Phoenix Wright : Justice For All

Reviewed by Andrew Clark
July 27, 2007

Developer: Capcom Publisher: Capcom Website: Click Here Consoles Available: Nintendo DS Numbers of Players: 1 ESRB Rating: Teen

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Justice for All is the second installment in the Phoenix Wright series. Like in the first game you play as Phoenix Wright, a young defense lawyer.  This time around your main rival is Franziska von Karma, an undefeated 18-year-old prosecutor from Germany, who is also the daughter of Manfred von Karma from the first game. The game plays the same as the first and only has a few differences; one is the ability to present person profiles as evidence. The second difference has to do with the life bar.  During a trial in the first game, you could only mess up 5 times and it would be game over.  In Justice for All, there is a now a life bar, so mainly if you mess up you will lose a small portion, but in certain instances you can lose anywhere from half of the bar to the entire thing for making one mistake. The last difference is the addition of psyche-locks, these are locks that appear outside of court when someone is lying and trying to hide something from you.  Locks are broken by presenting evidence to prove that they are lying, kind of like a smaller version of a cross-exanimation, and like in the cross-examinations, you can lose part of your life bar if you present the wrong thing. These are also used to regain life, as when you break a psyche-lock you gain back a majority of your health.

This game has very few flaws.  A few grammar errors stick out here and there since the game is done entirely through text for the most part; I’m guessing that these were just errors that occurred while translating the game into English. Aside from that there aren’t any real problems, the story is very solid and the game has 4 cases this time around, like the first they progress in difficulty, the first case took me only 20-30 minutes to complete while the last case lasted a few hours.

This is a great game that is fun to just pick up and play.  Some of the cases are fairly memorable and all cases can be replayed from the beginning after you complete them. The third game is on its way, scheduled for release in September of this year, and with a fourth game having just been released in Japan, it is obvious that the Phoenix Wright/Gyakuten Saiban series is becoming quite popular.   If you still haven’t played either of the games, there is really only thing to say… OBJECTION!!!

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