Ace Attorney Investigations: The First Clue

The first case in Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth begins with a murder, but instead of sitting in a comfy office like Phoenix Wright, the game starts with Edgeworth on the scene. A frazzled Dick Gumshoe follows runs in late.

These story bits are told with text and sprites, not text and portraits like the Phoenix Wright games. Some scenes still use talking heads and it’s nice to have both. You can see other officers dusting the crime scene for prints while Edgeworth and Gumshoe talk. Edgeworth takes a moment out of the chaos to introduce himself too, just in case a player isn’t familiar with the Ace Attorney series.

During a conversation Edgeworth automatically picks up two clues, the murder location is his office and the door requires a key to open. Using logic (i.e. the logic system by pressing the L button) the player can select these clues and then hit conclude to make Edgeworth put them together. Since there are only two clues now you can’t get this puzzle wrong. When Edgeworth realizes he’s on the right track a swirl of green lights spiral on the top screen and Edgeworth smugly crosses his arms and wags his index finger. The conclusion gives Edgeworth access to another clue that the culprit purposely made the murder to take place in Edgeworth’s office.

Now you get to walk around with Edgeworth, freely walk around. You can move Edgeworth and Gumshoe, who follows behind like the second hero in an RPG, with the D-pad or dragging the stylus in the room area. You can tap on Gumshoe’s face to talk to him. A pop up examine command lets you know if there is an interesting object near by.

Well, there is a gun on the floor. I’ll start with that. Inspecting the gun adds another clue to the logic bank. Now it’s time to search the body. The game zooms in on the lifeless victim and you can target specific areas, similar to the Phoenix Wright games. Searching the body adds evidence to your court file. This is the first piece of evidence I obtained other than the prosecutor’s badge, which Edgeworth starts with. Hit R and you view the case file which has all of the items and profiles you discovered. Searching the badge next to the body adds another clue to your logic menu.  You can continue to search for more clues, Gumshoe thinks lots of things are relevant clues, but that’s really all you need to move forward. Matching the badge with the gun in the logic board makes Edgeworth deduce the gun is actually the victim’s which adds another item to the case file. If you make a mistake and match the gun with the murder location clue you lose a bit of logic energy. Not as much as some objections in Phoenix Wright, just a smidgen.

The case moves forward with Makoto, an athletic looking prosecutor wearing a sweatband and carrying a sports coat on his shoulder, dashing in. Edgeworth explains the victim was moved around after noticing two sets of bloody finger prints and out of place case files on the bookshelf. After moving the body and the files back in its proper place he notices one file was stolen! A clue goes into the case file and the demo ends.

Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth feels like it retains the brainteasing fun of the Ace Attorney series. In addition to using evidence players need to connect clues to move the story forward.