Ace Attorney Investigations Collection Review (Switch eShop)

In the Ace Attorney games, Edgeworth has always been a bit like an outdoor cat. He drops in every now and again, does his job, then disappears for weeks, sometimes months at a time. Later on, you'll find out some cool tidbit of information – he was in Europe doing Important Lawyer Things, or chasing an Interpol lead in the deep jungle, or on a space station solving an extraterrestrial murder – and then he turns up once more at your doorstep with a cool new outfit like nothing happened. Ace Attorney Investigations is like putting a webcam on said cat to find out what he gets up to – and it turns out that most of Edgeworth's out-of-court activities involve solving murders before they even get to court.

The first game in this double-pack is Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, which came out back in 2009 on the DS as a spin-off to the main series. It's set between the events of the third game, Trials and Tribulations, and the fourth game, Apollo Justice, and – we'll be honest – players will benefit from a pretty robust knowledge of (at least) the events of the first trilogy.

Where Phoenix's adventures largely take place in court, Edgeworth seemingly prefers to do his work by investigating crime scenes and grilling suspects until he knows exactly who did it, when, and why – but the rest of it is very familiar. Even without the legality and professionalism of the court, Edgey-poo is able to cross-examine witnesses, listen to testimonies, present evidence, and say "Objection!" a whole lot.

It's invigorating to be much more hands-on with the evidence and the crimes, but at the same time, it's much more static than Phoenix's investigations – you're often trapped in one room until Edgeworth decides to move on, instead of Phoenix's more dynamic investigations that let you move between locations. But Edgeworth and friends are represented in the world with chibi versions of themselves, which arguably makes it feel more dynamic, anyway. Also, they're really cute.

The characters in Investigations are your usual colourful cast, each with their own memorable quirks – a character that laughs a lot, a character that growls like a tiger, a character that, um, has a large chest – and the requisite pun names, like the victim "Deid Mann" and the exercise-loving "Jacques Portsman". You'll see a lot of returning characters, too (no spoilers here, because it's nice to have the surprise), which is one of the reasons it's handy to have that background knowledge of the first three AA games.

Edgeworth also has three new powers up his sleeve: Little Thief, which allows him to recreate and examine crime scenes after the fact; Deduce, which lets you highlight a contradiction in the crime scene with evidence; and Logic, a Sherlock Holmesian mind-palace that lets you connect two facts about the case to create a new conclusion. Logic is fantastic, if sometimes a little obvious, and Little Thief is a treat, albeit infrequently used, but we often struggled to know what the Deduce ability wanted us to present as evidence.

Honestly, though, Investigations doesn't quite make it into our top AA games. It's a great story, as always, and the introduction of Edgeworth and his sidekick's special powers is a welcome change from Phoenix's Psyche-Locks, but the overarching plot across the five episodes is told out of order and is sometimes a little hard to follow, and Edgeworth's contradictions are often tricky to find (or to present at the right time). Compared to the long, complex cases of the third AA game, Investigations feels more like a lot of build-up and backstory for the denouement of the fifth case, rather than fully standalone mini-stories. It's a shame Investigations wasn't given more of a once-over, too, as there are more grammar errors than we're used to seeing in these games, and some of the animations really struggle and hang. Overall, a good game, but not one of the best.

But Investigations 2: Prosecutor's Gambit is something we've been anxiously awaiting for over a decade, and we were absolutely delighted to discover, at last, that it picks up the Investigations mantle and improves on almost every aspect.

Edgeworth is less of a cardboard cutout than before and has some fantastic moments of character development alongside several new characters: Judge Gavèlle, an antagonist who hates prosecutors; Eustace Winner, her idiot protégé; and Eddie Fender, who is by far our favourite character of the new cast. He begins as a creep who wants to give everyone hugs, which gave us flashbacks to Director Hotti, but soon develops into a rich, deep character we really fell in love with. Props to the writing and localisation team.

Get ready for even more deep Ace Attorney lore, though, because Investigations 2 is chock-a-block with recurring characters, backstory, flashbacks, and references to multiple capital-I "Incidents" referred to by three-character codenames, which can get really confusing. Both games are told out-of-order, too, so maybe get ready to take notes if you want to follow along with the overarching plot – which, as it turns out, spans both games. Technically, it spans even more, since people keep mentioning DL-6 (if you know, you know).

But once you're locked into the AA lore, Investigations 2 is easily one of the best Ace Attorney games. It paces out its twists and revelations perfectly, giving you an "AHA!" moment exactly when you need it, and the characters are so beautifully written that you feel like they're real, with unique and gorgeous animations for each that bring them to life.

The only mark against it, really, is Edgeworth's newest gimmick, Mind Chess, which is utter nonsense. It's similar to Phoenix's Magatama questioning, except instead of Psyche-Locks, it's... chess pieces that you have to explode? Using interrogation tactics? It's basically a convoluted dialogue tree that you have to play perfectly, or you get sent back to the start, even though you've already said 80% of what's in the tree. It has its moments of brilliance, but it's largely annoying, superfluous, and weirdly written, because of how much of it relies on the correct answer being 'Say nothing', which gets people to confess, for some reason. Bleh.

There are also extras — animation galleries, a music player, concept art, and achievements — but those are really just the cherry on top of an already rather tasty cake. Despite some bumps in the first game, we wholeheartedly recommend the Investigations Collection, not least because it gives us Investigations 2, at last.