Sustained!

Hold it! Has it really been almost fifteen years since Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (NDS) first showed me how fun the law could be?

The Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy package presented a surprising, and exciting, opportunity for me to revisit all those fondly-remembered cases from early in Phoenix's career. More recent installments like Spirit of Justice have made me wonder, are the original games really as good as I remember?

So far, the answer is... mostly. I remembered there were some frustrating instances of dialog-tree "pixel hunting" in Phoenix's early cases, so running into those hurdles again wasn't too disappointing -- but I had forgotten how inconvenient the out-of-court sequences could be to navigate, sometimes taking five or more click-throughs to get to a particular scene.

Most importantly, though, the writing of Ace Attorney's characters and plots feels like it's aged just fine. At least to me, the balance between "mystery-solving realism" and "bizarre cartoon humor" still seems good. (Granted, I may still be biased by nostalgia.)

As for the trilogy collection's visual facelift, it's a bit mixed. At its best, the new high-resolution art is a solid match for my rose-tinted memory of what the DS games "might have" looked like. Occasionally, though, a character will have awkward shading on their face or a weird mouth shape, and watching them talk doesn't ... totally look right.

It's not so bad that it distracts from the still-great storytelling and case-solving, though. And even when I'm replaying a scene that I still remember vividly from 10-15 years ago, becoming re-acquainted with Phoenix's friends and stories is a joy.

Progress: Finished episode 1 of Justice for All