This game was a massive improvement to the already decent first game and you get one of the strongest entries in the series. Every single case is connected in someway and the twists of whats going on is just great just like any other Ace Attorney game. Edgeworth continues to grow even further as a character (whos secretly a weeb for Steel Samurai) as hes strays away from what made him an antagonist from the previous entries. The new characters were just great and were as just well developed as Edgeworth was with the antagonist being very interesting to find out who it was. i thought every single case (case 2 was probably the weakest) was extremely solid and just kept getting more interesting as you kept playing. the localizers did a great job to make it just like an official translation

Eu sonhava em finalizar essa parte da franquia, já é um sonho por si só terminar Ace Attorney inteiro, mas INVESTIGATIONS 1 e 2 são os jogos que menos tinha interesse, e agora, finalmente terminando eles, sinto como se tivesse ganhado essa luta.

O 1 foi legal, mas bem arrastado, o 2 foi tudo que o 1 errou, só que aumentado em 1000%, eu amei tudo que foi mostrado aqui, seja a gameplay, os personagens EXTREMAMENTE BEM DESENVOLVIDOS (que todos voltem no futuro) e a trama muito bem escrita, surpreendente e completamente interligada, uma das histórias mais bem feitas da franquia, e olha que eu tô falando de um padrão de qualidade ACE ATTORNEY, então ele ser um dos melhores, é realmente uma coisa a se notar.

Foi incrível, principalmente ver o quanto que o Miles cresceu desde o primeiro jogo da franquia, ver ele aqui e lembrar dos velhos tempos é simplesmente pensar em dois personagens diferentes, meu garoto cresceu cara vsfd que felicidade!

Sinto orgulho de dizer que Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor's Path, foi o meu primeiro jogo zerado de 2024, pra começar o ano já batendo o pé na porta. Esse ano vai ser foda!

i'm so grateful to have played it after such a long time because enduring a series of embarrassing and disappointing entries (5 and 6) over the years genuinely makes you doubt whether ace attorney was ever good to begin with, or if it has always been a terrible series, and collectively, we only have fond memories of it because we played it in middle school

THE SERIES IS GOOD, THE GOOD ENTRIES ARE GOOD, WHAT THE FUCK IS CAPCOM PROBLEM WITH MODERN ACE ATTORNEY


also being so heavily influenced by umineko is just the icing on the cake

It truly is a shame that this game never did well enough to be localized for the west. Because, with the help of a high-quality fan translation, it becomes apparent that this game has one of the strongest narratives in the series. And, being a sequel to Investigations, has the same quality gameplay, with a few new bells and whistles thrown in!

Now we have Logic Chess, a new “minigame” of sorts where Edgeworth must “battle” against a character in order to find the truth hidden beneath their lies. It’s all in the tone of your opponent’s voice; if they sound flustered, perhaps they’re hiding something? The visuals and music for this minigame are quite nice as well.

The story and its characters have improved since the first Investigations game. The overarching plot feels more personal to Edgeworth, meeting his father’s investigative partner and the leader of the Prosecutorial Investigation Committee. Not only that, the secondary characters this time around are far more memorable, even including some familiar faces like Frank Sahwit or Will Powers. However, I do think that some investigations take a little too long. The first case, which is meant to be the tutorial for each Ace Attorney game, is, at most, around 2 hours long. And that’s if you don’t read all the extra fluff dialogue! Each subsequent case gets longer, so be ready for a marathon of Edgeworth. Though it’s not always a bad thing. The final case is a TRIP, and debuts one of the greatest antagonists in the series (at least in my humble opinion)!

A step up from the first game, though not without its faults. I still thoroughly enjoyed this game, and hope that some day, more fans can experience this game for themselves. If the Apollo Trilogy does well, maaaayybe they’ll do an Investigations Duology?? Yeah, that’s copium, but I will gladly keep hoping anyway!

Ace Attorney Investigations 2 is an oddity. A never-localised sequel to the worst entry in the series, it held many conflicting expectations for me before I went into it. I certainly didn't hate the first game, it was often painfully mediocre and overly drawn out but it went some way to satisfying that Ace Attorney itch. The sequel though had been sold to me as the potentially the best in the series, a landmark achievement in fan-localisation and and a total improvement on its predecessor. After over thirty hours, I'm not sure I can entirely agree...

I really, really wanted to love this game. There was plenty of stuff in the first Investigations that was interesting, but what that game needed more than anything was refinement. The new mechanics weren't fleshed out enough and there were too many characters, and too much arguing on technicality rather than substantial gotchas.AAI2 does not agree though, instead adding more of everything. As well as the logic system and deeper investigations from the first game, we now have logic chess - a system that boils down to a really crappy version of the psychic locks from the AA trilogy. It never felt like a substantial challenge, always playing out like a glorified flow chart where victory was all but confirmed. The puzzles in Ace Attorney are usually at their weakest when they rely on multiple choice questions, so having a puzzle mechanic that is entirely comprised of them is such an awful idea.

Perhaps I'm being harsh there, logic chess definitely does not comprise much of the game's runtime. You don't spend more than two to three hours in it over the whole game, but honestly, that is part of the problem with it. The same problem exists for the investigations and logic connection systems (both returning from AAI). You simply don't use them enough for them to ever advance in complexity. I maybe had to use the deduction mechanic less than ten times across the whole game, no more than two or three times per case, and the logic system is always so easy it feels like a patronising attempt at making me feel included. Difficulty is a big problem here across the board, with constant flashbacks and hint dialogue bombarding you every other time you're called upon to solve a tricky puzzle. AAI2 is far and away the easiest game in the series, while still having twists that feel convoluted and at times nonsensical.

But puzzles are only one ingredient of the Ace Attorney recipe, perhaps less important than the other major component: the story. Improvements have been made from the first game, but at a cost. There are more characters than in any other AA game, with genuinely interesting new characters like Ray Shields being joined by a cavalcade of familiar faces. It's admittedly quite nice seeing returning characters like Frank Sahwit, but some of the choices are odd to say the least. Was anyone crying out for the return of Lotta Hart or Regina Berry? They're pleasant surrpises, but they detract from the stories and arcs of the new arrivals like Justine Courtney and Sebastian Debeste. The final case suffers the most from this bloating, the final scenes of which have a comedically large ensemble stuffed on to the DS screen. As much as I love them, did Franziska and Lang need to return? Why is Kay still so prominent when Ray is supposed to be the new foil to Miles? I like fan service (when it's done well) as much as anyone, and I tolerate it more than I would normally with the Ace Attorney games, but here it actively detracts from the story being told and the arcs we're supposed to be invested in.

This is normally where I would say at least the presentation is at its best as usual. Apollo Justice is a very flawed game, but it still has best-in-show music, character design and animation. I'm afraid that AAI2 is a mixed bag. Some stuff here is great, better than the previous game at least, but some sprites here are awful. Blaise Debeste and the President are particularly horrible designs, featuring ridiculous muscles in skin tight suits for seemingly no reason other than "look cool", and both have breakdowns that beggar belief. The Ace Attorney games normally feature designs that are a little silly and over the top, but in AAI2 they're downright cartoonish. Don't even get me started on Justine Courtney's gravity-immune boobs.

It probably sounds like I hate this game, but I honestly didn't. The translation work here is astounding, it feels completely in line with the style of the first game and I didn't notice any lines that felt out of place (nor even any typos). You can tell how much love has gone into this fan-effort and I'm glad that it exists, because I don't think Capcom will ever localise the game officially. Outside of that, it's really the third case in the game that saves it for me, and is leagues better than the other four. It's almost entirely new characters and has a totally new structure for the series, with a constant switching back and forth between past and present. The conclusion is still a little convoluted and silly, but it was a great case that only makes the rest seem all the worse by comparison. Play this if you've played every single other Ace Attorney game and are still dying for more, otherwise, probably give it a miss.

Just about the best game that could have possibly been made within the AAI style, and proof that the overwhelming majority of its predecessor's problems were in the mildness of its story, not in the formula of its play.

That formula however is still not without its awkwardness. Logic Chess is stupid. Not offensive. Not game-ruining by any stretch of the imagination... but deeply, deeply stupid. Its non-sequitur chess theming reeks of insufferable "debate bro" cringe, and as an actual gameplay activity all that it amounts to is navigating a dialogue tree without fumbling the buttons, and backing off whenever the subject performs a certain animation. It is incredibly silly and adds nothing of any real value.

The fact however that this one small attempt to improve the gameplay of the original proves to be insignificant just goes to show that it was never the formula that was at fault. Before playing AAI2 I would have told you that the story in AAI feels so glacial because there's no cycle between investigation and court segments setting the rhythm... it's all just one long brick of the same thing from each case's start to its finish. In telling you this, I would have been dumb and wrong, because AAI2 pulls off an engaging flow of highs and lows just fine. The secret is just uh... having a more interesting story and telling it better.

AAI2 feels like a completely different experience from the first game mostly because it uses its characters SO much more effectively. This goes equally for returning characters who are spot-on, and new characters who both radiate immediate charisma and develop in satisfying, well-executed ways.

Every case in AAI2 is good. All of them. While I have the occasional grievance (please, please just stop doing amnesia) there is not a single case that I would even call mediocre, though there is one that dips pretty close. This puts it at the same level of esteem that I reserve for Trials and Tribulations... and yet I can't quite place it with the exact same standing.

This is, quite likely, the simple result of bias. I played Trials and Tribulations when I was like twenty years old, and all of its twists got me BAD. Nothing in AAI2 (not even the finale) rocked me as hard as the rollercoaster of T&T did. I am no longer twenty, I am thirty-one... and I'm a thirty-one year-old who has played almost every other AA game since.

I have no way of knowing whether AAI2 would have hit me as hard as T&T if I had played it eleven years ago. I only know that it didn't.

AAI is an interesting experiment in increasing the tactility and fidelity of solving AA cases but i think an ultimately failed one. Every case turns into a monumental slog where you have to connect 4 pieces of AAI evidence to do the job of a single mainline AA piece of evidence, and because they still need to signpost these movements, you just get a total bloat of functional text leading to and resolving from the 'presenting evidence' moments. It's an inverted celebration of how good the mainline formula is.

And at a distance, AAI2 should be quite good, really. The macro mystery and coordination is great. There are several great characters. Logic Chess is fantastic and deserves some revival in the series as a method of conversational information-grabbing. But getting through all of it is like manually turning the wheels on a car. We could have just walked there – in fact, there's a whole main series where we do just walk there. BuT tHaT's NoT tHe PrOsEcUtOr'S pAtH

also, whoever decided that they should localize the japanese "Ee?" into english as characters literally saying "Eh?", turn on your location i just want to talk

I knew out-of-print, obscure and/or unlocalized games tended to get hyped up beyond what they deserve and it always leads to disappointment once people actually get their hands on it. I took the things people said about it with a grain of salt and fully expected it to be good, but not the masterpiece people said it was, and even if I did end up liking it a lot, I didn't want to get carried away and end up continuing the cycle of overhype.

It didn't work. Ace Attorney Investigations 2 is my new favorite 2D-era Ace Attorney game.

The first Investigations was the weakest one I've played so far so I didn't really have high expectations for the sequel, but 2 does literally everything better. The addition of Logic Chess adds more variety to the gameplay and helps the game feel more distinct from the mainline series. There's a much greater exploration of who Edgeworth actually is as a character and the path he chooses to walk, and not only are the new characters a lot better, the returning characters from I1 get fleshed out in a great way as well. The cases are a lot stronger overall, they're actually connected to each other in a meaningful and interesting way and build to a much more satisfying climax, and while they're quite long (The Grand Turnabout can easily take an entire day to finish) they use their length much, much better than the first game's attempt at a long, epic case. It feels like what Investigations 1 should have been to begin with. My only real major complaint was with the amount of fanservice- it's not as bad as the first game, since the cases are built around the returning characters a lot better than "oh look! here's the funny character from the original trilogy! laugh!", but it still feels a bit excessive? I know it was released around the 10th anniversary of the original game but especially considering the context of a controversial new cast four years before this game's release it kind of feels desperate.

Either way, this is again my favorite AA game so far- Apollo Justice comes really close, but Turnabout Corner drags it down. There's not a single bad or even mediocre case in this game, and while sad dad Phoenix is still the most interesting character the character stuff in this game is really good as well. It's a real shame this didn't get localized officially- the fan translation is really good and fits in very well with the official team's work, and if there's ever an official localization I hope Capcom is willing to use it as a base, but it's less accessible and less polished than an official release would be.

A fairly miserable experience for me, by Ace Attorney standards. None of the new characters are really likeable, the cases try too hard to be perfectly connected and just end up contrived, and Logic Chess becomes the most tedious gimmick in the series as it grows more complex. I wanted to drop it in case 2, and really should have instead of slogging through it for over five months. It did not ever become worth it.

It is still an Ace Attorney Investigations game, though, so the pixel art is fantastic and always a treat to look at.

Being someone who thought the first Investigations title was fine but lacking, I wasn’t sure what I was expecting going into the second game. The first game definitely had it’s great moments, but combined with the fact that the story and many of the game’s cases didn’t grab me like they do in other Ace Attorney games, I was worried about what I’d think of this one. Especially considering that prior to my play-through I had heard from many people that it was one of the best Ace Attorney games, one of the best the series had to offer that wasn’t as appreciated by Capcom due to the fact that it was never released outside of Japan. However, I am happy to say that after finishing the game, I think the game is very great.

This game probably has the best story out of any Ace Attorney game. You get five cases with 0 filler and every case in this game connects to the bigger picture in some way. It’s really cool and the interconnectedness of the game’s events along with the fact that it all comes together at the end is spectacular. Furthermore, the quality of the cases also does not disappoint. One of my favorite cases ever, “The Inherited Turnabout”, is a case that revolves around a murder at a museum for desserts. But what makes this case extremely fun (without getting into spoilers) is that it’s a case where you solve a mystery in the present by (quite literally) exploring the past events that happened there 18 years ago. The cases in this game are fantastic and I love them. The entire game also sets up the idea of a “mastermind” who controls the events of the game and when they’re revealed and all the events come together, it’s incredible.

Like Ace Attorney typically does, the characters in this game are excellent. Ray Shields, a defense attorney with a great theme, has a very nice arc in case 2 and 3, and is he does a really good job at representing a guy who’s fun to be around but is serious when the time calls. It’s cool that he’s a connection to Edgeworth’s past. Justine Courtney is an entirely new take on judges in Ace Attorney. Typically, the judge is just a bald guy with the long beard you see in every game, but AAI2 is an entirely new take on judges and I enjoy how Courtney insists on taking Edgeworth’s badge throughout the story. Her arc also feels similar to Edgeworth’s in Ace Attorney 1, in a sense, since she also realizes that the legal system is imperfect throughout the game. The last character I’ll mention is Sebastian Debeste. Yes, it’s kinda dumb to have a prosecutor be really bad at his job and be a major pushover, but to be honest… I just think he’s funny. He also has a really good arc in case 5 about learning to be better and outdo his guardian; once again mirroring Edgeworth in Ace Attorney 1.

However, while I love the way they concluded their arcs, these last two characters, while enjoyable, don’t really develop until case 4. Until that point they feel a little too much like roadblocks because they’re introduced way too early. The problem with them in “The Imprisoned Turnabout” and “The Inherited Turnabout” is they pull the classic “you can’t investigate here” while wearing out their quirks by being roadblocks.

However, the entire game suffers from one big flaw: the pacing. Personally, I’m not someone who’s that bothered by pacing ever, but the game really loves to take its time and crawl along here. Characters will gladly talk for long periods of time and use 100 words to say something that could’ve been said in 15. This also means that it feels like the cases can take actual hours - and they do - because the story is told at a snail’s pace most of the time. It’s not even close to something that ruined my enjoyment of the game, though.

The biggest thing that irked me during my play-through was, oddly, Edgeworth himself, Having the exact same issue he did last game. Edgeworth is very dry emotionally in this game; it’s something I critiqued in Investigations 1 and it has not changed. In this game, Edgeworth feels like has has most of his negative traits watered down or outright removed. He just doesn’t feel as emotionally deep as he does in the trilogy because it doesn’t feel like he shows anything other than “smart smug guy” a lot of the time. Sure, we can see this in text, but the amount of times I can say Edgeworth had much emotional depth to him that was more than him doubting his career or being worried because the truth almost escaped him is… very little.

I hope people don’t think I’m being too negative or patronizing with my review. I was just interested to see why people liked this game so much, and I thought it was great, even if it didn’t entirely deliver. However, the things it got right, it REALLY got right. I love the ambition and interconnectedness of the cases from the insane setups to how gripping the story connects to itself behind the scenes. It’s fantastic and comes together into a masterful piece of writing with some of the largest scale to come out of Ace Attorney, even if it’s told really slowly. While I love the ambitiousness of the game, It’s hard for me to look past what I didn’t like so much about it. While I like the characters, I do wish some of them changed sooner and while it is an improvement over its predecessor by miles, I don’t think it reaches the same level as The Great Ace Attorney 2 and Trials and Tribulations like people say it does, but it’s a great game.

The best Ace Attorney has to offer. It does everything Ace Attorney is best at perfectly and nails what its predecessor fumbled. The ost is one of if not the best in the series; it has some of the most interesting and compelling characters in the series; and it has just the right amount of wackiness. The cases are interconnected much like Investigations 1, but here they made every case feel like it mattered. There's nothing I can think of that I can complain about because even if I felt annoyed by something it felt worth it by the end. If you love Ace Attorney and somehow haven't played this game yet you need to treat yourself.

Writing a review because I'm so passionate about how good this game is. Literally every case is peak and easily exceed the quality of cases from the mainline series. Somehow the finale case brings all loose plot points perfectly together, actually having engaging twists and surprises I didn't see coming, but made perfect sense. Characters are amazing, I wish Ray Shields was in more games he is perfect and his theme is a banger. This is likely the least played game in the series, I really want everyone to play it right now.