Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth is just the game to breath new life into the Ace Attorney franchise.
As with all great mysteries, it begins on the surface. Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth arrives to his office late in the evening to find it ransacked. He's suddenly surprised by the culprit and held at gunpoint when the criminal flees. Left to clean up the mess, Edgeworth begins to gather clues about what went on. He interviews everyone he can, fingers a suspect and manages to get him to confess to his crime. But what he's uncovered is only the tip of the iceberg. There's much more going behind this simple case of breaking and entering, and Miles Edgeworth has only scratched the surface.
Ace Attorney fans will quickly realize that this is a fully reinvented title. You can actually see your character among the environment and move him about to have him search for clues. This new interaction gives the game a greater sense of tangiblity. During dialogue exchanges, you'll also see your character's profile on the screen accompanied at the same with people he's talking to. It may seem moot, but simply displaying more profiles on screen makes the game more interesting.
The core essence of Miles Edgeworth is the same as the previous Ace Attorney games. You go about the crime scene gathering evidence and talking to witnesses. When you talk to someone suspicious, you hear their testimony and present contradicting evidence during the rebuttals. The difference is there's no courtroom filibuster this time around. All debating takes place right there on the scene.
There's a new gameplay mechanic called Logic that helps Edgeworth piece together what happened. As Miles finds a significant clue, he'll make a note about it, such as an open window providing a breeze smelling of flowers. This goes into the Logic area of the game where it awaits its matching pair. For instance, Miles might find the flower and note it in Logic and when you pair up those two pieces of logic, he'll realize something new about the investigation. It may lead to new evidence, or even a new suspect.
Miles Edgeworth will eventually meet an aspiring thief by the name of Kay Faraday, and this unlikely assistant brings a very important mechanic to the game's crime solving: Little Thief. This ingenious portable electronic device overlays a holographic projection based on gathered data of how the crime scene looked beforehand. Thanks to the new environments the characters can move around in, this creates an updated or even newly formed environment that lets you uncover clues you wouldn't have been able to before. The concept of the technology is a bit far fetched, but it proves engrossing nonetheless.
For the first time since Phoenix Write: Ace Attorney, the game's been given a complete makeover. Even though Miles Edgeworth contains a large cast of returning characters, they have all been redrawn. They maintain a lot of their same poses and mannerisms, but they still look new. Just from the fact that the game hardly spends any time in the courtroom means you're treated to a wonderful change of scenery. Your sprite based characters don't move with much care for animation, but it gives them a bit of charm anyway. This is hands down the best presented Ace Attorney.
The audio for the most part is about the same as the previous games. A lot of sound effects such as button selecting and people taking hits when contradicting evidence is presented to them sounds pretty much the same. The music is great as always, but it's not entirely original. Returning characters continue to have the same theme to them. The Ace Attorney games have also never been backed much by voice acting, but Miles now says, "Eureka!" when making a logical conclusion, and a few other characters he debates will scream out "Hold it!"
For fans of the Ace Attorney games, Miles Edgeworth: Investigations is one title you will not want to miss. Everything from the gameplay to the aesthetics has been revamped and given a fresh coat of paint. The story's intriguing with many twists and turns, but the only downside to how it plays out is that sometimes the game takes too long to wrap up a case. Aside from that minor fault, Miles Edgeworth stands to be the pinnacle of the Ace Attorney games, providing a fresh new feeling Capcom should have incorporated several titles ago.