Apollo Justice Ace Attorney review
:: NO OBJECTIONSPrice: $0.99
Version: 1.00.01
App Reviewed on: iPad Air 2
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Apollo Justice Ace Attorney–the fourth game in Capcom's Ace Attorney series–has finally come to mobile. Despite its awkward timing (the fifth game has been out on mobile for a couple years now), Apollo Justice is a beautiful port of the original title and can act as a decent starting point into this series of games.
A fresh start
Despite being part of a long-running series, Apollo Justice serves as a good entry point to the Ace Attorney series because you play the game from the perspective of Apollo Justice, a rookie lawyer, and a supporting cast of mostly fresh faces. Throughout the game, you'll be learning along with Apollo, whether it is about the mechanics of how the game works or his own particular abilities as a litigator.
Because this is an Ace Attorney game, you can expect dedicating most of your time to talking with people–in and out of the courtroom–in order to find the truth of four cases. There are also mechanics revolving around forensic work and perceiving lies through body language that are neat distractions to help vary the experience up.
Peculiar procedural
If you've played an Ace Attorney game before, you probably won't be surprised to hear that the cases in Apollo Justice revolve around pretty absurd scenarios and quirky characters. In this particular game, I'm not too sure many of the characters are particularly endearing–especially the bumbling protagonist–but they play their roles well enough to make figuring out their cases compelling.
Although you may find yourself motivated to keep pressing on, Apollo Justice suffers from feeling a little vague at times. Because of this, you may find yourself stuck, aimlessly wandering around or presenting things to people to try and figure out what to do next. It's a classic problem of a lot of adventure games, and it persists across most Ace Attorney games, Apollo Justice included.
Passing the bar
Regardless of how you feel about the Ace Attorney gameplay formula, one thing is for certain: The iOS version of Apollo Justice is a fantastic version of the game. The colorful art and animations of characters look great on a high-resolution screen, and all of the actions originally designed for the Nintendo DS translate very naturally to phones and tablets.
The only real wrinkle in moving Apollo Justice over to the App Store is its pricing model. Although the store lists the game as $0.99, this will only get you the first half of the first chapter of the game, with the full price of the game actually coming in at $14.99. As a package, Apollo Justice is well worth Capcom's full asking price, but the game's description isn't very upfront about the true cost of the game which does rub me the wrong way.
The bottom line
Apollo Justice Ace Attorney is a great version of a pretty good Ace Attorney game. If you haven't played one of these titles before, I'd recommend checking out the Phoenix Wright Trilogy's free episodes to see if it's the kind of game for you first. Otherwise, I have no problem recommending this game for anyone looking for a great Ace Attorney experience on iOS.