The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures is an adventure game and the eighth installment in the Ace Attorney series, developed and published by Capcom. It was directed by Shu Takumi and produced by Shintaro Kojima. The game was released for the Nintendo 3DS in Japan in July 2015, with Android and iOS versions following in August 2017. A sequel, The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve, was released in Japan in 2017. Both games were released worldwide in July 2021 via The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, a duology compilation for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Windows.
Gameplay
The game carries on the courtroom style gameplay of previous installments in the Ace Attorney series, including the fully 3D environments and character models previously featured in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies. Like previous titles, the game is divided between investigation, in which players explore areas to gather evidence and testimonies, and courtroom battles, in which players must use evidence to find contradictions in witness testimonies to find the truth behind a case. Similarly to Takumi's previous game, Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, the player sometimes has to cross-examine multiple witnesses at the same time, potentially gleaning new information by addressing one witness when they react to another's statement.
The Great Ace Attorney introduces two new gameplay mechanics; The Dance of Deduction and Summation Examinations. During certain investigations, Herlock Sholmes will perform a "Logic and Reasoning Spectacular", in which he will come up with a flawed theory based on observations of the scene and the behavior of witnesses. Players will then have to examine the scene and witnesses carefully in order to correct Herlock's mistakes and reach a more logical conclusion. Summation Examinations take place during trials in which the jury, an aspect of trials in England, will unanimously decide on a guilty verdict. At these points, the player has to convince a majority of the jury to change their verdict so that the trial may proceed. Players accomplish this by comparing statements from two different jurors that contradict or otherwise prove strongly relevant to each other. This sometimes requires the player to press each juror and present evidence in order to change their statement.
Premise Setting and characters
Taking place near the end of the 19th century and the dawn of the 20th century (known in Japan as the Meiji Period, in Britain as the Victorian era), The Great Ace Attorney focuses on Ryunosuke Naruhodo, a student at Imperial Yumei University and an ancestor of primary Ace Attorney series protagonist Phoenix Wright. He is described as a character with a strong sense of justice, but who easily ends up in danger. Joining Ryunosuke is Kazuma Asogi, his friend from university who studies law. The concept of defense lawyers was merely "years old" in the judicial system at the time in Japan, so Asogi is qualified to stand in court already, and aims to transform the legal system via study in Great Britain. Ryunosuke and Asogi are aided by Susato Mikotoba, a judicial assistant. She is described as being an "ideal Japanese woman", and is also a progressive dreamer, and a lover of foreign mystery novels.
Upon traveling to England to further his studies, Ryunosuke meets and befriends world-famous British detective Herlock Sholmes (named "Sherlock Holmes" in the original Japanese release). Herlock is a very eccentric and free-spirited individual. Despite being genuinely intelligent, the rapid-fire, blasé nature of his abductive reasoning often leads Herlock to incorrect conclusions. Accompanying Sholmes is his assistant Iris Wilson (named "Iris Watson" in the original Japanese release), a ten-year-old prodigy and Sholmes' adoptive daughter. Iris is a genius inventor, and the author of "The Adventures of Herlock Sholmes".
Plot In Japan, Ryunosuke Naruhodo is put on trial for the murder of a visiting university teacher, Dr. John H. Wilson. He is represented by his close friend Kazuma Asogi, while the prosecutor is Taketsuchi Auchi (the Meiji Period ancestor of recurring character Winston Payne). With help from legal assistant Susato Mikotoba, Ryunosuke and Asogi prove that the real murderer is Jezaille Brett, an English exchange student who had been studying under Wilson at the university. Her motive is left a mystery; she is to be sent to China and tried in a consular court.
Following the trial, Asogi leaves Japan to complete his studies in Great Britain but hides Ryunosuke in his baggage so he can see Asogi's debut in the courts. However, while Ryunosuke is asleep, Asogi is found murdered within his cabin, and the now exposed stowaway Ryunosuke is once again blamed for the murder. Working with Susato and eccentric passenger / detective Herlock Sholmes, Ryunosuke discovers that the real killer is Nikolina Pavlova, a world-famous Russian ballerina who fled Russia. She had unintentionally killed Asogi by pushing and breaking his neck on his bed's wooden knob after fearfully assuming that he was going to turn her in to the captain; in truth, he was attempting to introduce her to fellow stowaway Ryunosuke as an act of trust. After the incident is settled, Ryunosuke persuades Susato to let him take Asogi's place as a representative lawyer in Britain. She agrees and begins to heavily tutor him on English law for the remainder of the journey.
Shortly after their arrival in Great Britain, Ryunosuke and Susato meet Lord Chief Justice Mael Stronghart, who assigns them the defense of philanthropist Magnus McGilded, who has been accused of murdering bricklayer Mason Milverton within a moving omnibus. They go up against Barok van Zieks, a legendary British prosecutor known as the "Reaper of the Old Bailey" and are introduced to the British legal system, which uses a jury of six people to decide the verdict. During the trial, a smoke bomb is set off, forcing an evacuation of the courtroom. After court resumes, Ryunosuke and Susato cross-examine the newly discovered witness, Gina Lestrade, and discover evidence proving that Mason had been killed on the carriage roof, though van Zieks claims that this evidence had been forged after the smoke bomb had gone off. He is unable to prove this, and McGilded is subsequently acquitted, though Ryunosuke remains unsure of McGilded's innocence. Shortly after the trial, McGilded is killed after he returns to the omnibus and it is set on fire.
The following day, Ryunosuke and Susato take on the defense of the soon to be famous Japanese novelist Soseki Natsume, who is currently in London studying English as a nervous exchange student, and has been charged with aggravated assault following a stabbing in the street. During the trial, Ryunosuke proves that the stabbing was actually the result of a domestic disturbance between landlord John Garrideb and his wife Joan, who had thrown a knife at her husband, only for the knife to fall outside their window and unintentionally hit the victim. Soseki is declared not guilty and decides that he is going to go back to Japan. Meanwhile, Herlock invites Ryunosuke and Susato to live with him and Iris at 221B Baker Street and they set up their law office in their attic.
A few months later, Gina is accused of murdering pawnshop owner Pop Windibank. During the trial, where Iris aids Naruhodo, it is revealed that McGilded actually was Mason Milverton's murderer, and that the fire that killed McGilded was started by an assassin hired by Milverton's son, a telegraph station technician named Ashley Graydon. Graydon and an unwitting Milverton had been selling coded government secrets to McGilded, which eventually resulted in a fight that led to McGilded murdering Milverton; in revenge, Graydon killed McGilded and tried to steal back the encoded secrets from Windibank's pawnshop, causing him to accidentally murder Windibank in a confrontation. After the case is solved, Ryunosuke is suspended from practicing law due to revealing government secrets during the trial, while Susato returns to Japan after learning that her father Yujin is supposedly deathly ill.
Development
The Great Ace Attorney was developed by Capcom for the Nintendo 3DS. It was directed and written by Shu Takumi and produced by Shintaro Kojima, and features character designs and art direction by Kazuya Nuri and music by Yasumasa Kitagawa and Hiromitsu Maeba.
Development began in 2013, a few months after the Japanese release of Takumi's previous project, Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, when he was asked to work on a new Ace Attorney game. At one point, he considered having the game focus on civil trials, but remembered a game idea he had come up with earlier: around 2000, he had the idea of a mystery game in which a detective makes incorrect deductions, and where players have to correct the detective and lead him towards the truth. He thought it would be fun to combine the idea with Ace Attorney, but did not expect Capcom to accept the idea.
Takumi had also been wanting to make a Sherlock Holmes game for a long time; because of this, Holmes was part of the concept all the way from the start. According to Takumi, he had several reasons for wanting Holmes in the game: both due to the gameplay, and as a way to separate the game from the main Ace Attorney series, as Holmes is from a different time period than the one the main series games take place in. This led to Takumi thinking about how Japan was at that time, and lead to new possibilities for the game's mysteries. Initially, Takumi had intended for the game to begin in London, thinking that it would be too much to create a Japanese court only for the prologue; this changed when Nuri said that he thought it should begin in Japan. The previous work in Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney helped Takumi establish the details for this setting.
Takumi found it challenging to write dialogue and using expressions appropriate for the way the Japanese language was during the Meiji period, as he had to avoid both too old-fashioned and too modern dialogue. As the Meiji period was a time when the lawyer profession was new in Japan, and when there was a lot of focus on becoming a part of "the new world" and becoming more Western, Takumi made sure to make the game reflect this. As Takumi had to create a new world for the story to take place in, it took longer than expected to write the game's scenario. The protagonist Ryūnosuke's character was based on how the main series protagonist Phoenix Wright would speak and act if he had lived during the Meiji period. When the development team wrote a list of ideas for names for the protagonist, "Ryūnosuke" was the first one to be suggested; it only took a few seconds for them to decide on it. Susato is based on the same concept as that of previous Ace Attorney heroines: she was designed to be a "perfect partner" and fun to spend time with, as the heroines of the series always are by the main characters' side. Her name was decided by choosing kanji characters that Takumi found pretty. The development team decided to change "Sherlock's Watson" from the original, as they thought it would be more interesting if Watson weren't another English gentleman.
Visuals and music