Name: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Orig. Name: Gyakuten Saiban Yomigaeru Gyakuten (逆転裁判 蘇る逆転) Publisher: CAPCOM JP release: 15/11/05 US release: 11/10/05 EU release: 31/03/06 Price: ˜$30,00 (Buy this game)

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is, as you know, the first installment of the Phoenix Wright series. Although being at the time of its release a completely new formula for US gamers, Japan has already enjoyed and fallen in love with the same particular type, named Gyakuten Saiban, a series of three GBA games.

Simply consider Phoenix Wright a transformation of Gyakuten Saiban onto the Nintendo DS - revamped, updated, and a completely unexpected experience.

Players are taken through a simple point-and-click adventure of Phoenix Wright, a rookie attorney that is about to make his first trial, which in other words is the gamer's training process in listening to witnesses, giving evidence, and shouting out "OBJECTION" whenever required.



Although most of the game really takes place in court, most of the "chapters" of Ace Attorney take focus on digging up evidence in order to further prove a client of his/her innocence. Thanks to the DS's touch screen, scrolling through text and navigating through menus is made easy and intuitive - a major improvement over the Gyakuten Saiban series.

The story in Phoenix Wright, is, however quite linear in design. While it does seem that at times the choice can be quite volatile, per se, with a little bit of experience the player will already know when and how to do the right thing whenever prompted. That is, if you don't give off the wrong piece of evidence on purpose, which will make you lose favor with the judge, which is pretty much your life gauge in the series.

When this game comes to replay value, there's not really much fun to have except for re-playing the story, but seeing as this is in no way an RPG and also being quite the linear example of a game, you'll play through it in about half the time you did at first.

One very cool feature when it comes to gameplay, however, is voice recognition. By pressing a simple button down and shouting out "Take that!" or "Hold It!" might get the gamer a little more involved, but soon the "gimmick" factor of it just makes it not really have much of a point.

Overall, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney provides a very enjoyable experience, and gives the player a different view of what really happens in court. The well-written corny/funny dialogue maintains the level of interest throughout the game as well as the various personalities of different characters.

Graphics: With a slight anime/manga look to it, animations are quite clunky and although that adds to the overall humor, a little more effort could have been done in order to improve the overall presentation of this game.

Sound: There's next to no voice in this game, but the nice background songs compensate the lack of voice action.

Gameplay: With a simple touch of point-and-click, the well-written script takes over the whole experience.

Presentation: The first installment of the series proves to be fun and enjoyable, waiting for evidence to unfold in court, and makes us want for more.