LogFAQs > #934573191

#38. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies


Its hard to remember now, but there was a time when it seemed like the Ace Attorney series was on the brink of ruin. Apollo Justice had put the main series into a cold sleep, and we didnt even get an official English localization of the second Ace Attorney Investigations game. There were rumors that Ace Attorney 5 was happening, but that was all they were. We had yet to see any official information about the game itself. We feared we may never get another Ace Attorney game (which is why I make it a point to buy Ace Attorney stuff whenever I can, so we can avoid this situation again in the future), so when we saw that first trailer with Phoenix Wright in his familiar blue suit and his name leading the title again, it was cause for great excitement, even as someone who was a fan of Apollo in his own game. The main thing was that they needed to get rid of Hobonix and undo the damage it did to his character, and thats what Dual Destinies set out to accomplish.

Phoenixs return to the spotlight was an overwhelming success for the series, as we now see with Ace Attorney being spread far and wide to practically every platform nowadays, as well as getting a sequel, a crossover game with Professor Layton, two seasons of an anime, and being a playable character in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Ive seen this comparison made on this board a few times recently, and I agree with it. Dual Destinies was to Ace Attorney what The Force Awakens was to Star Wars. For the most part, both entries played it safe, hitting a lot of familiar story beats and feeding on the nostalgia of the fanbase, but that was honestly what each series needed to undo the poor reception of Apollo Justice and the prequel trilogy, respectively. The fanbases needed to know that the series still had it, so to speak, and they could branch off and take risks from there in the sequels. Its not a stretch to call Dual Destinies the most important Ace Attorney game in the series because its future largely depended on how well this game did.

The reason I rank Dual Destinies as highly as I do is because the average case quality is superb. 5-1 is the only case Id rank as below average, and even then, I dont think its that bad. 5-2 is a really strong introduction to the important new characters in the game, Athena, Blackquill, and Fulbright. I thought it was really smart to have Apollo take the lead for this one because he has great chemistry with Athena, and hes the perfect opponent to make Blackquill come across as threatening as possible. 5-3 is such a fun case and takes advantage of the transition to 3-D really well. I wasnt sure if Athena could carry a case as the lead attorney, but she absolutely nailed it here. 5-4 has a really unique format and a twist ending that floored me. Its one of the rare times the series has elicited a verbal Whaaaaaaaat? from me. While I dont think 5-5 reached the heights of the epic cases of the original trilogy, I really enjoyed it. It had the right amount of fanservice callbacks to previous games, and while I know some people didnt like the ending, I thought it turned out to be pretty cool, with a twist that I didnt see coming at all until the game forced me to make a choice. 5-6 is the first DLC case the series attempted, and I thought they did a good job of taking the extra development time to give it some special touches. It also has probably the best classic Phoenix Wright turnabout moment in the game.

As far as the characters go, Phoenix is still the classic Phoenix, who acts without thinking and somehow comes up with the right solutions that no one else even considered from the smallest clues. He continues to believe against all evidence, but I think they use that to great effect to play him off of Apollo, who has a more skeptical and objective sense of reality. He's really more like Edgeworth than Phoenix. One of my biggest complaints about Hobonix is that he never makes even the smallest effort to be a mentor to Apollo, so I was glad that they turned that around here. Blackquill is an amazing prosecutor and quickly became a top ten character in the series for me. I thought Dual Destinies had a good cast of defendants (highlighted by Damien Tenma) and witnesses (highlighted by Robin Newman and Yuri Cosmos), as well as a solid set of culprits (whose names I wont list here for the sake of spoilers, naturally). Overall, Dual Destinies was a great return to form that may not have taken many risks with its story but did exactly what it needed to do.

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