Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is actually the story of a an inexperianced defense attorney named Phoenix Wright. The game follows Phoenix through five cases as he tries to prove his clients innocence and to find the real killers. The game provides an entertaining story with memorable characters and mysteries that are fun to solve. That being said the game is in no way acurate in portraying courtroom procedings or the practice of law.

For those who want a game that feels like "Law and Order" or "The Practice" this game is not for you. The legal system in the game is nothing like the actual American legal system. In the game all trials last for three days. This is explained in the game as being a result of having too many trials in the courts. The game does not have rules of evidence, presumption of innocence, the requirement that guilt must be proved beyond all reasonable doubt, or a jury system. Phoenix Wright acts not only as his clients Attorney but also as a private investigator as he must search the crime scenes and find the evidence needed to catch witnesses telling lies.

The characters of the game are well developed with even the most minor characters having distinctive personalities and quirks. There are a few plot holes in the story but those are fairly minor and easily overlooked. The chapters are all connected by some common plot threads but can also be viewed as stand alone stories.

The gameplay is divided into two parts, investigation and trial. Each case consists multiple instances of each. While the two types of gameplay have similar looks and controls the objective and feel of the gameplay changes.

The investigation part of the game involves talking to witnesses and looking for evidence. To look for evidence the player simply indicates using the touch screen where to look. This can either lead to a piece of evidence that is added to the court record or open up a new line of questioning for witnesses. If they player looks in the wong place he is treated to some dialouge between whatever characters are present at the time. Talking to witnesses is done by selecting topics from a list. New topics appear as old topics are brought up or as clues are found in the environment. Still other topics can be found by presenting witnesses with evidence.

Once the player has found all of the evidence and talked to all of the witnesses the game moves into trial phase. In the trial phase the player's job is to prove that his client is innocent by proving that the witnesses are either wrong or liars. This is done by pressing for more information or by presenting contradictory evidence. The problem with this is that the player must first listen to the witness' whole testimony before he can attack it. This means that the gameplay can be repetitive at times. Another area of frustration is that there are times when the player will know what he needs to present yet the game does not give him a clear opening to present it. This is made worse by the fact that the player can make a limited number of mistakes before the judge finds his client guilty. Still because the game can be saved anywhere trial and error is a possible method providing the player is willing to reset the game after every four or five wrong guesses.

The controls for the game are simple and work well. The entire game can be played using only the buttons or only the touch screen but I have found that a combination of the two works best. A small number of things can be done using the microphone but it is such a small number of things that I doubt anyone would choose this method even if doing so did not make the player look like an idiot to those sitting around him.

For the most part (the only exceptions occuring late in the game) the graphics are unimpressive and 2-Dimensional. The characters have an anime style to them and the look nice but in addition to being 2D the graphics are also very still. The characters are simply there on screen so you know who is talking. This is not to say that the characters do not move just that the usually stand still and when they do move the animation seems to be missing several frames.

Near the end of the game everything improves dramatically the character motions seem much more fluid and there are some added touch screen and microphone specific features that are not present in the earlier levels. These features, which include dusting for prints and being able to examine evidence in 3D, lead me to suspect that this game was originally intended as a GBA game and the new features were added when it was moved to the DS. I am hopeful that the recently announced sequel will have more of these kinds of features.

Like the graphics the sound is a weak point for this game. The game has maybe two or three words that are actually voice acted and these words are as overused as are other sound effects throughout the game. The background music seems to fit the game perfectly and can be quite catchy.

In the end Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney provides players with a new experiance. It is a game unlike any other and the novelty of it is definately enough of a reason to at least try it out. While it has it's flaws it does enough things right that it is fun to play. It is easy to see that the quality of the game is greatly improved upon in the last chapter and now that Capcom is working on a sequel I hope that they will make a game that uses the full power of the DS.