Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice is a visual novel adventure video game developed and published by Capcom, and the sixth main entry (and ninth overall installment) in the Ace Attorney series. The game was released for Nintendo 3DS in Japan in June 2016, and in North America and Europe in September that year. Versions for iOS and Android followed a year later in September 2017, and it was released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One in January 2024 as part of the Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy compilation.
The game primarily follows Phoenix Wright as he travels to the fictitious Kingdom of Khura'in to see Maya Fey, only to come into conflict with the country's court system, where defense attorneys have been deemed unnecessary and verdicts are decided based on a mystical vision called the "Divination Séance". Meanwhile, Phoenix's subordinates, Apollo Justice and Athena Cykes, take on cases at the Wright Anything Agency in his absence.
Gameplay
Spirit of Justice continues the investigation and courtroom gameplay of its predecessors, in which players take the role of the defense attorneys Phoenix Wright, Apollo Justice, and Athena Cykes, and try to defend their clients. Like previous games in the franchise, chapters are divided into two types of gameplay: investigations, where players gather information from people and search for evidence, and trials, where they must use evidence to find contradictions in witness testimonies. Investigations utilize the 3D navigation introduced in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies, allowing players to navigate environments from various angles. Along with returning gameplay elements, such as Psyche-Locks, Perceiving, and the Mood Matrix, the game introduces Divination Séances, which show the final moments of a victim before their death. By paying close attention to the senses that appear in the séances, players must find contradictions in the insights given about them.
Plot Setting and characters
The story of Spirit of Justice is set roughly one year after its predecessor, Dual Destinies, and once again focuses on defense attorney Phoenix Wright and his two understudies Apollo Justice and Athena Cykes. While previous games in the series have been set in Los Angeles, California (Japan in the original Japanese releases), Spirit of Justice sees Phoenix travel to the fictional kingdom of Khura'in, a deeply religious nation where the art of spirit channeling originates. Roughly half the game's episodes detail Phoenix's activities in Khura'in, while the other half follow Apollo and Athena, who are left to watch over the Wright Anything Agency in Phoenix's absence. The game features the reintroduction of Maya Fey, a spirit medium and Phoenix's longtime friend and former assistant, who has not appeared in the main series in person since Trials and Tribulations. Other returning characters include Trucy Wright, a magician and Phoenix's adopted daughter; Ema Skye, a former detective who has recently become a forensic investigator; Simon Blackquill, a prosecutor and former prison inmate who is friends with Athena; Pearl Fey, Maya's younger cousin and fellow spirit medium; and Miles Edgeworth, the district chief prosecutor and Phoenix's friend and rival. New to the series are Rayfa Padma Khura'in, the princess and royal priestess of Khura'in, and Nahyuta Sahdmadhi, an international prosecutor and devout Khura'inese monk.
Story Phoenix travels to Khura'in to visit Maya, who is finishing her ascetic training needed to perfect her channeling abilities and become master of Kurain Village. Upon arriving, Phoenix's tour guide Ahlbi Ur'gaid is accused of stealing the Founder's Orb relic and murdering a security guard. During Ahlbi's trial, Phoenix discovers that Khura'in is intensely prejudiced against defense attorneys. Under the Defense Culpability Act, a law enacted 23 years prior, anyone who defends or aids a guilty criminal will be given the same sentence. With the addition of the Divination Séance showing the deceased's last moments, all trials in Khura'in since have led to guilty verdicts, with most defense attorneys having been executed. Despite this, Phoenix successfully defends Ahlbi, exposing head monk Pees'lubn Andistan'dhin as the real killer, earning Khura'in's first "not guilty" verdict since the Act's introduction. He also learns of the Defiant Dragons, a rebel group fighting against the current legal system.
In America, Apollo and Athena defend Trucy against prosecutor Nahyuta Sahdmadhi when she is accused of murdering performer Manov Mistree, AKA "The Great Mr. Reus," during her stage show. They prove the real killer to be the actual Mr. Reus, TV Producer Roger Retinz. After reuniting with Maya, Phoenix must defend her when she is charged with murdering high priest Tahrust Inmee, who actually committed suicide to protect his wife Beh'leeb after she accidentally killed one of their disciples to manipulate his Divination Séance. During the case, Phoenix learns that the Defiant Dragons' leader, Dhurke Sahdmadhi, is Nahyuta's father and Apollo's foster father. Meanwhile, Athena defends soba shop owner Bucky Whet, accused of murdering rakugo performer Taifu Toneido. Athena exposes Taifu's co-star Geiru as the true murderer.
Days later, Apollo is approached by Dhurke, who asks for help locating the stolen Founder's Orb. After battling Phoenix himself in court over the orb's ownership, Apollo learns that Maya has been taken hostage to force Phoenix to win the orb for his client. Upon proving Dhurke's ownership, the group return to Khura'in where Justice Minister Inga Karkhuul Khura'in, husband of Queen Ga'ran Sigatar Khura'in, is holding Maya hostage. When Dhurke goes to make a hostage exchange, he is accused of murdering Inga after he is found dead. With Ga'ran acting as prosecutor, Phoenix and Apollo must prove Dhurke innocent of both Inga's murder and the assassination of the previous queen, Ga'ran's sister Amara, which led to the DC Act's creation. Along with learning that Amara is alive, Apollo discovers that Dhurke was already killed by Inga a few days earlier, having been channeled by Maya to see Apollo one last time. Apollo also discovers that Nahyuta had been blackmailed by Ga'ran in order to protect Rayfa, revealed to be Nahyuta's sister and Dhurke and Amara's biological daughter.
With the ties of her father's crime threatening to destroy Rayfa's life, Apollo uses his final gift from Dhurke, a photo of his deceased biological father, Jove, to conduct a Divination Séance, proving that both Jove and Inga's murders and Amara's attempted assassination were committed by Ga'ran. As Ga'ran threatens to use her royal authority to execute Apollo and Phoenix, Apollo proves that Ga'ran possesses no spiritual powers, and thus has no claim to the throne, nullifying all the laws she had passed and ending her rule. As Rayfa is chosen to succeed her as queen, Apollo decides to stay in Khura'in to establish his own practice and help Nahyuta rebuild Khura'in's legal system. In a post-credits sequence, Phoenix gives Jove's photo to Apollo's mother, who decides it is time to tell her children the truth.
An additional case set after the game's events features Phoenix defending Ellen Wyatt, who claims she was attacked just after her wedding, but traveled back in time and is now accused of killing her attacker, Dumas Gloomsbury. Meanwhile, Phoenix's childhood friend Larry Butz returns, claiming he is Ellen's fiancé. Phoenix discovers that there was no time travel – the wedding guests secretly held the wedding reception twice – and that the culprit is family butler Pierce Nichody, who killed Gloomsbury and framed Ellen as revenge against the groom Sorin Sprocket for an incident the previous year that took the life of Sorin's sister and Pierce's fiancée.
Development
Spirit of Justice was produced by Motohide Eshiro and co-directed by Takeshi Yamazaki and Takuro Fuse; Yamazaki was in charge of the game's scenario, while Fuse directed the graphics and gameplay and was the game's art director. The game's music was composed principally by Noriyuki Iwadare, with additional tracks by Toshihiko Horiyama, who had previously composed the soundtrack for Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, and series newcomer Masami Onodera. Capcom mentioned the game for the first time in December 2013, at which point they had just begun working "full force" on a new game in the series and were thinking up ideas for it. When they announced the game for Japan and the West in September 2015, development was 30% finished. By the end of 2015, development was mostly finished, with the team working on polishing and adding finishing touches.
When developing the previous game in the series, Dual Destinies, Yamazaki had been the only director; after finishing its development, he had become exhausted and wanted to quit working on Ace Attorney. Eshiro had encouraged him to continue by taking him to a press conference in Taiwan and to San Diego Comic-Con to meet the media and fans of the series; following this, Yamazaki felt renewed enthusiasm over the series, and wanted to work on a sixth Ace Attorney. Thinking Yamazaki's exhaustion stemmed from too much directing responsibility, Eshiro decided to split directing responsibilities between Yamazaki and Fuse; he had at first considered having two equal directors working on the game, but decided against it out of fear that the development team would have difficulty with dealing with contradicting opinions from two directors working on the same aspects of the game.
The implementation of the new divination séance gameplay system was similar to that of the Mind Chess system in Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor's Gambit. It was created to show the events of a crime from the victim's point of view, and to have that character's feelings be potentially important evidence. Initially, the developers had considered using ghosts or puppet possession for this, but they were rejected due to being too creepy and "out there". The divination séance system was tweaked with improved hints in response to feedback from the Spirit of Justice demo at the Tokyo Game Show, where it was seen as being too difficult and taking too long to play. Other gameplay features being affected by fan feedback include the return of features from Dual Destinies that had been well-received, such as the backlog; adjustments to the difficulty, which had been perceived as low in Dual Destinies; and the hint system being possible to turn off. According to Eshiro and Yamazaki, character actions and movements were given a larger focus than in Dual Destinies, with Rayfa's dancing animation given as an example of this. Returning characters from Dual Destinies were given new 3D models to make sure that the quality was higher and consistent with those of new characters. Like the previous title, Spirit of Justice features fully voiced anime cutscenes, this time animated by A-1 Pictures, who also produced the Ace Attorney anime series.
Writing