Ace Attorney Investigations Collection completes the series’ western localisation in style

It may be hard to believe, but the Ace Attorney series has now been going for 23 years.

Starting with the Japan-only original on the Game Boy Advance (it was later ported to the DS and given a western release), the series made its way through three generations of Nintendo handhelds, culminating in The Great Ace Attorney 2 on 3DS.

Fans of the games worldwide have lapped up every new instalment, because it’s one of those rare franchises that’s never delivered a bad game. As long as you can get along with the genre – it’s essentially a visual novel with deduction-based puzzle solving – a good time is all but guaranteed.

Despite its popularity, not every Ace Attorney game has made it to the west. Of the 11 entries released on Nintendo handhelds during the series’ first run, three of them – Ace Attorney Investigations 2, The Great Ace Attorney and The Great Ace Attorney 2 – were only released in Japan.

With the GBA, DS and 3DS now very much retired, in recent years Capcom has been re-releasing the games on modern platforms with enhanced illustrations designed to take advantage of their higher resolutions. Back in 2021, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles ticked off two of those three Japan-only games, giving them western localisations for the first time.

Now, with Ace Attorney Investigations Collection, Capcom has ticked off the last of them, ensuring that fans can finally play through the entire series in English for the first time. And it was worth the wait.

As the name implies, Investigations Collection is a two-in-one remaster consisting of two DS spin-off games – Ace Attorney Investigations (which did get a western release) and Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit (which didn’t, until now). In true Ace Attorney fashion, both titles are lengthy affairs, each containing five separate cases for a total of 10 in this compilation.

Naturally, given the heavy emphasis on narrative it would be entering serious spoiler territory to go into anything more than the vaguest