge to Phoenix than Edgeworth ever did- he s nowhere as smart or clever and keeps ranting endlessly about how he ll finish his trial in 17 coffees or less.

Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations reuses more characters than the former games and as a result, ends up in the whole we ve seen this before problem. Maggie (the bad luck policewoman), makes a comeback in the third case in this game, and her stale personality totally dries up a far too long trial where she s accused of murdering a computer programmer. The new characters are shallower than they have been in the past, and as a result, this sequel sort of loses its charm. It s fun to see the young Mia and Edgeworth as apprentice attorneys duking it out in court though, and that s probably the highlight of the game.

Text Adventure at its Best (and worst).

The nice thing about the Phoenix Wright series is that you get a LOT of gameplay for the money you pay. The game literally goes on for hours- and possibly even in the 10-15 hour range in terms of sheer text.

This is a double-edged sword. Most of the game is text. Text with some great character-art but in the end, just a lot of bloody text. The game is artificially long on some level because the text-scroll speed isn t quite that fast. In fact, it s kind of mind-numbingly slow actually and for Capcom to not give the gamer an option to increase text-speed is outrageous. The only time you can fast-forward through text is if you ve read it already before (which either occurs if you ve accidentally clicked on the option again or missed reading something).

So like the former Phoenix Wright games, the gameplay is divided into two sections. One is the trial, which constitutes most of the fun of the game. This section involves careful attention to the case as it is presented in court, giving you a chance to cross-examine witness testimony in hopes of finding holes in it that will allow you to win the case and defend your client. Most of the time, figuring out what evidence to present or what objections to make is fairly straightforward, and most of what folks would say this is the game s actual gameplay segment. At times though it can be a bit cryptic and you might not have really any reasoning as to doing what you do. If you present the wrong evidence you do get penalized and at times this can be frustrating enough that you ll find yourself scouring GameFAQs for a quick answer.

The other part of the game is the investigation, which involves wandering around places and examining sites for evidence. You ll also get to talk to people and try to uncover their secrets using a special stone called the Magatama, which is like a mini-version of cross-examining. The investigation part can be very tedious as you ll often wander around aimlessly until you trigger new dialogs or find the essential bit of evidence you need to move the story.

As I ve mentioned the main problem with this game is the inability to fast-forward through text. If you mess up, or your DS gets turned off or something happens, you ll find yourself having to trudge through 10-15 minute of text to get back to where you formerly were. Saving occasionally can be nice- but the game should have offered multiple save slots for folks interested in loading.

Finally the ultra-linearity of the story continues to make Phoenix Wright a one-shot deal. Like its predecessors, Phoenix Wright has no replay value. Once you go through it, you ll be done for life and the game can be passed onto another it s simply too tedious of a game to go through again.

Conclusion

While I may have made Phoenix Wright sound much worse of a game than it probably is, that s partly because it has a lot to live up to. The first two games featured great stories with fully-fleshed out characters that made the whole tedious text wading worthwhile. In short, the game is like watching a great lawyer anime- a good time-consuming distraction on the go. Unfortunately though, Phoenix Wright ends up going back to its roots a bit too much and innovating far too less. It wouldn t have been a bad idea if they had tried to introduce a new lawyer protagonist, or somehow mixed it up a bit with the whole Maya Fey and Pearls tag-team (those two were starting to get on my nerves). Still if you are a fan of the series, odds are you will find yourself playing this despite the fact it doesn t quite live up to the series- it still offers more lawyer scenarios for those that have been dying to spend more hours with their DS.

For the newly initiated though- I d say if you didn t like Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, then you might as well stay back from this one. Given the somewhat overused plot elements, this is best left for the diehard fans.