Review – The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles
The Ace Attorney games have always been favorites of mine. I think they are shining examples of how to take creative liberties with localization and still end up with a stellar and faithful product. A lot of other people must think the same way, apparently, since Capcom has continued to rerelease several of these games across different platforms since as far back as the DS and Wii. There are a few outliers to this though, one being “The Great Ace Attorney,” a duology originally released on the 3DS over half a decade ago.
As far as gameplay goes, a large chunk of “The Great Ace Attorney” pulls heavily from “Professor Layton VS. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney,” and even the director, Shu Takumi, has acknowledged that point. The character designs in the game were handled by Kazuya Nuri, who also did the designs for the “Layton” crossover. There’s a general level of cartoony-ness to some of the characters, but I think that just ends up adding to the charm of the game. The style also works exceptionally well on bigger screens. These models look surprisingly good for being mostly blown up 3DS tech. There are some jagged-edges and unsmoothed polygons noticeable, but the game’s stylization overpowers a lot of it. I mostly played through the game undocked on the Switch, but did the final case docked on my TV. I kind of regret playing through everything else in portable mode after seeing how bright the visuals looked on a big screen.
Court cases are handled with a jury and multiple witnesses, adding a lot more liveliness to the courtroom. I wasn’t sure how I would feel about the jury when I first started, but the system very quickly grew on me. It’s a great way to add in goofy gaffs and one-offs that might otherwise have not happened. I don’t want to spoil any of the good ones, but I definitely got a lot of chuckles out of some of the more expressive jurors. The system kind of falls to the wayside in the second game though.
Another strength of the jury is it let the writers get way with not having Ryunosuke or Susato being experts in British culture. I think culture shock, and especially the feeling of isolation and confusion in a foreign land, are meant to be big parts of the narrative. The jury being made up of common people willing to explain things often pulls Ryunosuke out of the fire in situations where he would obviously lack the knowledge. It seems a bit Deus ex Machina at times, but the overall flow of the story is strong enough that I never found it to be unbelievable.
The game also plays around a lot with its investigation sequences. Previous “Ace Attorney” games often swapped between a “court” mode and an “investigation” mode, that would drag across multiple days. It could cause some cases to drag out and get boring, and while there were a couple of cases like that in this game, most of it is streamlined in a way that feels enjoyable… but it’s a shame that enjoyability doesn’t extend to Sholmes’ reasoning episodes. When puzzled by a perplexing problem, Ryunosuke will often have a “duet” of sorts with Sholmes. Sholmes will propose some horrendously wrong idea, that Ryunosuke will then have to go back and fix. However, you have to sit through a full Sholmes ramble twice to fix things, and I’d rather just have had Ryunosuke try to solve the problem on the first try. I understand why it was done, at least for gameplay purposes, but these sections in particular would kill the mood for me, and I found myself mashing through them after the 2nd or 3rd one.
The localized script is nothing short of an astonishing accomplishment. “The Great Ace Attorney” mixes elements from all kinds of languages and speaking styles that can seem overwhelming and foreign. The original “Ace Attorney” games were moved from Japan to America in their localization, but “The Great Ace Attorney” retains its original locations and motifs (for the most part). It presents an entirely new challenge to the localization team, and I think they hit it out of the park. There are still obvious quips that wouldn’t be in the Japanese version, but they’re handled in such a way that they feel right in-line with the rest of the dialogue.
A common part of “Ace Attorney” localization often involves changing the names of characters around. This is done mostly to keep the spirit of the puns involved in them understandable. All of the major characters retain their names this time around, probably because their pulled straight from “Sherlock Holmes” stories, but most of the minor cast has name revisions unless their name was a Holmes’ reference. A lot of the changes are really good though. The European characters have their names changed to sound closer to their ethnicity, and even the few Japanese characters that appear had the same treatment. My favorite name by far that of the army general “Iyesa Nosa.” It’s a really clever localization that retains a Japanese-sounding name but makes the pun work for a non-Japanese audience.
“The Great Ace Attorney” takes various creative approaches to how it handles its “Holmes” material. The titular great detective had to have an unfortunate name change to ‘Herlock Sholmes’ (along with his assistant going from ‘Watson’ to ‘Wilson’), but plenty of nods and creative spins are still there for those familiar with the works. Most of these are just in the form of character names. Tobias Gregson is the main police detective Ryunosuke and Sholmes deal with, but Inspector Lestrade is instead introduced as a young pick pocket. There are plenty of other small nods like a character named after “The Adventure of the Three Garridebs.” Unrelated to Holmes, there is also a caricature of the famous Japanese author Souseki Natsume. “The Great Ace Attorney” is rife with plenty of fun nods and re-spins of classic literature, and I highly suggest reading through the original Holmes short stories if you aren’t already familiar with them. It’s not required reading for the game in any way, but it’s fun to catch all the little references and see how the writers chose to put their own spin on “Holmes” mythos.
There’re all kinds of tiny intricacies that pull not only the writing, but the rest of the game together. I love how Ryunosuke and his friend, Kazuma, have slight British accents because they had studied English in college (probably with either a British teacher, or another Japanese teacher who studied in Britain). I love the active use of British English, as American English wouldn’t make much sense in these games compared to the other titles. I love how character’s dialogue is localized within how they would perceivably speak. A Victorian British gentleman will have a much different tongue than that of an East End commoner. Many characters are foreigners from other European countries, and the localization team put in the work to make sure their words mentally read in a way that they would speak. I think this duology might be my new favorite “Ace Attorney” title.
I originally didn’t want to review “The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles” because I feared I would have to spoil too much of it to make my points. It’s difficult to talk about a dialogue-heavy text adventure without delving hard into the story, but there’s too much here that I enjoyed to not at least try. If my praises for the game haven’t sold you on it yet, I at least hope it’s made you consider picking it up. Despite there being a large number of games I’ve wanted to play over the summer, none of them have really impressed me like this one. It’s one of the first games in a while where I actively enjoyed going through it. I wasn’t just doing the motions to finish the story; I was wholeheartedly engaged.
Wonderful/5
★★★★★
“The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles”
Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Capcom
Release Date: 2021/06/03 (Worldwide)
Available on: Switch, PC (Steam), PlayStation 4, 3DS (Japan only)
Played on: Switch