12. The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles (2021*)
- * released on the Nintendo Switch in 2021; original 3DS Japanese-only releases in 2015 and 2017
- Final score: 33 points
- Total placements: 3 lists
- Highest placement: #7, (tie) Casey & Q
Casey writes:
The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles “package” encompasses two games in the Ace Attorney series that had originally seemed like they might not make it out of Japan: The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures from 2015 and The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve from 2017. While the fan community was working on an unofficial localization and so we may have been able to experience the game this way, having easy access to both games at the same time and being able to recommend that to others was a great development, especially when the future of the franchise seemed so unclear before 2024’s back-to-back reissues of both the Apollo Justice trilogy and the Miles Edgeworth duology.
The Great Ace Attorney games have a fascinating narrative hook that leads to a lot of weird anti-Japanese racism, features perhaps the most absurd Sherlock Holmes characterization of all time, and introduces some occasionally baffling but fresh courtroom mechanics, like the ability to cross-examine multiple witnesses at once or the requirement to sway each individual jury member into changing their verdict, sometimes by pitting them against each other. Its investigations include the wacky “dance of deduction” mode, which is a lot of fun. Perhaps most importantly, the two games tell a really cool and pretty grand story across two continents. While fans seem to rank the cases that link most closely to the overarching plot the highest, I actually want to use this soapbox for a moment to say that case 4, The Adventure of the Clouded Kokoro, has possibly one of the best courtroom sequences of the entire franchise. The twist reveal is unprecedented and tragic and in a series that frequently relies on wild coincidences and pretzel logic to make its story exciting, the way this mystery unfolds is really unique and special.