The Ace Attorney Investigations Collection is closing a loop that’s been open a long time. The first Investigations game, a spinoff of the popular lawyer-based, detective-adjacent adventure games starring Phoenix Wright, was released in 2009 (or 2010 in English). Despite following fan-favorite prosecutorial rival Miles Edgeworth, it didn’t sell well, particularly in the West. And so, although Capcom made a second Investigations game, it was never localized. After the Great Ace Attorney games were finally adapted for release outside Japan in 2021, Investigations 2 languished as the only game in the series that didn’t have an official worldwide release.
It makes some sense. Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, the first of the two games in the collection, is, by all accounts, basically fine. It’s fun to get an inside look into Edgeworth’s mind after three games with him as a rival and side character. Getting to walk around crime scenes and rebut arguments in a new way is a fun twist on the standard Ace Attorney formula.
But it’s understandable that it didn’t land as well as the main trilogy. The pacing — especially in one infamous argument at the end of the game — is not good. Some plot points are convoluted, and the timeline can be difficult to follow. And most of all, it doesn’t have the personal stakes that mark the best parts of the series as a whole, and that made Edgeworth a fan-favorite character in the first place.
And yet its sequel, Ace Attorney Investigations: Prosecutor’s Gambit, is an astonishingly good video game.
I should already have known this. I played the fan localization not long after it came out, and I replayed it less than two years ago. But playing this new version still somehow took me by surprise. Maybe I was influenced by Capcom’s decision not to release it, assuming there must be a good reason despite my own enjoyment. Maybe having played the much less consistent Apollo Justice trilogy more recently threw me off. Maybe the awful ending of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles made me inherently mistrustful of late-coming localizations. Whatever the reason, I was completely taken aback.
Although I’ve always enjoyed it, having replayed it in full over the last few days, I now think Prosecutor’s Gambit might be the best game in the series outside of the main trilogy.
It is still best to play them both, even if the changes made in the collection don’t really touch the issues with Miles Edgeworth. The new chibi character portraits are cute; they grew on me a lot more during play than they had in the promo materials. (Edgeworth, barrel-chested as he is, actually has the worst chibi design of the lot and kind of looks like he’s about to tip over. Also, he’s textually a furrowed brow, sunken-eyed horse of a man, and not supposed to look cute, a problem that the franchise has been wrestling with since the original Trilogy remake erased all his rough edges.)
There are some quality-of-life changes, too. Story Mode, which allows you to see the game without having to do any of the puzzles, is a good addition to the series that has been slowly implemented into every rerelease, saving any frustration from getting stuck (something that’s bound to happen at least a couple of times per game). And there are new gallery items and music, which are neat.
But Prosecutor’s Gambit steals the show. None of the problems of the first game in the collection apply here. Prosecutor’s Gambit is well paced and straightforward, and has all the character drive that Investigations 1 is missing. In fact, it’s a much more direct sequel to Edgeworth’s story in the original Ace Attorney trilogy than Miles Edgeworth, no matter what the name or the order of their release implies.
It might also be the most thematically consistent Ace Attorney game, even including the original trilogy, which is otherwise easily the most well written the series has ever been. Prosecutor’s Gambit uses the plot point about Edgeworth’s father’s death introduced in the original Ace Attorney to spin out a game all about parenting, mentorship, and building the path you want to take through the world, and it sticks to it with a coherency not found anywhere else in the series, weaving almost all of its plot points into the same thread.
The official localization is also very good. It’s jarring to see characters given new names (Sebastian DeBeste, I will never forget you), but directly comparing the two, it’s clear that the professional translation is better. Lines are less literal and sound more natural. Some characters have more distinctive gimmicks, too, like Eddie Fender’s lines making use of his “quote unquote” animation that went unremarked upon in the fan localization. There are one or two things I do think are worse in this version than the fan-made one, but with so many tiny decisions to choose from, there always would be.
The existence of an easily accessible, professionally localized Investigations 2 truly makes the series complete. People can finally get Miles Edgeworth in his full glory, including the new mechanic introduced in 2: Mind Chess. It’s perfect for him! It’s goofy as hell! It’s a lot of trial and error! It’s so, so Ace Attorney in all ways good and bad!
I’m very glad this series is officially complete. And I’m glad that Prosecutor’s Gambit is really, really good. And if Miles Edgeworth doesn’t quite meet the same standard, well, that’s all part of the experience.
Ace Attorney Investigations Collection will be released Sept. 6 on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows PC, and Xbox One. The game was reviewed on PC using a pre-release download code provided by Capcom. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.