After The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, I shouldn’t have been surprised by this release, but seeing the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection announced for the West was fantastic because it meant we finally would get to play the other major release in the series that had eluded us for years in Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit. Thanks to early access from Capcom, I’ve been playing Ace Attorney Investigations Collection on Steam Deck and Nintendo Switch for preview, and my early impressions are very positive for both games. I’m going to cover how Ace Attorney Investigations Collection feels on both platforms and also how this new version compares to Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth’s original release.
If you’ve not kept up with it, Ace Attorney Investigations Collection includes two adventure games: Ace Attorney Investigations Miles Edgeworth and Ace Attorney Investigations 2 Prosecutor’s Gambit together with quality of life improvements, a gallery, a new remastered HD look, a story mode to sit back and relax, and more. Both games are spin-offs to the main series. Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth debuted on Nintendo DS in the West back in 2010 and saw a mobile version about seven years later. Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit debuted on DS in Japan back in 2011, but it never saw an English (or release outside Japan) release until this collection. The iOS and Android release in Japan was never brought over either.
Back when I first played Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, it felt like a nice change of pace from the mainline games which I loved. It is always good to see developers try different things with spin-offs, and Ace Attorney Investigations going for more of the investigation aspect than the courtroom element made it a nice companion to the main games, especially with how it featured so many characters we all know and love. The sequel was sadly never localized, and that is the main draw of Ace Attorney Investigations Collection in addition to being able to play the first game with HD visuals and an arranged soundtrack. This preview only lets me cover the early parts of both games, so I’ll save my full thoughts on the stories for my review closer to launch. Right now, Capcom has done more than I expected to make the Ace Attorney Investigations games shine on modern hardware.
Having revisited Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth on iPhone and iPad to prepare for this remaster on Steam Deck and Switch, I’m pleasantly surprised at how much of a visual upgrade this release has gotten. With the most recent Apollo Justice Trilogy, there was a good visual upgrade, but those games felt like they’d scale up well anyway. With Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I ended up trying the HD and pixel art visual options to see how I felt. I stuck to the HD option because there was a bit of a visual disconnect using the pixel art option in some of the early locations, and I didn’t like how the edges were handled on characters. It isn’t as bad as the Sonic Origins’ launch mess at all, but I hope Capcom can fix how the pixel art style is rendered for those who want to play with that option. Maybe I need more time to get used to it, but for now I stuck to the HD version.
Ace Attorney Investigations Collection on PC has full keyboard and mouse controls with an option to change how you use the mouse (click or drag), a cursor lock option, and rebinding option for keys. It supports resolutions from 720p (what I used on Steam Deck) to 4K. I played at 1440p on my monitor when docked and it ran without issues. I also tested at 4K and noticed it drop from 144fps to about 130 sometimes when moving, but this collection’s free movement has some camera issues where the camera moves at a lower frame rate. Not a huge deal, but it was noticeable.
Speaking of Steam Deck, Ace Attorney Investigations Collection is already Steam Deck Verified, and I have no complaints with the visuals and performance of it on Valve’s handheld. It just works. It also feels and looks great on Nintendo Switch OLED and Lite.
So far, my only real complaint with Ace Attorney Investigations Collection is the lack of touchscreen support. I enjoyed playing prior releases almost exclusively with touch controls on Switch. Ace Attorney Investigations Collection has no touchscreen support as of this writing. I hope it can be patched in. On Steam Deck, the mouse controls I tested with a wireless mouse made it seem like touch controls would be doable with tapping or dragging to move, but right now, there is no touchscreen support unless you press the Steam button and simulate a virtual mouse or use an external one.
Check out the comparison below to see how the collection on Switch (left) looks compared to the iOS release (right) cropped and scaled to compare:
So far, Ace Attorney Investigations Collection is shaping up to be another win for Capcom, and it finally brings over a game we never had available officially outside Japan in the form of Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit. I can’t wait to dig into it more and continue my replay of Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth. I’ll also be trying out the home console versions to see how it scales, but for now, Ace Attorney Investigations Collection feels like it will be more than worth it.
With Ace Attorney Investigations Collection, we have the complete series on modern platforms not counting Professor Layton Vs Phoenix Wright which remains only on 3DS for now. Hopefully Level-5 and Capcom can work on bringing that over as well eventually. Until then, Ace Attorney Investigations Collection is a release you need to have on your radar for September when it arrives on Nintendo Switch, Steam, Xbox One, and PS4. For my full review, I will also be covering the game on Xbox and PS5 if I can.