Generally, I just think this shit’s ass.

I wouldn’t say Lost Turnabout is the single worst case in the series, but it definitely demonstrates the least amount of effort put into writing one across its entire history. Turnabout Big Top has some of the more interesting character and gameplay moments from the Trilogy, but the game never possesses the attention span to focus on either its good or potentially good qualities, instead making us spend any amount of time at all with Benjamin Woodman. The second case gets overpraised because it’s surrounded by the aforementioned cases that are dogshit on either end of it, but it’s still mostly nothing to write home about with its investigations feeling particularly repetitive and just generally not having much to praise outside of its twist’s premise. It has a cliffhanger. Ok. The fourth case has insane potential for aiding Phoenix’s character and gesturing toward a more coherent series philosophy, but unfortunately bails him out too early of having to actually take the conflict seriously after it’s built itself up impressively, and the next game doesn’t care about its implications anyway. Very bizarre closer when the story obviously has an answer to the question of who Phoenix should be going after in mind, (both Maya and Edgeworth state it explicitly) but then throws the question to the player as though it’s accomplishing anything by stunting its main character’s opportunity for growth. I’m glad nothing was accomplished.

I also think this entry is the worst collection of mysteries the series has ever cooked up. Every clue that’s vital to major twists in the cast’s dialogue is bolded, underlined in red, and made the most overt it’s ever been. Moe makes Maya sneeze from pepper out of nowhere and they proceed to talk about how cool sneezing from pepper is. When Dr. Hotti (another goated addition to this generation-defining game) speaks about Ms. Miney’s face operation with Phoenix, he does so with such blatant signaling that the actual twist is that this is one of the game’s better written reveals. Outside of that metric, the type of reasoning this game consistently uses during trials is so amateurish. Arguments regularly go in circles, and these sections always feel padded out to the extreme to order to aid some of Phoenix’s more nonsensical arguments.

I think that if Farewell served as an actual turning point for Phoenix’s character that either extended into the next game or the end of this one, then I would accept the thought that case 4 makes the rest worth it, but given what is present in the case itself, I would not make an explicit recommendation for this one unless one intends on playing through the whole trilogy from start to finish. It doesn’t give the player anything to meaningfully reflect on when all is said and done.