A man lies dead in a prosecutor’s office, his body crumpled against a bookshelf. Folders of case files are scattered around the corpse, and bloody handprints adorn the shelves. According to the victim’s ID badge, he’s a detective – the cause of death, a single gunshot seemingly fired from his own service weapon. Who could have killed this man so brazenly in this bastion of justice? How did they get in at all when the door should have been locked? Why is one of the case files missing – the files relating to a strange incident from 8 years ago? Only one man can fit together the facts and logic of this case to catch the killer – Miles Edgeworth, Ace Prosecutor.

The Ace Attorney series returns in style with Ace Attorney Investigations Collection – a remastered set of the two Ace Attorney Investigations games originally developed for the Nintendo DS. In all the other Ace Attorney games, you play as a defence attorney, charged with defending your client and bringing the truth to light against all odds. Here, you find yourself in the shoes of the man you’d usually be up against, Miles Edgeworth – however, this game doesn’t take place in the courtroom. Instead, you are tasked with investigating crime scenes, interviewing witnesses, rebutting arguments, and catching the culprit before they can slip away.

This collection marks the first time that Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit, has been released to English-speaking audiences. Prior to this, fans had to play an unofficial romhack to experience the second chapter of the AAI story – so needless to say, as a long-time fan of the series I came into this with high hopes. I am pleased to say that these hopes were well placed, and that this collection delivers some of the most thrilling stories across the Ace Attorney series.

The Truth, The Whole Truth, And Nothing But The Truth

As mentioned, you play Miles Edgeworth – a prosecutor with a stunning red suit, ridiculous cravat, and an unrelenting drive to bring the truth to light. In Ace Attorney Investigations, Edgeworth finds himself directly at the scene of the crime, tasked with figuring out the truth of each situation, no matter how complicated or impossible it may seem. The gameplay is split into distinct sections – generally, you will begin with an investigation section, where you can walk freely around the location you’re in to gather clues and interrogate witnesses. Unlike in the rest of the series, here you control a 2D sprite of Edgeworth and actually walk around the scene instead of just clicking around. Each game contains five episodes – with the first being a relatively short, tutorial-style mystery, and each progressive episode getting longer and longer.

Once you’ve finished investigating, you’ll then have to listen to people’s Arguments and provide your own Rebuttal (which is the same as Testimony and Cross Examination in the rest of the series). Here characters will provide their statements on what happened, and it’s your job to expose the contradictions. You can press each statement for more information, which will sometimes reveal new information or add new avenues for you to attack. Then, you must find which of the statements contradicts the evidence you hold, select the right piece of evidence, and raise an “OBJECTION!”. These two phases are the core loop of the game, and by alternating between them, you will unearth the real killers and bring them to justice.

The first addition these games make to this formula is the inclusion of Clues and Logic. As you explore around, listen to witnesses, and discover new evidence, you will also build up a selection of clues. Then, it’s up to you to figure out which two clues relate to each other and fit them together using logic. This starts off simple and easy, like matching together “I found a gun” and “What’s the murder weapon?”, but as the game progresses they get more complicated and lead to bigger revelations about the case you’re working on. It’s a pretty simplistic system, but it adds another layer to the investigative process and makes it more dynamic. Have I discovered all there is to find in this scene? Do I have the clues I need to piece this together, or do I need to question a witness first?

Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit also introduces a new mechanic called Logic Chess, where you must navigate branching paths of dialogue to figure out how to draw more and more information out of a suspect until they crack and reveal all to you. It has elements of the Habit mechanic from Apollo Justice, as you have to read the body language and tells of the person you’re engaged with to figure out when to attack and when to bide your time and let them implode. It’s a little clumsy at first, but turns into a thrilling back-and-forth as you face tougher opponents – you really get to feel like you’re reading the suspect and figuring out how to get inside their minds.

Two Games, One Edgeworth

Since the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection is two separate games, it feels pertinent to contrast them. The first Ace Attorney Investigations, while delivering some excellent mysteries, suffers from some pacing issues and odd decisions about its content. Much of its grander mystery revolves around a smuggling ring that you hear about early on, but in the process, it gets caught up a lot in questions of jurisdiction. Perhaps it’s just me, but I don’t find the matters of extraterritorial rights and feuds between nation-states to be a compelling driver of the narrative. It feels oddly impersonal at times since the game has to explain so much about these fictional nations to you, when you’re not given any real reason to care about them. Where it shines far stronger is in the character-driven plots, where the people you know and love get caught up in convoluted murders and you have a strong reason for wanting to get them out of trouble.

Remastered, but left alone

These games have the graphical remastering that is par for the course for all of the recent Ace Attorney releases. The environments are extended to fit the aspect ratio of non-DS screens, and the chibi-style avatars that walk around the scene are very fun. You have the option of switching back to the original pixel art avatars, but seeing them against the remastered backgrounds just feels messy, so it’s not a hugely appealing option. There’s a gallery you can look through, which is… fun, I guess? Be warned that it contains spoilers though – thankfully, the game notifies you when you go in. There are also some new accessibility features, including the Story Mode, where the game essentially plays itself and allows you to take the back seat. It’s a great option for those who might feel turned off by the difficulty of some of the puzzles, but still want to experience the stories.

It does feel like they could have gone further in modernising these experiences though. Many of the cutscenes feel a bit stilted in a way that you don’t necessarily notice on a tiny screen, but on the larger Switch screen is far more obvious. There’s very little in the way of extra graphical flourishes or effects. As an example, there’s a cutscene where Edgeworth walks past a series of broken fun-house mirrors. You might think we’ll see strange, distorted versions of him as he passes – instead, there’s just a low-resolution reflection that appears for a brief moment. These remasters could have added far more visual flair to make these moments more engaging, but the developers have chosen instead to present the games as close to their original form as possible. While it’s an understandable approach, it feels like a missed opportunity.

My experience with this game was also marred by some occasional performance issues. Graphically there’s not a whole lot going on, but there were scenes and patches where I experienced frame rate drops, stuttering animations, and stilted cutscenes. These hardly impact the end-user experience, but it’s hard to forgive these issues, especially when you consider how old the base games are. Hopefully, these will be ironed out for the final release of the game.

The pieces on the board

The Ace Attorney series is known for its memorable, loveable, and punnily-named characters, and Ace Attorney Investigations Collection delivers them in spades. There are plenty of fan-favourites returning here – maybe even a couple too many in the first game – but also plenty of fresh faces who you will come to love over the course of your time investigating. Edgeworth’s new sidekick is Kay, a Great Thief in training, and she brings much-needed energy and lightness to the severity of prosecutorial life. As usual for the series, her backstory is very important for the larger mystery that these cases build towards, and you get to know her more and more as the game progresses. Kay can also recreate murder scenes using her trusty sidekick, Little Thief, which allows for some great sequences where you walk through a virtual room and find contradictions in the physical space.

These games are visual novels through and through – because of their nature, you will always spend a lot more time reading than actually investigating or making decisions. Because of that, it’s imperative that you actually like and care about the characters, especially the ones you spend the entire experience with. These assistant characters have always been a strength of Ace Attorney, and Kay is up there with the best of them. The antagonists you’ll face are no slouches either, like Agent Lang, an Interpol operative with a hatred for prosecutors and an unhealthy obsession with wolves. As for the pun names, they’re in full swing here. A personal favourite from early on is Tabby Lloyd (who, as you might have deduced, works as a reporter). It’s good stuff.

Grand Mysteries to be Solved

As always, while the individual episodes of each game focus on a different case, they all end up leading to a much grander mystery. The climax of each game is a marathon, a case that brings everything together and puts Edgeworth against all odds to unravel the full extent of the crimes. The Ace Attorney Investigations Collection is among the best in the series when it comes to this – the cases weave together in unexpected ways, building up a larger narrative piece by piece. Slowly, methodically taking this puzzle apart and revealing the ultimate truth is a thrilling and enthralling experience. The writers put so much effort into shaping these mysteries, and it pays off in spades when you have a realisation that makes you gasp, out loud, in real life. I did that multiple times while completing my journey through these games, which is the highest form of praise I could give them.