Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth

Ace Attorney Investigations is a single-player adventure game During investigation phases, players control Edgeworth directly, either with the D-pad, At certain points, a device called Little Thief can be used to create hologram reproductions of the crime scene; As more evidence is uncovered, the hologram is updated. If the player makes mistakes throughout the game, such as presenting wrong pieces of evidence, attempting to connect two thoughts that do not match up, or making incorrect choices, a green gauge called the Truth Gauge decreases, representing Edgeworth getting further from the truth. If it is completely emptied, the game ends. By clearing an investigation phase, half of the gauge is restored, and by clearing an episode, the gauge is restored completely. ==Synopsis==

Setting and characters Ace Attorney Investigations takes place between the third and fourth games in the series, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations and Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. The story is split into five episodes, each focusing on a different crime; though told out of sequence, the cases tie together to form an overarching story who was Phoenix's rival in previous games. Among the supporting characters are Kay Faraday, who claims to be the Yatagarasu, a legendary thief who works to expose illegal corporate dealings, and detective Dick Gumshoe, Edgeworth's long-time partner. Recurring rivals of Edgeworth's are Shi-Long Lang, an Interpol agent from the fictional country of Zheng Fa who bears a fierce hatred of prosecutors and the courts after his family's reputation was tarnished by a corrupt prosecutor, and his assistant Shih-na. Other characters include prosecutor Byrne Faraday, detective Tyrell Badd, and defense attorney Calisto Yew. Returning characters from previous Ace Attorney games include prosecutor Manfred von Karma and his daughter Franziska, and forensics student Ema Skye. Plot Cohdopian Embassy secretariat Manny Coachen is accused of murdering Cece Yew, a witness who was to testify against a smuggling ring. Prosecutor Byrne Faraday and detective Tyrell Badd attempt to convict Coachen, but he is acquitted due to a lack of evidence. Feeling that the justice system is powerless to those who stand above the law, Faraday, Badd and Yew's sister Calisto start stealing corporate files detailing illegal or unethical activities and sending them to the media under the alias 'Yatagarasu'. Three years later, another murder occurs at the embassy. During the trial, in which Faraday is the prosecutor, suspect Mack Rell claims that Faraday is the Yatagarasu and ordered him to commit the murder. A recess is held to replace Faraday with another prosecutor, Miles Edgeworth, due to this accusation; before court reconvenes, both Rell and Faraday are found dead. Edgeworth discovers that Calisto murdered Faraday with Rell's help, then killed Rell and made it look the two had killed each other. Calisto claims to be the Yatagarasu as well as a member of the smuggling ring before fleeing. Faraday's daughter Kay is comforted over his death by Edgeworth and detectives Gumshoe and Badd; she believes her father to be the 'true Yatagarasu', and vows to one day catch Calisto (the 'fake Yatagarasu'). Seven years later, while Edgeworth is traveling on an airliner, an Interpol agent investigating the smuggling ring is murdered during the trip. Upon landing, Prosecutor Franziska von Karma arrives and explains that she is working with Interpol to expose the smuggling ring; she and Edgeworth discover the murderer to be flight attendant Cammy Meele, who is working with the smuggling ring. After landing, Edgeworth is contacted by businessman Ernest Amano, whose son Lance has been kidnapped and is being held for ransom. Edgeworth reunites with Kay, who calls herself the Yatagarasu. They discover the body of Amano family butler Oliver Deacon, and find Lance who identifies Deacon as one of his kidnappers. As Edgeworth investigates the mystery, he meets Interpol agents Shi-Long Lang and Shih-na, who believe that Amano's business group is involved with the smuggling ring; the ring's counterfeit money has ruined the economy of their home country Zheng Fa, so they seek to bring an end to the ring. Edgeworth learns that the kidnapping was a ploy by Lance to get money from his father, and that Lance killed Deacon after the latter had attacked him. Evidence is found tying Amano to the smuggling ring, and Lang brings him in for questioning. Returning to his office, Edgeworth is confronted at gunpoint by an unidentified man and then finds the body of Detective Buddy Faith inside. He determines that the murderer was Jacques Portsman, a prosecutor working for the smuggling ring who broke into Edgeworth's office to steal evidence from Byrne's murder case, murdering Faith after being caught; however, Edgeworth works out that Portsman was not the man he encountered at gunpoint. The next day, the countries of Allebahst and Babahl, which formerly made up Cohdopia, prepare to announce their reunification when their shared embassy is set ablaze and two people are killed. The bodies are found in the embassies' respective offices; one of them is Manny Coachen, now the secretariat for Babahl. After investigating, Edgeworth exposes Shih-na as Calisto in disguise; she admits that she attempted to frame Kay for Coachen's murder but insists that she did not murder the secretariat. As she is taken away, Badd reveals that he has since figured out that "Calisto Yew" was an alias (Cece didn't have a sister), and that she became part of the Yatagarasu on orders from the smuggling ring's leader. He also reveals that he was the one who confronted Edgeworth in his office – he was looking for the case file covering Cece Yew's murder. Edgeworth discovers that the smuggling ring's leader is Quercus Alba, the former Cohdopian and current Allebahstian ambassador, who committed both murders to cover the smuggling ring's tracks. He intended to frame Coachen as the smuggling ring's leader as Coachen had plotted to seize control of the ring himself. After Lang gets Alba's diplomatic immunity revoked, Edgeworth proves his guilt and Alba, Amano and the other smugglers are convicted. ==Development==

The game was directed by Takeshi Yamazaki and produced by Motohide Eshiro, with character designs by Tatsuro Iwamoto, Eshiro said that they could have set the game in a courtroom similar to that of the main series and made a few additions, but that it would not have been very interesting; instead they moved the game to crime scenes, and added several new gameplay elements. Figuring out how to move the game from the courtroom to the crime scene was a challenge for the development team. The team also thought that it was difficult to make the game feel new while also making sure it felt similar to the game series. Because of the new gameplay systems that all had to be created from scratch, Ace Attorney Investigations took longer to develop than previous Ace Attorney games had. The concept of the story was that while each case is a standalone episode, they are also all interlinked, forming a larger mystery, with each episode revealing a piece of the puzzle. Eshiro saw the story as the most important part of the game, and said that, while time-consuming, it was important to make sure that it works. This was accomplished through a lot of trial and error, and several rewrites and revisions: Yamazaki would come up with an idea, which was tested to see if players had a hard time understanding it. Based on feedback from the testers, Yamazaki would rewrite and reorder some parts, and add hints. When creating the game's story, the development team took into account that some players might not have played any Ace Attorney games before. Because of this, they tried to make the game as accessible as possible, and make it playable without first having played any of the previous titles; for instance, the first part of the game is a tutorial that introduces the game and the characters. They did however add in-jokes for players who had played previous Ace Attorney games. the game's logic system was created because the development team wanted to show how Edgeworth thinks. It represents what is happening inside his mind, which Eshiro describes as a "very cool, calm and collected way of thinking". Eshiro and Yamazaki wanted to add a lot of features to the Little Thief system, but due to time constraints it ended up more simplistic than they had originally envisioned. Eshiro used his experience with producing action games such as Shadow of Rome and laying out scenes to get backgrounds to move smoothly without scrolling issues when Edgeworth moves. The programmers faced big technical challenges and had to make significant modifications to the game when implementing the graphics: in the game, two animated characters - whose graphics each are larger than those in previous Ace Attorney games - appear simultaneously and on top of smaller "mini-avatar" graphics. Eshiro said that he thinks they pushed the graphic processing ability of the Nintendo DS system to its limits for this. Eshiro said that they would consider making DSiWare episodes if demand was high enough, but that they did not have any plans at the time. He said that there were many technical aspects to consider, such as memory limitations for DSiWare. ==Promotion and release==

The game was announced in Famitsu in April 2008. A demo of the game was made available at Tokyo Game Show 2008. It was also shown at San Diego Comic-Con in 2009, and appeared once more at Tokyo Game Show in 2009. The game was published by Capcom for the Nintendo DS on May 28, 2009, in Japan, on February 16, 2010, in North America, on February 18, 2010, in Australia, and on February 19, 2010, in Europe. A limited edition version of the game was made available in Japan, containing a business card holder, promotional videos, a CD with five tracks from an Ace Attorney concert performed by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, a pamphlet from the concert, a game box, and a copy of the game itself. A bundle containing an Ace Attorney Investigations themed Nintendo DSi and a copy of the game was also made available in Japan. An iOS and Android version was released worldwide on December 8, 2017. The soundtrack album Gyakuten Kenji Original Soundtrack was released on June 24, 2009, by Suleputer. Localization For the game's localization, the main focus was to keep the dialogue natural and accessible to Western players, while also staying true to the Japanese version. The Japanese version had several instances of puns or cultural jokes, which would not have worked if they had been translated literally. There were also places in the script where the development team would have liked to insert jokes in the localization, but thought that it may be inappropriate to do so since the joke was not in the Japanese version. The team found difficulties in getting the Western version's tone right, as they wanted to keep the localized text interesting, and at the same time avoid inconsistencies with the original version's tone. ==Reception==

Ace Attorney Investigations was well received by critics. and 42,000 the following week; by the end of 2009, it was the 33rd best selling game of the year in Japan, with 303,445 copies sold. On the other hand, Capcom USA's vice president described Western sales as "poor at best". The game won an Aggie Award for Best Character of 2010, for Miles Edgeworth, and was awarded for Best Adventure Title of 2010 on Nintendo DS by Nintendo World Report. Following the game's appearance at Tokyo Game Show in 2008, it was awarded a Japan Game Award in the "future" category. Austin Boosinger at Adventure Gamers said that the gameplay changes compared to the main series were mostly superficial, resulting in a game that is similar to but worse than the main series. Hilary Goldstein at IGN said that the new gameplay elements were strong additions that add variety to the game, but felt that the series was running out of steam. Steven Hopper at GameZone said that the game was very similar to previous Ace Attorney games, on good and bad, and that the Ace Attorney series was starting to show its age. Laura Parker at GameSpot said that the game was a "successful twist" on the gameplay of the previous games in the series, and that it "lacked none of the magic" of them. Boosinger called the game too easy and streamlined, and found the Logic system to be too simple. He did however feel that finding contradictions in testimonies was "fantastic as always", while too reliant on trial and error. Ronaghan said that many solutions in the Rebuttal phases are "binary" - while it makes sense to present a piece of evidence at several points, the game accepts only one of them. He found the controls to be fine, but called the touch screen-based walking controls "awkward and imprecise". Hopper said that solving cases isn't intuitive enough, and involves a lot of trial and error. While some puzzles made sense to him, others were frustrating. Legacy A manga based on the game, written by Kenji Kuroda and drawn by Kazuo Maekawa, premiered in 2009 in Kodansha's Weekly Young Magazine. Kodansha also released the manga in North America in four volumes between July 31, 2012, and January 29, 2013. The second and third volume ranked 7th and 8th, respectively, on The New York Times Manga Best Seller List for one week each in 2012. In 2011, an attraction based on the game was opened in the amusement park Joypolis in Tokyo. A stage play based on the game ran in July 2016 in Tokyo. A sequel to the game, ''Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor's Gambit, was released in Japan on February 3, 2011. While there were initially no plans for Capcom to release it internationally, the game was eventually localized as part of the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection, released in September 2024. The compilation, which includes both games, features high-resolution graphics, with the option to choose between newly animated character sprites and the original pixel art, as well as bonus content such as artwork and music. In July 2013, Eshiro said that he and Yamazaki would like to make a third Investigations'' game, and that he intended to secure the needed Capcom personnel and plan everything out in the future, but that he could not make any promises. ==Notes==