The Phoenix Wright games - all of which, as far as I know, have similar gameplay - are courtroom-drama detective games. You play as a lawyer, usually the titular Phoenix Wright, who is trying to prove that their client is innocent. There are two different arenas for this; out in the field, where you move around locations involved in the crime, and in the courtroom, where you listen to witness testimony and point out where it contradicts other evidence. Some of the smaller chapters only have the courtroom segments. These advance like a visual novel, with your correct answers or presentation of evidence allowing the plot to move forward. The field segments are more freestyle, with you moving around areas, questioning people, and looking for evidence. Finding certain things or asking certain questions unlocks more conversation options or allows you access to more people or locations. It's not possible for you to move forward without having the evidence or knowledge you'll need in the next segment. Trials are limited to three days in length, and, just to up the stakes further, clients found guilty of murder are usually assigned the death penalty. Apparently, a lot of the game acts as a commentary on the Japanese legal system. The three day limit does have gameplay implications, as it minimises the session of discovery/courtroom per episode.
It is very satisfying, exposing liars in court and figuring out what actually happened. I originally played the second game of the trilogy, Justice for All, waaaaaay back in 2006, when I was in America, on my exes Nintendo DS. This was long enough ago that, despite writing a guide for the game at the time, I'd forgotten a lot of the details. The games do lack replay value, because so much of the joy is in discovering the twists and turns of the case, which means there are diminishing returns in playing the game over without a long gap. I am eagerly awaiting the UK/Steam release of other games in the series.
While playing the trilogy, I also discovered a similar game, Murder by Numbers. You play as a robot, Scout, whose memory is damaged. Mistaking an actress playing a detective for an actual detective, he enlists her help over four detective missions.
Most of the gameplay is like the fieldwork sections of Phoenix Wright, with your character moving between locations, searching for evidence, and talking to witnesses/suspects. There are no courtroom segments. The other major difference is the inclusion of Hanjie/picross puzzles, which serve as a metaphor for Scout's visual systems coming back online, and also as a metaphor for the detective work itself. That makes a lot of sense to me - in both detective work and logic puzzles, you're building up pictures of what must be true based on tiny little pieces of information, e.g., if this is true, that must also be true, but that cannot be true. I love Hanjie puzzles, so that was a big appeal for me, and you can try them out online if you're not sure if you are or not. The game cost me £8.39 and I played it for 52 hours, despite it only having 4 episodes. This is because of the puzzles. I spent a lot of time staring at them while watching Community in another window. Sometimes I'd put the game in the background while I did something else for a bit, and then I'd come back with fresh eyes. So, those 52 hours are not as active as the time spent playing the Phoenix Wright games.
I enjoyed the game a lot. It feels very much like a 90s TV show. I liked that one character casually refers to a tampon in her purse at one point, because I've never seen a menstrual product mentioned in a video game before. It's like that thing about ads for razor blades never shaving a leg with hair on it - just a complete erasure of the lived experience of most women (and some men), to the point where it's weirdly refreshing to just acknowledge it as a completely normal part of everyday life. I also learned a bit about drag culture, and I liked that this was just a part of the characters' lives, that was sometimes relevant, sometimes not. As opposed to, for example, being their entire character. This game was different from the others mentioned in this post through being more western in style/feeling and less obviously Japanese.
The final game I wanted to mention here is Liar, a mobile game I played last year. There are three storylines you can play through. In each of them, you are working out which of the people around you are liars, exposing one per chapter. Despite taking place entirely in the field, it does play more like the courtroom sections of Phoenix Wright, in that, it's on rails, with no player input on where your character goes, and with your character answering questions or presenting evidence when asked. If you get the answers wrong, you get to see how your character's life goes wrong through trusting the wrong person, while, if you get it right, you're one step closer to finding your true love/best friend/most trustworthy coworker. There are also sections where your player is scrolling through a facebook equivalent, sometimes saving images or posts to asks about later, which is an interesting bit of gameplay. The game is free, but it is one of those where you have a certain number of 'tickets' per day, with tickets being used to access a certain amount of gameplay. I found this a little frustrating at times, but the tickets weren't as unreasonably tight as in some games and I enjoyed the story (and the lack of ads) enough to stick with it. That said, I'd have no problem with watching
ads to earn tickets or whatever, I'm okay with that sort of arrangement.
One thing I would like to warn people about with this game is that there is a trans character, and she's sometimes referred to or treated in ways which come off...well, a bit disrespectfully. I think some of this can be attributed to cultural differences and translation issues, but, yeah, be aware of this if it's something you're likely to find hurtful or which you would rather not deal with.
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