Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Justice For All is basically the sequel to the first game which can be played anywhere as much as I know, we play as, once again, Phoenix Wright. He was considered a rookie lawyer in the first game...well, he actually was, but one could say that this is not the case anymore. Anyways, the point is that this is a sequel and we play as the same guy. We´ll solve complicated cases through the game, to defend our clients and enjoying a good story.
If you ask me, a sequel only needs one thing in order to exist, when I say that, I mean that the sequel itself has to contribute to its respective franchise, this is a videogame we are talking about, of course it exists for money, but, I like to feel that the existence of these things are actually necessary, this is the thing with Justice For All, I honestly think it´s a good sequel, and kind of an underrated one, it adds gameplay elements which develops the franchise and the story takes its time to solve many loose ends from the first game.
When talking about the first game, I did say that the investigation segements, those when you find important proof to defend your client, are pretty basic, I understand that, because the first game is pretty old already but that doesn´t change the fact that you are limited to what you can do in these segments, there is no challenge actually or punishment, nothing, these examination parts can get really tiring because sometimes the game becomes into ¨go to B from A, get back to B and go to D, get back to B and head to D again¨, I think you get the point, the game kind of fixes that thanks to the 2-days system. In the first game, you had to play through 3 days when it was about the most complicated cases, now in the sequel, all of the cases are just 2 days long, so the horrible backtracking the first game suffered at times, it´s kind of clipped, plus the scenarios are not THAT big, so yeah, there is still some backtracking, but not as awful as the turnabout samurai.
There is one gameplay element added through the investigations, the Psyche Locks. This is when the game gets interesting, people lie everytime but these lies can hide useful information on the case, we won´t access to this important info until we break the Psyche Locks, it´ll be kind of a cross-examination, we´ll talk to the npc and they´ll ask us about some evidence, it can be twice, or more, one thing I like about this mechanic is that it makes you feel rewarded for unlocking all of the mystery these people would hide, it´s a good challenge and it doesn´t feel tedious to solve, by the way, you can´t just cheat through these Psyche Locks things, if you present evidence at random withouth giving it a thought, you might lose a good amount of HP, one you wouldn´t be able to recover until you break all of the Psyche Locks. Remember, the HP is used through the Trials, and it´s not that it´ll recover at the begining of the Trials, if you begin it with pretty low HP, it´ll remain like that.
Yeah, I know what you are thinking, just save the game before and once you are ready, load the file, did you that in the Ace Attorney fanbase that´s called ¨save scum¨? It´s at it sounds, when you save before an important moment, so if you lose a lot of HP, no problem just load the file, I see no problem in playing that way but it certainly ¨breaks¨ the game, like, what is even the point? This time, I wanted to play the game without save scum and I did it, I only saved when the game made me to and when I had to stop playing, it was a painful experience, but once I completed the game, I felt pretty rewarded myself, like, there is no prize for doing that or something but it feels good, now that I´m talking about difficulty, I´d like to point something.
I think that this game suffers from artificial difficulty and let me explain how I reached this conclusion. When you play in the Trials, you are given two options, to press the witnesses, so they can slip contradictions, this is where the second option lead us, once you find the contradiction, present the evidence, of course, if you are wrong about what you are presenting, you´ll be penalized, which implies losing a bit of your HP, it´s a classic game system and yet, fun and addictive.
In order to increase the difficulty and to make the game longer, there are witnesses who you are not allowed to just press, you have to press the right statement and if you press a statement you are not allowed to, the game just penalizes you, making you to lose HP, and of course, you have no way of knowing which of many statement you are supposed to press, and the penalizations for pressing the statement the game doesn´t want to it´s usually high, it´s kind of unfair you know, even if you get the right statement, like, they´ll make you to show evidence or proof, and you´ll be penalized if you don´t show the right one, that might be not bad if it wasn´t for what I mentioned, funny thing is that the penalization in these parts are even higher, that much that the game can bomb you the whole HP bad and getting a game over.
You may be able to understand why playing this game without save scum is actually hell itself, I can´t remember how many times I got a game over and had to begin a trial from the begining or when the game wanted it me to start, it really was painful, but hey, at the end of the day, it was gratifying. I have no complains about the game story-wise, I think there are cases which are better and some others that are not, for example, I think Reunion And Turnabout is a way better second case than the Turnabout Sisters from the first game, both the investigation and the Trial are way more complicated and dificult, the mystery is more interesting and all of the drama behind the character was just better for me; I find the Turnabout Big Top to be way better than the Turnabout Samurai, both are filler cases to be honest but I found this one to be better in pacing and characters, the key mystery that if Max is actuallly able to fly or not...it was interesting.
Justice For All is a good sequel indeed, but I think I´ll stay with the first game, it´d be maybe because of the nostalgia but I´ve had lived very intense moments when playing that game, it´s hard to just say which one is better, let´s just say both does good and not that good things, I think people would rather skip this game but it´s not something I´d recommend.
All of the screenshots were taken by me