Franchise as a whole
Mainline entries:
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney | Justice for All | Trials and Tribulations | Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney | Dual Destinies | Spirit of Justice
Spin-offs:
Ace Attorney Investigations | The Great Ace Attorney
Other media:
The 2012 film | The anime
- Acclaimed Flop: Although the first game got good reviews from the professional critic circuit, it was thoroughly review bombed
by actual players due to the accusation of the game being "incomplete", and while the 3DS version of the second game managed to Win Back the Crowd and got as good (if not slightly better) reviews as the first game — it even won a Famitsu Excellence Award and was nominated for Famitsu's Game of the Year alongside major releases like Super Mario Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Resident Evil 7, and NieR: Automata — it still ended up becoming the worst-selling Ace Attorney game since the Game Boy Advance era due to the first game's bad reputation having preceded it, something exacerbated by gamers moving away from the 3DS and towards the Nintendo Switch. Fortunately, word of mouth managed to get the first game Vindicated by History, and the Compilation Re-release sold better as a result. - Actor-Shared Background: Susato Mikotoba is voiced by the Japanese Rina Takasaki, and Ryunosuke Naruhodo is voiced by the German-Japanese Mark Takeshi Ota. In one of the game's development blogs, the localization director states that she wanted to cast Japanese actors for all Japanese characters, but couldn't due to the heavily-reduced pool of actors caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Colbert Bump: The Monty Python references caught media attention soon after the duology was announced to come stateside.
- Content Leak: A massive hack of Capcom's interal servers during November 2020 led to various leaks of upcoming products, including the localization of the duology to modern platforms, and that it would be announced in April 2021. Then the actual The Great Ace Attorney English title was listed as being rated by the Taiwan Digital Game Rating Committee.
- Creator-Driven Successor: To Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, another game in the series that features a defense attorney and his female assistant going to England and teaming up with an English gentleman and his young assistant. Naruhodo can cross examine multiple witnesses at once, just like that game. Even the box art is similar. Resolve also has a Layton-esque puzzle in the final case as you have to figure out what Jigoku's trunk code is, which is written on the sailor's arm upside-down. They're also the only games in the series to not use the word "Turnabout" in the names of cases (with the exception of English Turnabout, the first case in the crossover).note
- Creator's Favorite: Recurring Ace Attorney artist and character designer for the duology, Kazuya Nuri, states that Rei Membami is one of his favorite characters due to the unique circumstances of her creation. She's one of the only characters created exclusively by him, as she was not part of Shu Takumi's script for Resolve and took the place of Yujin as the defendant of Case G2-1 for the sake of averting Chromosome Casting. It's for this reason that Rei is an Advertised Extra, as Nuri likes to add her into ensemble Ace Attorney art that he creates, including the box arts for Resolve and Chronicles, and the 20th anniversary art◊ for the franchise.
- Dummied Out: In The Great Ace Attorney 2, while Selden has a profile picture in the game files, said picture does not appear anywhere in the game. Same goes for Susato disguised as "Ryutaro Naruhodo".
- Fake Nationality: Though the game's localization team employed a British voice agency, avoiding the issue of obviously fake-sounding British accents, the reduced pool of actors caused by COVID-19 meant they couldn't ensure every Japanese character could have a voice actor with the same background. The most notable example is Kazuma Asogi, who is voiced by Ben Deery. Others include Peter de Jersey as Yujin Mikotoba, and Nigel Pilkington as Taketsuchi Auchi.
- Fan Translation: A group called Scarlet Study translated the first game and completed up to the third case of the sequel before the official localization was announced. It's more literal than the Ace Attorney Investigations 2 fan localization, keeping the original names due to how intrinsically Japanese it is, along with the fact that a good deal of the character names are already in English to begin with.
- Franchise Killer: Despite strong reviews, The Great Ace Attorney 2 was the worst selling game in the series, and the series has gone on an indefinite hiatus since then. The only content that has come out of the franchise has been ports of previous games (including an official localization of both of The Great Ace Attorney games), with plans for a new entry in the series being uncertain.
- Late Export for You: The initial Nintendo 3DS and mobile ports were never localized. It wasn't until 2021 that versions of the game were coming out West for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PC.
- Meme Acknowledgement: The official Ace Attorney Twitter celebrated the worldwide release of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles with a traditional English lunch, referencing the Awkward Zombie comic. Even following that by directly quoting the meme, "Eat your Fish n' Chips Ryunosuke."
- Milestone Celebration: While not explicitly billed as an anniversary title, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles was released during the franchise's 20th anniversary. The 20th anniversary did capitalize on the game however, by prominently featuring the characters from the duology right alongside the characters from the mainline titles in promotional material for the anniversary, as well as the 20th anniversary logo featuring Phoenix and Ryunosuke together.
- No Budget: Due to the mediocre sales and divisive reception of Adventures, Resolve was made with a brutally slashed budget and staff, something which is reflected in how the majority of the new characters were either designed for the first game or based on their models, the limited number of new areas, abandoning anime cutscenes in favor of in-engine ones, or the Jury outright vanishing for the final two chapters, essentially abandoning a major mechanic with more than a third of the game left. That the game still ended up one of the most acclaimed in the franchise is a testament to their perseverance, though unfortunately the game would still end up an Acclaimed Flop.
- No Export for You: Due to being exclusive as pre-order bonuses to the 3DS version and not included in the Compilation Re-release, the two "Great Ace Attorney Theater" DLC mini-cases from Resolve are only available in Japan.
- Remade for the Export: The duology received its western release as The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, a collection with both games in the series, remastered to HD, and containing extra content, like an art gallery, and a "Story Mode" for if you want to just enjoy it as a traditional Visual Novel.
- Screwed by the Lawyers: Part of the Sherlock Holmes canon was still under the United States' absurdly-long copyright term limits during localization, so Sherlock Holmes had to be renamed Herlock Sholmes to release it in the west while the copyright was still active. This also culminated in adding an extra number for the final puzzle in the last chapter of Resolvenote .
- Throw It In!: The Story Mode in the Compilation Re-release started off as a debug tool, but was worked into the final product at the request of the producers.
- What Could Have Been:
- Concept art shows that the character designers considered giving Taketsuchi Auchi's glasses round lenses, since that was the norm during the Meiji era in real life, but decided against it and instead gave him more rectangular lenses for the sake of making him look more like his descendants, the Payne brothers.
- The collection's concept art gallery reveals Rei Membami was a late addition to Resolve Case 1; originally, the defendant was going to be Yujin. This was changed because him giving co-consul advice for his own defence felt awkward, and because the cast would have been all men (and Susato pretending to be a man) otherwise.
- Ironically, that concept is actually Older Than They Think because Phoenix Wright gave co-consul advice to our leading defense attorney despite the former being a defendant at one point (the 3rd time to be exact).
- "Sandwich" in Resolve Case 4 was going to be a completely new character, but time and budget constraints meant he had to use a modified Beppo model. (And, consequently, he's implied to be the same person)
- Jezaille Brett's death in the sequel was brought about by the game's scenario being split into two games, with Takumi stating her story had to be rewritten from the original one-game treatment.
- Likewise, Kazuma Asogi's return as the Masked Apprentice was not in the initial plan for the sequel, instead being brought about by fan reception to the character in the first game.note
- According to his concept art, the character of van Zieks' Masked Apprentice from the second game was originally proposed for the first game, with the intention being to give Susato a personal rival in the judicial assistant to the prosecution. While the concept was dropped, the apprentice himself was proposed again for the second game. The fact that introducing a new character with such narrative importance so late in the story would have been awkward is part of what resulted in the Masked Apprentice actually being the amnesiac Kazuma Asogi.
