Hold It, Gentlemen.
Professor Layton and Ace Attorney: two franchises to which I am apathetic and enslaved, respectively; their cross-over game, then, was a warily-curious prospect for me. In the end, their collaboration didn't put me out as much as it pulled me in, and is something I'm happy to have played. But the full story isn't quite so simple.
The highlight of each franchise is storytelling, and Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright makes a bold, strong play in that regard. As the game opens in London, some mysterious characters cross paths with both Layton and Wright, and from there the gentlemen - plus Luke and Maya, of course - get wrapped up in a story that blends puzzles with trials, and fantasy with logic. The real story takes a while to get started, but once it does, it presents a genuinely refreshing take on courtroom showdowns: Phoenix adapts well to the fantasy setting, and applies analytical reasoning to magic and witches without breaking a sweat.
That having been said, a slow start is only one part of the game's awkward pace. The first half is a little ponderous, but rich in content and prose; as a side-effect, each "chapter" can be quite long and sprawling. After the halfway point - quite suddenly - the dramatic tension ratchets up and the storytelling tightens, with shorter and more-numerous chapters than before. The previously-open game world is replaced with constricted corridors, and investigative exploration supplanted by linear set-pieces. And for some reason, most of the characters established in the early game simply ... vanish, their personalities dismissed after only just being built up.
Pacing issues come to a head in the game's "ending," which is laborious -- not for the sake of being drawn-out, but because there is still so much story left. In a clear misunderstanding of the term "Epilogue," the game's final chapter contains the bulk of its exposition, and has as many twists and turns as the ten chapters preceding it.
But the remarkable thing about Layton v. Wright's storytelling is that, in spite of these problems, it still feels satisfying in the end. The shortcomings are impossible to ignore, but what's left - strong characterization, impressive world-building, compelling dialog, and fascinating story beats - is substantive and entertaining enough to more than balance that scale.
As for the gameplay? Well, I've made no bones about my issue with Curious Village's story being totally disconnected from its gameplay -- while Ace Attorney games have a solid history of intertwining their narratives with investigations and courtroom interaction. And as one might mathematically expect, this crossover game's execution lies roughly in the middle of those two models.
On the one hand, the game is full of Layton's dumb little placemat puzzles. Aside from clicking through conversations, and battling in the courtroom, much of the game is spent solving irrelevant riddles and brainteasers in order to proceed. To its credit, some of the puzzles in Layton v. Wright are actually synchronized with the storytelling, e.g. decoding a lock combination for a door, or rearranging pieces of a key. And a few of these puzzles are even legitimately challenging.
For the most part though, puzzles are either non-sequitur, insultingly simple, or both. That these puzzles' optimal solutions tend toward "guess and check" is clearly no accident, as the game frequently encourages the player - either implicitly in a puzzle's design, or literally, with words - to blindly fidget around until an answer reveals itself. That is to say, the game doesn't care that these puzzles are irrelevent, and just wants them to be toyed with and tossed away.
As for the court scenes, Ace Attorney's over-the-top courtroom gameplay is some of my favorite in any genre, so it's no surprise that I enjoyed these segments more than Layton's. However, the court scenarios in Layton v. Wright still fall short of the bar set by the rest of the series. Historically, Ace Attorney showdowns are at their worst when the expected action is too ambiguous to properly determine - such as when multiple pieces of evidence are rationally connected, but only one of them is the "right" one to present - and that's exactly what the cases in this game sometimes suffer from. There are also a few instances of misleading dialog (or possibly misleading translation), suggesting that a non-intuitive answer might be more correct ... but in fact, it is not correct at all.
In fairness, there aren't very many of these shortfalls throughout the game, and they're rarely bad enough to be legitimately irritating. In fact, Layton's hint coins can even be used in the courtroom to wave away such ambiguities (although I could never bear to use them, myself). Layton v. Wright's court scenes aren't as bad as Ace Attorney's worst. But they aren't as good as the series' average, either.
Every Ace Attorney game has a unique gimmick in its court scenes, whether it's spirit channeling or a robot that detects poker-faces. This game's gimmick is multi-witness testimonies, in which anywhere from one to ten witnesses take turns telling a story to cross-examine. In theory, this means that when one witness says something, other witnesses can be probed for their agreement or rebuttal, revealing new facts and further fleshing out potential contradictions.
In practice, however, this mechanic is only used a handful of times; and even then, witness disagreement only comes up about twice in each case. Furthermore, following up on said disagreement is trivialized by automatic, obvious on-screen indications -- such that it isn't meaningfully distinct from normal gameplay. All in all, the multi-witness gameplay is a fascinating idea that's both underused and poorly executed.
Actually, what multi-witness scenes show off most clearly isn't game design, but technical performance issues. Layton v. Wright apparently stresses the limits of 3D scene complexity on the 3DS, and this becomes especially evident when more than two characters are on the screen at once. The game's framerate suffers visibly in these instances, and it's impossible not to notice the stilted text-typing animations. (The framerate also suffers when there are visible fire effects, which unfortunately covers nearly all of the game's climactic moments.)
Performance aside though, the game's presentation is pretty commendable. The detailed style and thematic appropriateness of background scenes is just as great as any Ace Attorney game, characters are well-animated and expressive, and the soundtrack is really top-notch, with the possible exception of one or two "investigation" tracks that get too tedious too quickly. The game uses more voice acting than I'm accustomed to from a Wright game, and it works ... okay, for the most part. Most of the main characters' voices are good enough, though not great; side-characters' voices are more miss than hit, but are rarely heard after the game's early chapters.
And the proofreading is excellent, too, which is always nice to see in a text-heavy game. Too often, Phoenix's sequels have distracted me with sub-par spellchecking -- the only error I picked up on here was the somewhat-frequent use of "judgement" instead of "judgment," which now that I'm double-checking it, isn't actually "wrong," I guess. So, point to Capcom and Level-5 on that one.
It's impossible for me to ignore Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright's shortcomings. As a Layton game, I was as bored as ever; as an Ace Attorney game, it's clearly not among my favorites. And as such, I doubt I'll have strong memories of this game in the years to come. But just the same, it tells an entertaining story, and does it more than well enough to justify the crossover. And I have to admit that I actually enjoyed Layton's character in this story's context, even if I didn't enjoy his stupid puzzles.
Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is a fine story-driven game with acceptable-to-good gameplay mechanics. And while that isn't the best, it really is plenty good enough.
Better than: Professor Layton and the Curious Village
Not as good as: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies
But also better than: Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth
Progress: Complete, 4270 picarats, 200 hint coins.