i wish i could give a game negative stars. in all seriousness this game is almost entirely irredeemable in my eyes from the rampant racism in the entire execution of khurain.

the returning cast feels like they're all poor actors trying to pretend to be their past selves, especially phoenix, maya, and trucy (the latter two who are regressed into wind up dolls that say 'steel samurai' or 'magic panties' whenever the camera pans to them). the cases drag on with dull mysteries, and without that emotional connection i would routinely stop playing.

the closest this games gets to being good is turnabout storyteller because it is not attached to the main plot of the game at all. athena and blackquill get some time to riff off of each other and i would really rather play that than see a lobotomized phoenix.

the new characters are also uninteresting, with the exception of rayfa. nahyuta is actually the worst written prosecutor in my eyes (THIS INCLUDES DGS) for the criminal sin of being boring. him being bitchy isn't even funny. it feels like they read everything people liked about the trilogy and tried to copy it without understanding why it worked

So, here we are, again. All six mainline Ace Attorney games finished, with two journeys to Britain taken care of as well. The resting point for the series for over half a decade reached, and the conclusion of the second trilogy. Needless to say, I was really excited to get to this one, and I recommend you read my reviews on Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies, The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures and Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney (in that order) to get a full understanding of my perception and view on these games. But in short: I'm a series-as-a-whole enjoyer and really respect what both Shu Takumi and Takeshi Yamazaki do for the series.

Spirit of Justice had a lot on its shoulders, just as Dual Destinies did before it. It needed to both finish the ongoing trilogy about the law's influence on people and the concept of trust, as well as be a conclusion to Apollo Justice's story arc and provide meaningful content for more characters than you can shake a stick at. It needed to answer crucial, unavoidable questions for a game seeking to end a saga, not just the end of one trilogy but to establish a comfortable resting place for the series at large.

The game had to do all of that, yet it also set out to be the most ambitious, jam-packed, content filled and best Ace Attorney game the series had yet seen. I'm not here to argue that it absolutely succeeded at exactly all of that, but what I can say is that it is definitely close to- or IS, my favorite game in the series, and a near perfect conclusion to Apollo Justice's character arc. Despite the troubled development of this trilogy I believe it still achieved its goals, of telling the story of the new generation of lawyers growing up in a world far more oppressive and distrustful than the storybook tale Phoenix went through. And while it's undeniably more flawed than the original Trilogy, I believe all three games ended up being more interesting specifically due to this ambition. Because, say it with me: A Dragon Never Yields.

After Dual Destinies gave Phoenix such a perfect book-ended tale of rescuing both Apollo and Athena, it feels difficult to imagine a way where he would be able to get story relevance again in the series. Yet he IS the main mascot of the series, the appeal and key protagonist (yes, even in Apollo Justice). So how do we allow this relatively-concluded character to still play an important part in this conclusion to the second protagonist’s story, without just making it feel as if we’re treading on old ground? Simple: Focus on everything around Phoenix, instead of he himself. Thus the defining trait of this entry, Khura'in, becomes the focus of Phoenix's own cases, which gives Apollo and Athenas cases a distinct feel of their own whilst allowing them room to breathe and grow as characters. While I know Khura'in as a whole as a mixed reception with fans, it as a concept is a genius solution to so many things at once. Beyond mostly resolving the Phoenix issues up above, and giving AA6 its own distinct flair in the series, it gives the game a new perspective on the dark age of law theme that AA4 and AA5 established, showing us just what can happen when trust and humanity are forgotten in the law world: The outcome that AA4 very well could have led to, if it weren't for Phoenix's and Miles' efforts. I get that some find Khura'in's intensely aggressive anti-lawyer stance a bit ridiculous: executing all lawyers who align with criminals and all that, but given the traumatic origin of this law I can't help but draw parallels to some very real incidents and their outcome in real world countries. Its over-the-top in typical Ace Attorney fashion of course but I find it really thematically interesting and fitting for a trilogy exploring what happens when the law world fails to be trusted by the people. Its fitting for a law about punishing those who defend possible criminals to be tied to a land with heavy faith, where sin is actually thought of and reviled.

This thematic relevance of Khura'in extends to its main characters, who I almost all adore. People like Ahlbi, Rayfa, Inga and Datz are just plain fun to watch and be with, but then you have characters like Nahyuta, immensely layered with meaning and parallels to our main characters. Just like how Khura'in shows a world where the people completely gave up trust for the law, Nahyuta directly contrasts Apollo as someone who never learned the good nature of being a lawyer, of defending those you trust in. Apollo in AA4 defended weird, shady people he himself didn't trust or like, and it gave him a jaded outlook of his profession that he eventually snapped out of with the case of Clay's death in AA5. Nahyuta, just like his country, never had this revelation, staying loyal to his profession purely out of obligation, out of false hope that what he's doing might one day be leading to something good. His personality also contrasts Apollo really nicely, despite lacking personal attachment to the cases he takes on he's always calm, collected, and very respectful of all the details pertaining to the case. Whenever he snaps during a trial, it's not because he's angry that his argument's been dismantled: it's because he feels genuinely insulted that the defense disrespects the will of the dead to rest in peace. For Khura'in's anti-Lawyer stance seemingly being a gimmick, they weave it into its culture in a really natural way in that sense: Lawyers are seen as disrespectful of the dead by actively trying to twist the truth of their death, refusing to simply let the dead rest. This is why I LOVE Case 4, despite it often being derided as just filler: Its a case where, for once, we actually get to see a truly flawed defense of a client take place, and where Nahyuta and Khura'in's beliefs almost seem understandable for a moment.

I could genuinely go on for two paragraphs more than I just did on Nahyuta with Dhurke. This is the second time I'm trying to write this review, because my first got erased by Twitter acting up, and in that first one I genuinely could not shut up about Dhurke. He's an amazing character in the same way Nahyuta is: He parallels a main cast member, Phoenix, and shows just how different things could have gone had different things been prioritized in Phoenix's life. He's a great person, fighting for what he believes in with unwavering conviction, but in doing so faltered in caring for the new generation, his children: He felt it was his responsibility to save the world for his kids, rather than the other way, making sure his kids would be ready to take on the new world. Phoenix, however, after his defeat in AA4, reached out: He raised Trucy, played behind the scenes to rebuild the law world together with those around him, including seeking out Apollo and Athena to further reach that goal. Dhurke's flaws of being a determined good-hearted man failing in the sense of remembering the importance of our youth, makes him a super cool parallel to Inga, the tyrant of Khura'in who loves his daughter all the same. These kinds of analysies, contrasts, and connections to the themes of the game can be drawn everywhere, and its one thing I think all three games in this trilogy really excel at.

But cool theming and nice character depth can only get your game so far, yeah? Like I just said, I think AA4 nails its themes and meaning, yet I also think its by far the least fun game in the series to actually play. (Go read my AA4 review to find out why, I promise I like the game). Thankfully, I find Spirit of Justice to possibly be the most consistent quality game in the series: the only game where I would, honestly, say that EVERY case is a banger, both in terms of being fun to read but also in terms of being fun to solve. Sure, other games in the series have had far higher peaks than this game: The second halves of both Dual Destinies and Great Ace Attorney 2 are some of the best visual novel content I will probably ever experience, yet they're simply not able to contend with how constantly good and, most importantly, varied Spirit of Justice is. Thanks to the Khura'in setting and three lawyers in play at once, as well as the sheer amount of important characters present in the game, every case feels distinctly its own and goes to extreme lengths to fulfill the most of their potential. In a way it's like an Ace Attorney Greatest Hits album: An intro case that sets up so many mysteries in your head, a case that's very successful in being funny and unbelievable at every turn, a case that subverts everything you thought you knew about how an Ace Attorney case plays out, a case that's like a puzzle box of different interlinking mechanisms at play…these traits are shared with several golden cases in the series before, yet it doesn't at all feel derivative or redundant (except one moment in Case 5: You know exactly what I mean if you've played it, and it's the one part of the story I REALLY wish had been rewritten.)

But let's take a step back. This game at its core, as alluded to at the start, had to answer some very important questions, in order to truly allow the series to rest comfortably at its ending. -Where does Apollo Justice's character arc go and, finally, end, and
-How do we put a capstone on this entire saga of the Dark Age of the Law, after said age was unofficially ended in Dual Destinies? What message do we end the series with?

The game, in my eyes, delivers answers to those questions in the most satisfying way possible: After his Dual Destinies growth, Apollo now only defends people he genuinely cares and empathises with: be they friends like Trucy, complete strangers like Armie, or a mix of both like Dhurke. Unlike Athena, not knowing his client beforehand no longer stops him: He's learned the power and meaning of a mutual trust in your client, regardless of who they are. His newfound faith in others finally lets him take charge with newfound confidence and surpass Phoenix in a way we as players always knew was possible, but that he was just never able to do before due to his mentorship under Kristoph, and the looming distrust under the Dark Age of Law. Basically, he's someone who's risen above the effects of an age of distrust, and has become a more whole person than even Phoenix because of it.

The game, and series, ends on this note: That by not only banding together to solve the problems of the current day, but also ensuring that the next generation is given the help, care, mentorship and understanding that they need, the world will become a better place. If you ignore one, then the other will haunt you. It's a beautiful way to end the trilogy all about the new generation, passing the torch on in wonderful fashion, and putting a bookend on the Dark Age of Law once and for all.

And I have small gripes with how all this is presented, of course. The Case 5 story detailed I mentioned: Phoenix being blackmailed again, instead of them committing to a true moment of having the torch passed to Apollo. There's also the matter of Ga'ran, who for being the "final boss" of the game and arguably trilogy as a whole might not be as deep of a character as she maybe should be, especially compared to Nahyuta and Dhurke. (I still think she works really well as just an intimidatingly authoritative figure to take down). If I really wanted to, I'm sure I could go picking like a fine-toothed comb through Spirit of Justice and find small things to bitch about, yet I'll probably also find half a dozen more things to appreciate. Have you ever noticed, for instance, that every returning character in Spirit of Justice is finally living more or less completely happily, chasing the dreams they've always wanted? Trucy, Maya, Ema, Blackquill, Phoenix…through finding and sticking to the passion of their goals, they're happier than they've ever been, contrasting beautifully with Nahyuta's sorrowful compliance with doing his occupation solely because he believes he's right– okay, I'll shut up about him now, despite those above minor flaws and more…the ambition, consistency in quality, variety, theming and just, overall tons of emotional pathos packed into Spirit of Justice, make it tie very closely at the top of the series' best games for me.

And all of this Ace Attorney goodness, wrapped up in an extremely Takeshi Yamazaki-paced and designed game and story, with all the good and bad that entails. Every case, yes even 6-4, has meaning, has weight that mounts up and builds to the insane finale. Things are foreshadowed at every moment, even in the most subtle ways (Dual Destinies' Case 2 foreshadowing of its biggest twist still haunts me). The game also feels very cohesive to itself and the rest of the series, never directly spoiling things from the previous games but still making damn well sure existing fans are aware this is a continuation. Okay, so the Divination Seances aren't always the most fun, and for as much as I didn't care at all about Forensics in AA4 it and the Psyche-Lockes are painfully underused in this game. Like I've said before, Yamazaki's main weakness is his inconsistency in making fun-to-use mechanics. And that's what I've really grown to love with Ace Attorney: Despite just being ten games of pointing, clicking, reading and solving, their directions allow them to be so good in so many different ways. This isn't like Kirby where I'll gladly say every game in the series is good, but a lot of them are good in similar ways: Every Ace Attorney game is great, and each one can be someone's favorite for its very specific strengths and appeal. Do you love artsy, subversive, meaningful games where maybe the feeling you have while playing them shouldn't always be satisfaction and empowerment? Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney might be for you! Do you love seeing things built up for you over an immense span of time be resolved in the most satisfying manner imaginable? The Great Ace Attorney 2 is like made for you! Do you love a story that can pull the rug under you at the last minute, despite subtly foreshadowing said rug-pull throughout the game's runtime? Justice for All - the one most fans consider the weakest of the original trilogy, is actually my favorite of those three games specifically because of that!

Or did you read this entire, enormous review, and loved thinking about just how well put together a package Spirit of Justice is, not for its high peaks but for its pitch-perfect consistency, for how well it pays respect to the past whilst celebrating a new future ahead? Then yeah, this game may just be a contender. It sure is for me.

[Play Time: 48 Hours]
[Key Word: Ceremony]
[Note: DLC not played]

Spirit of Justice was actually so much better than Dual Destinies on almost every level. For one, half the cases aren't boring as fuck this time. There are actually some interesting mysteries and fun characters in this one, and the new Insight mechanic is pretty neat.

The overarching story is where this game really shines though. The premise sounds stupid at first; Phoenix travels to a country where lawyers are literally illegal, but somehow they managed to make it interesting. The Kingdom of Khura'in is pretty well fleshed out, and the trials that take place there are differentiated by the Seances that show the victim's last memories before they died. Above all else, SoJ finally gives REAL development to Apollo, something DD seriously failed to deliver on.

Overall, maybe not the best game in the series, but surprisingly pretty good. One of the more plot heavy and unique entries for sure.

A pretty good finale for the series (so far????) and INFINITELY better than DD but it's held back by the fact Takeshi Yamazaki wrote it. All of Yamazaki's AA games have enormous issues with expository dialogue and padding, and it's at its worst here. It also doesn't help that the first case is really bad (minus a good villain). I started this game at the beginning of the year and could never play for more than a half-hour at a time because hearing the same character calling card quotes over and over drove me fucking insane. I really cannot stress enough how much this game is hurt by Yamazaki's terrible pacing and writing quirks.

It's a shame, 'cause this game has a lot of fun moments. I adored the way spirit channeling is incorporated into the mysteries; it gets insane in ways close to T&T near the end. Apollo's character arc in this game felt kinda out of nowhere initially, but it grew on me and delivered well at the end. All of the side characters from the filler arcs are really good too, especially Sarge and Uendo.

tl;dr - good game, bad writer

It's hard to say how i feel about this game.
I'm one of these people who only half warmed up to all the Kurain and spirit medium stuff, so to have an entire game mostly be in the land of magical mumbo jumbo, i was sceptic.
I liked the second case, the fourth case was super cool and funny, and the last case was actually really really good and it had a lot of moments that hit in the feels.
Apollo is really good in this game and if these past three games are to be considered his trilogy, i'd consider them a satisfying character arc.
One standout thing that i hated were the annoying spirit seances, they took forever everytime, worst gimmick ever.
Also Bunny girl and Clown girl cute. And a big hell yeah for Maya and Ema.
I haven't played the DLC yet, i will have to do that sometime.

Way harder and definitely more fulfilling than Dual Destinies. It's themed differently than the previous two games to stand out more, and the new gameplay mechanic of the Divination Séances is not only creative, but fits rights in with how much the game forces you to bend your mind to reinterpret scenarios. I'll admit that there were a few bumps in the road with some annoying witnesses during some of the trials, but otherwise, it's a solid Ace Attorney game. They really turned it up to 11 in the last chapter with all the well executed twists, which more than makes up for its length. Absolutely recommended title with a fantastic narrative and as usual, a fantastic cast.

I’ve had some weird experiences with Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice that I haven’t really figured out how to put into words until very recently after finishing Great Ace Attorney, and it’s purely about vibes versus anything resembling actual quality. Like, I enjoyed a lot of the characters in Dual Destinies, and I have enjoyed a fair amount of what I’ve seen of Spirit of Justice’s cast, as well. The cases themselves have not been bad, the breakdowns are fun, and my generally negative feelings about Phoenix being shoved back into the protagonist role aside, I thought the returning characters were pretty alright.

But the vibes. Something bugged me about the vibes and I think I finally identified what it is. The original trilogy, Apollo Justice, and Great Ace Attorney feel like satirical takes on a job that actually exists in the world with like, some wacky shenanigans and supernatural nonsense mixed in for flavor. Ace Attorney Investigations 1 felt like a legal/political thriller with a goofy angle to it, and I get the impression that Ace Attorney Investigations 2 is like that as well but even better. So it’s definitely not the change in the writing team, even if I identified little hints of my vibes problem with Lang hating prosecutors as an entire profession because something something family tragedy in AAI1.

Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice feel like those kids’ media where everyone in the world is deeply obsessed with some kind of children’s card game or collectible toy or whatever to the point where society revolves around it, except it’s for being a goddamn lawyer of all things. There’s a lawyer high school! There’s a dark age of the law that doesn’t mean anything but it sounds really cool and there are like mascots and shit for it! And then we get into this game specifically where a guy from Japan or Japanifornia goes to a fake Central Asian country where being a defense attorney is, like, illegal? Because it’s against the local theocracy’s religion? And like man I know it’s more complicated and there’s a historical explanation for what’s going on, but there are so many ways you can make a corrupt legal system that the main character has to work within the confines of without making his career feel like it’s escalated like Yu-Gi-Oh.

And like the thing is, I’m not against the absurd. Ace Attorney has always been absurd, and I think the escalation of Yu-Gi-Oh is dumb fun. I seriously don’t know why my brain is having as much trouble with DD/SoJ’s brand of absurdity as it is, but every time I pick them up I play for a little while and have a bit of fun and then end up not wanting to pick them up again for like, three years because something felt weird the last time I played it and I couldn’t identify what it was. That’s why I’m not actually giving a rating to this, because I feel like my feelings on the matter are deeply irrational and if I ever get over myself to buckle down and finish it, I think I will probably like it. Until then, what the hell.

Spirit of Justice reeks of desperation.

Following up a game that stifled continuity so severely left the series very little room to expand. Phoenix and Apollo’s trajectories were cut off after AA4. Athena’s poor excuse for an arc was open and shut in her debut game. What ground does the series have left to stand on? Naturally, Capcom didn’t aim to slip out of the corner they backed themselves into. They raised the stakes and cornered themselves even further.


It would be remiss of me not to mention the overt orientalism present throughout the game. The original Ace Attorney trilogy centralized a family drama around a modernized depiction of spirit channeling. The ritual was used not only as a component to multiple murder mysteries but as a conduit to express generational trauma. The design aesthetics of Kurain Village and the Fey family borrowed only from traditional Japanese architecture and fashion, harmonizing with the cosmopolitan city life of Japanifornia.

Spirit of Justice not only contains uninteresting and stagnant characters that make far worse use of spirit channeling as an in-universe plot device, but the aesthetics of Khura’in (additionally a full-blown kingdom…one of this game’s many retcons) seem to broadly take design inspiration from the Middle East and South Asia without any tact or reason. The kingdom is presented as a theocratic (while also secular?) monarchy that has a ridiculous hatred of defense attorneys and wishes to execute them alongside their wrongfully charged defendants. While AA5’s only overarching theme to stand on was the pitiful and heavy-handed “dark age of the law,” completely overturning the moral argument presented to the player in AA4, Spirit of Justice’s moral argument, if you can even call it that, disavows a fictional and vaguely oriental monarchy for having a made-up law that criminalizes being a defense attorney.
I never thought I’d say this but maybe The Great Ace Attorney should learn a thing or two from this game about being anti-monarchy
AA6 continues to cast away the character drama present in the first four games to tell a story about a strawman political viewpoint and stereotyped culture that doesn’t exist, simply to raise the stakes for the player in an act of extremely misguided fanservice.


Speaking of fanservice, all of your favorite characters are back and they’re all shells of their former selves! I could go on about how The Magical Turnabout in particular is a masterclass in character assassination. In fact, I will.

Well written characters have desires. In AA4, Ema Skye was introduced to the player as a disillusioned police detective who never accomplished her goal of becoming a forensic scientist. Her grudge against the police force extends back to her debut in Rise from The Ashes, and her bias against the current justice system go hand in hand with AA4’s broader themes of disillusionment. Her viewpoint is remarkably different from the police presence in past games, and her willingness to cooperate with Apollo and Trucy (along with her past allegiance to Phoenix) subverts the player’s expectations to create a distinct web of relationships not present in newer games.

In AA6, Ema is not a police detective anymore. She achieves her goal of becoming a forensic scientist offscreen, and her disillusionment with the justice system is cast aside completely. She no longer has greater desires, and her character is no longer multidimensional. She isn’t set up to change or grow at all.

Here’s another example. Trucy was introduced in AA4 as an assistant with a lot more agency and wit than her predecessors. She frequently held her own during courtroom conversations, stalled a trial with a fake hostage, and was brave enough to confront her family trauma in Turnabout Succession. In the post-trial conversation between Phoenix and Thalassa, Phoenix mentions that he’s the only one who knows how hurt Trucy feels deep down. She puts on a face, but never truly reckons with the evil deeds done by her father, grandfather, and Valant.

In AA6, Trucy is accused of murder during her magic show. Not only does this magic show retcon a secret fourth member into Troupe Gramarye that was entirely irrelevant to the love triangle and accident that formed Trucy and Apollo’s original backstories, but this case also seems to completely rewrite and exonerate Magnifi Gramarye from his original misdeeds. Remember that original source of Trucy’s anguish? Yeah, it’s totally erased. Magnifi is genuinely portrayed as a kind and benevolent mentor here (You know, the man who blackmailed his troupe, tried coaxing one of them into murdering him, framed his suicide after that failed...). The game still tried to keep her concealed anguish as a character trait, so we’re left with a Trucy who feigns a smile for no discernable reason.

I talked about Apollo’s rewriting in my AA5 review, so I’ll keep this one short; once again, he is portrayed as a protégé who looks up to Phoenix, when his debut game had them act more like puppet and puppet master respectively. It’s the same in AA6, Apollo simply sees Phoenix as a generic mentor and the tension he felt towards Phoenix (which also fueled his desires as a character!) is completely gone.


I think it’s funny that spirit seances were chosen as the new big mechanic for this game even though the video analysis minigames in past entries were like, universally hated among fans.


Look, I could go on about how the Ace Attorney series effectively backed itself into a corner with stagnant characters and childish shonen writing (…and I probably will in a separate review for the Trilogy release), but in short, this series is left with nowhere to go. Phoenix Wright as a character is a husk of his former self, Apollo Justice is whatever the hell each game wants him to be, and Athena Cykes is a focus grouped cookie cutter “new protagonist” whose goal of exonerating Simon has been accomplished, leaving her with no more desires as well, effectively also making her a husk of what little depth she had.

Also I’ll say it as many times as necessary: DLC cases in this manner are inherently depraved. Remember when RPGs were sold as full games? Oh right, that means there has to be an actual cohesive story arc.


The stakes have been maxed out, and we’re 6 numerical entries in. This is unsustainable. What next, yet another hostage situation?