Name: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations Orig. Name: Gyakuten Saiban 3 (逆転裁判 3) Publisher: CAPCOM JP release: 23/08/07 US release: 23/10/07 EU release: TBA Price: ˜$30,00 (Buy this game)

Trials and Tribulations is the third in the Phoenix Wright series of courtroom drama inspired adventure games. Although the game bills itself as being about an "Ace Attorney", it's actually really a detective or mystery game with an extremely novel way of interacting with the user - as well as directly solving puzzles that uncover the truth, you also have to disprove false "truths" - that is, false testimonies - using the clues that you've collected.

In terms of the actual game engine and technical experience, there is not that much new to say about Trials and Tribulations. It's essentially exactly the same engine as was used for Justice For All, the previous game. The game is played in two phases: in the first, you move around a series of locations, talking to people, examining locations for evidence (which is done by carefully examining the on-screen picture of the locations), and showing appropriate pieces of evidence to the people you meet. In the second phase, you appear at court and have to use the evidence items you've found to disprove people's testimonies and answer questions from the judge. The game is extremely text-heavy, but that's actually valuable because it allows the puzzles to have a far greater depth than in many graphical adventure games, and you really have to pay continuous attention to everything that's said to form a mental image of the crime that you can check things against. It's exactly this type of experience that makes the Phoenix Wright series so unique, and if it's the sort of thing you enjoy, you're going to enjoy this a lot.

The only downside, however, is that there's very little freedom involved. It's a railroad all the way. In the courtroom you can't choose what order events occur in or control the questioning in any way, and when investigating, if you haven't seen the right things and talked to the right people at every stage then you won't make any progress - the items or people you need to encounter will just be mysteriously missing until you've found what you're meant to. Also, most of the previous games featured one or more "subgames" where you searched for evidence in particular ways: Trials and Tribulations only has one, and it's re-used from a previous game (detecting metal), which is a bit of a let-down.

The graphics are by no means ugly for a portable system, but don't yet use the full potential of the DS (it's a port of a Japanese GBA game, and they've used the same graphics), and they're largely limited to static background images plus animated character portraits in front, but that's all that's really needed, and they do their job well. The sound, equally, is generally good - it consists of a number of different musical themes, which relate to situations and to characters in a "motif" fashion, plus various sound effects that are used to punctuate the text spoken by people on screen. These sound effects are simple but effective, and they're standard throughout the series. However, the music seems a little more repetitive in Trials and Tribulations than it did in the previous episodes; similar themes are used again and again, and there are a surprising number of silent moments, although they're usually for dramatic effect.

In terms of notable additional game features, there are only two: first, you get to play as a far greater range of characters in this version of the game. Secondly, some of the "giveaway" features from the previous games are no longer used that way. You can no longer tell when a character is giving their final testimony by the altered music, and it's no longer the case that if a character amends their testimony in the middle, the amended statement is always the one with the error.

However, a major bugbear of the series is also still with us: the energy bar. Every time you fail at solving certain puzzles, you lose a certain amount of "energy", and if your energy runs out, the judge finds the defendant guilty no matter what(!), and you have to replay from your last save. Not only does this really hurt the courtroom verisimilitude, but it simply doesn't work as a game mechanic. Since it's a one-track adventure game, there is no fun or challenge in replaying a section you've already solved, and no way to escape from a puzzle that you're having trouble solving. The bar is supposedly intended to stop you simply presenting every piece of evidence by brute force trial and error; but if you genuinely can't work out a puzzle, there's still only one thread to the game, so what else can you really do - give up the game there? Or look up a walkthrough, which is cheating just the same? It's nothing but a pain in the posterior and you'll probably just finding yourself using saves and power-cycles to stop it making any real difference. LucasArts showed long ago that adventure games don't need this kind of thing, so it's a wonder Capcom didn't pay attention.

So, let's get onto the real meat of this, and what Phoenix Wright fans will be interested in: the plot. If you enjoyed the plots in the previous games, you won't be disappointed! It's just as delightfully full of twists and turns, and surprises and drama, as the previous games were - but there's something missing. There are two big problems I can describe without spoiling the plot. First of all is that the game seems to be striving for "identity" as a theme - but it just doesn't work. When mistaken or forged identity is used as a way of introducing "surprise" twists to cases over and over again, it becomes tedious, not an artistic theme. Ordinary people who become masters of disguise at the drop of a hat, people possessed by ghosts, even the ultimate identity cliche of long-lost identical twins; they all show up here.

And that's part of the other doubt I have - a lot of the human factor of the cases is weakened in T&T. With all of the contrived goings-on happening, there's a lot less space for the characters to express themselves or for the player to connect with the cases; and often characters coordinate themselves into huge plans without any clear motive, or no more motive than "they were forced". This is most obviously shown by the final case - the final case in the previous game, Justice For All, was based around a very human, very real moral dilemma which could easily catch the player's emotions and which actually taught a real lesson about the workings of legal systems. In this game, the final case's impact on the player more or less depends on the player trying to empathise with the characters' emotions - which is hard because of the huge amount of bizarre and supernatural behaviour involved, disconnecting it from the real world and from anything that a real player can relate to. It's also made somewhat harder by the fact that the ending feels rushed - the final defeat of the recurring villain is a good conclusion to the ongoing story, but it has very little player involvement and doesn't make complete sense at the time it happens.

Plus, there's the traditional problem with games of this type - namely, that once you've played through Trials and Tribulations once, you'll never, ever touch it again. You already know all the answers, and there are no alternative possibilities or space for exploration whatsoever. Still, it's a long game - longer than either of the previous two games - so you'll get your money's worth before the hammer falls.

So, in summary, Trials and Tribulations is still an excellent game. In objective terms, it is probably not quite up to the standard of Justice For All, purely because of the over-contrived plots. But, for story and background reasons, it's far better to complete the original Phoenix Wright and Justice For All before you play this game, and if you've already finished them both then comparison against them is irrelevant. If for some curious reason you only want to get one Phoenix Wright game, ever, then JFA might be a better choice compared to this one - but if you've played the series already and like it, or if you plan to play them all eventually, Trials and Tribulations won't disappoint at all.