Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth
The Logic gameplay device is genuinely engaging, and, to my surprise, Miles ended up having some pretty interesting character development (who knew that he was such a big fan of the Steel Samurai?). But much like Apollo Justice, I feel that this installment has diminished its storytelling quality, in the pursuit of ever-more-complicated scenarios.
All five of the game's cases are intimately inter-related, although I don't feel like they're told in the right order; and the segues inbetween them are shaky at best. Somewhere around the third case, I started noticing a dip in the game's polish: more frequent typos, evidence presentations that didn't really fit, bizarre plot devices, and meaningless character cameos. By case four, I felt like I was just going through the motions. The fifth and final case was laboriously long, told in three separate parts - and while the last part really impressed me as an authentic Ace Attorney case, the rest of it seemed very sloppy and over-complicated.
Since Ace Attorney's gameplay and story are inextricably linked to one another, the Logic mechanics, regrettably, suffered for these writing weaknesses. Logic was largely neglected through most of the fifth case, and where it was used, there tended to be very few leads, making it more a game of connect-the-dots than a genuine mental challenge.
With some significant tightening up, Ace Attorney Investigations could have easily been my favorite in the series: the case premises are great, and the new gameplay is right up my alley. But the progressively slapdash writing, and subsequent sacrifices in the Logic mechanic, put it firmly at the bottom of my list.
Weird note: for a game that so heartily dives into series fanservice, Phoenix Wright is nowhere to be seen. His absence is downright conspicuous, with frequent dialog allusions to him as "that man," and one particularly impactful moment in case 5 where Miles channels the spirit of by-the-skin-of-your-teeth cross-examination. Not that that's necessarily a "bad" thing - this game's characters are, in general, capable enough - but considering he was even built into Apollo Justice's plot, it just seems, well, odd.
Better than: Touch Detective
Not as good as: Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney
Twelve-year-old Franziska in a flashback: is simultaneously adorable and intimidating
Progress: Complete