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Name: Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth

The Ace Attorney series has built itself around its own formula. Investigate crime scenes and present that evidence in a court of law under the scrutiny of an opposing attorney. Over time, old formulas become tired, and after four games holding tightly to this dogma, Investigations is trying to redraw the blueprint. By creating a protagonist out of an old nemesis, and moving out into the third-person, is this enough to inject life into this revered series?

The story begins shortly after the third Phoenix Wright game, Trials and Tribulations. Now behind the fluffy cravat of Miles Edgeworth, the sometimes-villain/sometimes-ally of the past becomes embroiled in a range of deaths necessitated by illegal smuggling activities. Beyond trying to search out the organisation involved, Miles is forced to face his past in the search for truth. Politics and criminality grey the moral line, yet the same upbeat dialogue and hilarious characters still stop the events from becoming overbearing. Old favourites such as Detective Gumshoe and Franziska von Karma make reappearances as major characters, yet old faces often dot the game as brief cameos. Despite this, there is a roster of new faces that still represent the same spectrum of bizarre characters the series is known for, and in atmosphere and tone, the game can't be misrepresented as anything else but Ace Attorney.

The gameplay, while outwardly different from past games, is actually very similar to the original formula. It's still segregated into the two distinct fields of investigation and confrontation. While Phoenix would be looking around a flat background for evidence, Miles just has to physically walk to the objects in question. Aside from that minor difference, investigation remains mostly the same. However, the lines between receiving testimony from witnesses and confronting the villain are now more blurred. Rather than having the confrontation segregated by always having it in a courtroom like in the Phoenix Wright games, this is done through regular testimony at the crime scene. You are trying to prove he/she is the perpetrator before it goes to court by presenting all the evidence you found that implicates them, cutting that section from the game completely.

Each game has a gimmick upon which it tries to add to your arsenal of crime-fighting tools. While psychic powers are the venue of other defence attorneys, Miles relies on a more scientific, Vulcan-approved tactic – Logic. As he examines objects of interest, certain pieces of information will separate themselves and be transported in bubbles into a Logic menu. If two of these strands of Logic relate to each other, such as the sound of a gunshot and a nearby open window, he will postulate that the gunshot was heard through the open window since the room's walls were soundproof.

While this is an interesting addition to the formula, the end result of these changes is that it takes away from the narrative rather than enriches it. The benefit of partitioning the styles of gameplay in the previous games meant that it rarely got repetitive. However, a large proportion of the game is devoted entirely to the pressing of testimony and the presentation of evidence at the right moment to prove contradictions, and this begins to wear thin after a while. There isn't a balance between the amount of testimony and the amount of investigation, as these areas are often very short and very few. Usually, you're restricted to only being in a single room, rather than having to find evidence over a wide area. In previous games, you'd be moving to multiple locations all over the city, so being contained in single locations, no matter how freely you can navigate them, is a regression for the series.

Yet while it's more monotonous and restricted, it's still a wonderful game in the vein of its precursors. It's a really wordy title, essentially being a text adventure with graphics, and as linear as the originals, with next to little replay value. Yet the words are witty, and the linearity constructs a complex and interesting story. The situations are just as convoluted, and the villains are just as devious in covering their tracks. The character designs are just as well drawn, and the music covers the range of emotion that it must in order to be appropriate to the wide range of situations.

The only problems that arise with Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth are some questionable decisions regarding the game's design, or, perhaps more tellingly, its redesign. The choices were relevant ones, but the implementation was not. Increased ability to explore was not met with more space to explore, and this unbalanced the fine equilibrium that made these games the near-perfect titles that they were. While it doesn't live up to the pedigree of the originals, it remains a fine adventure game that is afflicted with the disappointment of potential unrealised.