Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice for All

The Good
First, if you're new to the series I recommend reading the review for the first game instead. The games are very similar, so I won't go into the same detail for all aspects. For story reasons it's better to play the series in order anyway.

Phoenix Wright may be a year older, but what else has changed? Not much. He's still getting stuck involved with helpless defendants in murder cases, and he still needs you to help him through them.

Gameplay is very much as it was in the first game, with two notable changes. First, the Psyche-Lock system. It becomes possible to tell when someone is lying to you or hiding something from you during an investigation, which is represented on the screen by a series of locks and chains. While it's a change to the gameplay, it isn't very new, either. It essentially takes the cross-examination portion of the trial, and lets you do it at certain points outside of the actual trial. It can be a bit trickier, though, since you can initiate it any time after you've seen the locks and chains, even if you haven't discovered all the evidence you'll need to unlock them, so you might find yourself running into dead ends if you're not yet prepared.

The other change is how making mistakes is represented. In the first game, you had several exclamation points each day of the trial, and you'd lose one when presenting the incorrect piece of evidence or making a bad claim. In this game the exclamation points are replaced by a bar, allowing decisions at different times to be worth different amounts. If it's at a key point in the trial, screwing up could cost you half a bar. This bar is also present during the Psyche-Lock sessions described in the previous paragraph.

Past those modifications, the game could be mistaken for an expansion pack. As was the case with the first game, though, the game mechanics take a back seat to the stories and text, which are still very entertaining. The names are as punny as ever (see ventriloquist Ben and his dummy, Trilo Quist), and there are more little pop culture references than ever: the Legend of Zelda cartoon, YTMND, there's even some really obscure stuff like use of a quote from Nintendo president Satoru Iwata that will probably go over most people's heads, but is great if you're one who catches it.

The Bad
The game really could be mistaken for an expansion pack. The gameplay and interface is nearly identical to the original. Many characters return, some of whom almost entirely reuse their images and animations from the first game. It's nice to see that these characters are still around, but sometimes you wish for some fresh blood. Music: much of it is reused, with the unfortunate exception of the exciting music that accompanied things turning your way in trial, which has a less-exciting replacement.

Though I again praised the localization, it is weaker in one simple way than the first game: an apparent lack of proofreading. I'm not surprised to see "alter" used where "altar" should be used in an online discussion, but in a professional game it's disappointing, and there are dozens of instances like that throughout the game.

Though the four cases of this game are longer than the first four of the previous game, this one has no DS-exclusive fifth case. On the one hand it's disappointing, because using the DS features in that case was a lot of fun. On the other hand, I'm somewhat glad that the DS ports of these games aren't being so labored on, so we can catch up to Japan and get to the games that were built for the DS from the ground up. It should also make things easier for the story; this game basically ignores the events of that bonus case, which makes sense since this game was written several years earlier, but as a player trying to keep his continuity straight it doesn't feel quite right.

The Bottom Line
Justice For All brings very little new to the table, but if you enjoyed the experience of the first, you'll probably want to continue it with this game. It's not like regular comic books have frequent improvements to their technology, so is it really a deal-breaker if an interactive comic book sequel doesn't either?