E3 2016: Making Some Sense Of ‘Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney- Spirit Of Justice’ And Its New Mechanics
As a longtime fan of the Ace Attorney series, I always imagined that it must be really hard to make a sequel for a game like this. As a simple lawyer, how can the development team keep finding new ways to prove that people are lying through text? Obviously, whoever’s working at Capcom is a lot more creative than I am, because they’ve pulled off new mechanics well so far. Their impeccable track record is seemingly continuing in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney- Spirit of Justice, the sixth mainline game for the popular handheld series, asking the lawyer to examine the senses of the victims at the time of death.
Finding himself in a foreign country that detests lawyers, with a legal system that relies on Spirit Mediums to take us back to a victim’s final moments to identify their killers, (kind of like Minority Report in reverse), how is someone supposed to defend the innocent with rules like these? With that said, how can the defendant be innocent when you’re watching what seems to be the crime in action, with your client committing the crime? In typical Wright fashion, you bluff until you find a clue that can blow the case wide open. Except this time, examining memories themselves will be the only way to do so.
When viewing the victim’s death, the sensations that they’re feeling manifest into words in the vision. While not meaning much at first glance, this method of cross examination will let you point out contradictions in new ways. In the demo version, the time of death was called into question since the victim heard the Song of Ceremony, which wasn’t supposed to take place until some time after. Perhaps the most obvious sense, his sight, also played a role as the person apparently blacked out right before feeling the blow to his head that led to his death. Once these contradictions came to light, it wasn’t long before the court started questioning their full proof methods, but in typical Ace Attorney fashion, not before taking some humorous pot shots at our favorite lawyer. Just be prepared to get it your guesses wrong on your way to success, which gives the game plenty of chances to show off the return of five “chances” before you get a game over as opposed to the health bar that’s been a mainstay since the second game.
Comparing testimony to the senses that the victim experienced is your path to justice.
This mechanic takes some time to get used to, but I have complete faith in the development team. Like with the psychological profiles and nervous ticks from the last two games, I fully expect to be challenged in new, exciting ways when Spirit of Justice releases exclusively for the Nintendo 3DS in September.
