The elephant in the room when discussing the Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy is the argument that it’s not really a trilogy. The three games which have just been remastered and rereleased under the title — 2007’s Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, 2013’s Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies, and 2016’s Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice — are indeed respectively the fourth, fifth, and sixth mainline games in the Ace Attorney series of courtroom dramedy visual novels. But nevertheless, many long-time fans were surprised at last year’s announcement that the remasters were being marketed in this way, since there’d never really been a sense that the originals were intended to be read as a single continuous narrative.
Ace Attorney fans have been a bit spoiled in this regard in the past. Most video game trilogies are loosely connected when you really look at them, but the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy truly is what it claims to be: three games developed by the same creative team that come together to form a single story, paying off in a highly satisfying conclusion that weaves almost every thread from start to finish back together. The same is even truer of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, a prequel duology that was in the works alongside the Apollo Justice-era games when they were first released, and which only really pays off once you’ve played both halves to the end.
By contrast, the three games now united under the Apollo Justice name are each far more stand-alone. Eagle-eyed readers will probably already have noticed that although Apollo Justice gets his name in the collection’s title, Phoenix Wright resumes his top billing for the latter two individual games therein, which really says a lot about the sometimes-awkward push-and-pull drawing this compilation rerelease in different directions. But still, they had to call it something to differentiate it from the Phoenix Wright Trilogy, and none of this is Apollo Justice’s fault, so I think it makes sense as a title. It just has the unfortunate side-effect of creating an expectation that the Apollo Justice Trilogy isn’t quite up to delivering on.
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