When Is the Next Game Out
The next entry in the Ace Attorney series is Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice. It’s the sixth official title in the series, not including spin-offs of course. Spirit of Justice releases on September 8, exclusively on the Nintendo 3DS. The game can only be purchased via the eShop, as it won’t be getting a physical release in the United States, and there’s currently a demo up that you can download, and an anime prologue detailing the events leading up to the game.
Spirit of Justice takes Phoenix to the Kingdom of Khura’in on a trip to visit his old assistant Maya Fey, it’s a country steeped in religious tradition and ruled by a royal family. Here he’ll have to contend with something called the Defense Culpability Act, as he defends clients from being accused of murder. The DCA is a law in Khura’in that makes it so defense attorneys are convicted of the same crimes as their clients, when the client is proven guilty.
While Phoenix is off in Khura’in the other members of the Wright Anything Agency, Apollo Justice and Athena Cykes, have to hold down the fort back in America. The five cases of the game will flip back and forth between Phoenix and Apollo, tying the events together into an overarching story filled with revolution, conspiracy, spirit channeling, divination and much more. The new Divination Seance mechanic during trials will have you viewing the final moments of victim’s lives, along with testimony from the royal priestess on what they experienced in terms of sight, smell and touch. Your job is to find discrepancies between the scene that plays during the Seance, and the testimony of the priestess, uncovering the truth along the way.
It’s interesting to note that Spirit of Justice is the 8th Ace Attorney game we’ve seen in the west, including Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney. There are, however, two games in the series that we’ve never seen a localization of. The first is a sequel to Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, released on the DS in 2011. The second is an interesting title set over 100 years in the past in Japan, called Dai Gyakuten Saiban: Naruhodo Ryunosuke no Boken. This 3DS game starred Phoenix Wright’s ancestor during Japan’s Meiji Period, as the profession of Defense Attorney was just starting to become a thing. The renowned detective Sherlock Holmes even plays a large role in the title, which at the moment has no plans for a western release.
