Alright, I'll say it. These are the best Ace Attorney games.

If you are a lover of mystery solving, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles is an absolute must-play. Everything from the characters, to the cases, to the music and visuals, is exquisitely well made. Once I got playing I could hardly put it down, and I loved every minute of it.

Please, play these games!

It's pure kino

Shu Takumi and Janet Hsu are such an amazing "team," in a way. TGAA:C really showcases just how amazing the former is at scenario writing, and the latter at localizing with passion. ^_^;

As a huge AA/GS fan ever since the DS trilogy ports first made it stateside, I gotta' say that it's this title right keeping the spark alive in my eyes for that potential/elusive 7th mainline entry. There's plenty of mention out there on how Shu Takumi kinda' burned out on the series for awhile, not feeling there was room to grow with the current cast. Apollo Justice of course challenged that notion quite a bit, but the later two non-Takumi games sorta' helped you see what he meant, especially with whatever Capcom HQ BS forced them to practically disconnect plot threads game to game (aka how Apollo infamously has THREE backstories lol). Resetting the status quo so hard in 5 & 6, contrary to any aims of keeping the series fresh and accessible, just kinda' contributed to the feeling of the magic getting lost as the years went on.

TGAA1&2, in my eyes, totally derail that notion. While I'm not going to sit here and say the game revolutionizes the "gameplay" format (AAI probably still being the best rep in the franchise there), it does throw at you steamboat loads of fresh, well-realized characters and tons of interaction/dialogue opportunities, in and out of court. Like, this game's characters are so good that the jurors, originally meant to be one-offs case-to-case, end up being as full of personality as some of the best witnesses in any other AA game. I'm replaying now after buying the game on Steam and absolutely adore the concept for Juror#4 in TGAA2, for example. Kazuya Nuri's designs are just so full of life, and they're so well-realized by their 3D models, animations, and scripts. Nuri is right up there with Shiginori Soejima of modern Persona fame, as far as I'm concerned.

Speaking of the script, WOW does this game absolutely transport you with a rock-solid sense of period storytelling. You can absolutely hear the characters speaking to you in distinct tones of voice, thanks to the wonderfully-realized speech patterns brought to us once again by the Takumi/Hsu combo. AA has always been a humorous marvel of localization skill, and Janet Hsu & co once again impress. I'd recommend reading her interview regarding localizing this game in particular, as she goes over the challenges presented in the interweaving of two unique period locales, Victorian-era England and Meiji-era Japan.

The few dubbed lines, by contrast, feel sorely lacking; I would say voice acting has never been the franchise's strong suit (for obvious reasons), but it hits pretty hard if you decide to keep things in English. Ryunosuke in particular is just like...are you serious? The Susato VA apparently tried to realize a Japanese national speaking English with an accent, but both Ryunosuke and Kazuma don't even bother. In the other AA games this obviously doesn't matter due to the Japanifornia situation established over the years, but in this one the story context makes it awkward as hell, practically demanding the JP original voices. Thankfully, as mentioned, AA has never really relied on voice acting.

While the game is beautiful, sounds great, and features great story/dialogue content, I do have to admit that it might not be the sharpest case-to-case when it comes to player discoveries. Evidence manipulation is also much more limited feeling than in 4/5/6. It's possible that, by concocting a grander narrative across two entire games (5 cases each), the team lost the thread when it came to pacing and pizzazz for individual cases. The worst offender is probably TGAA1 case 2, but I'm still replaying rn and maybe a later case in TGAA2 will stick out at me. They might have also just struggled with era-appropriate forensic technology limitations, itself a concept that factors heavily into the story. Regardless, I can forgive the weaker moment-to-moment punchiness when the cast is just so utterly endearing. Shoutouts to Susato, SHolmes, Gina, and Soseki!

ONE BIG NITPICK. I'm not sure if this is a PC port only thing as I don't remember it being an issue in the Switch version, but having the "Autoplay" option activated prevents you from text skipping unless you disable it, and it can't actually be disabled while on the green witness cross-examination statements (though pressing them will restore the option until moving on to the next statement). I don't recall this being an issue in the Apollo Justice collection at all and I played that one on Steam almost immediately prior to this TGAAC replay, so idk.

Aaaaaaanyways, I'm ranting at this point. Not really a well-focused review by any means. The TL;DR for sure is that TGAA:C hints at a bright future for a modern 7th entry, featuring some of the best characterizations, models, and storytelling that AA has seen yet. The pacing can drag from time to time, and the Juror System is really just standard witness cross-examination in disguise (despite the jurors themselves being amazing), but the huge shift in cast/setting still breathed new life into the franchise. I would hope a 7th entry might find the courage to do the same, mostly abandoning the old characters for good and establishing a new core centralized around Athena, perhaps?

...TGAA:C gud