Why Ace Attorney: Justice for All is actually the best Ace Attorney game

[cashew]

As I read through some fandom shit, I realized that it is an absolute horror that Ace Attorney: Justice for All is not considered the best Ace Attorney game of the franchise. Often Trials and Tribulations or Ace Attorney: Investigations 2 takes the place as the best, with Justice for All languishing around third to fifth, or sometimes at the very bottom of the pile.

And I just cannot...I just can't.

Justice for All, is, IMO, the most thematically mature and coherent of the Ace Attorney games. Starting from case 1, the game establishes its main theme: For what does one become an attorney? The first case literally ends with the main villain telling Phoenix Wright that until he can answer the question of "who are you?", he cannot solve the case. The opening case practically spelled out that this game is going to be about Phoenix Wright's descent into darkness and his identity crisis.

And then every case after is about breaking Phoenix Wright's faith, not just in law and order, but in his own ability to judge right from wrong. Case 2 has Phoenix trying to hide the truth from an 8-year-old girl (Pearl) so that she doesn't have to confront the difficult reality that her mother is a murderess. Case 3 deals with a case of mistaken identity leading to vengeance against the wrong person, and exposing that truth was a painful experience that shatters a child's innocence.

Case 4 (the final case), leaves Phoenix Wright in a fucking emotional mess because he has to weigh saving his friend by letting an innocent woman take the fall for a murderer or carry out justice and potentially doom his friend to death. The entire game was building up to this point, so that Miles Edgeworth can swoop in and tell Phoenix to figure himself out. I love that Edgeworth doesn't give Phoenix any direction and straight up tells him that there are no guides here, there is only what Phoenix can figure out for himself.

And then the entire fucking theme of the story gets delivered by Edgeworth, when he tells Phoenix, We aren't some sort of heroes. We're only human, you and I. This is probably the most important line in the entire game, as this is the concept the game is revolving around, right here. Lawyers are just human. They are literally incapable of saving everyone. That's what all of this leads up to. Will Phoenix Wright figure out his own moral code or will he let other people tell him how he should be living his life? Will he be able to swallow the bitter pill of truth or will he run away?

Then, to beat the point home harder, if you, as Phoenix, pick the option to bury the truth to save your friend, you get a special bad end. Not just a standard Ace Attorney game over, but a narrative BAD END that has Phoenix Wright running away from the legal system forever. Because the lesson that was supposed to have been learned in this 20+ hour game is that ultimately, the truth will save you, no matter how bitter and how painful it might be in the moment.

This BAD END is significant, because it's the only non-generic bad end in the entire trilogy. Justice for All was the only Phoenix Wright game (as opposed to Apollo Justice or Miles Edgeworth game) that put in a special bad end narrative for one specific case to re-emphasize the narrative theme.

And that's what lifts this game over all the other Ace Attorney games. Every case was carefully crafted to build toward this final climax. Every step of the way, the player is denied the satisfaction of convicting straight up evil criminals because it was all building up to the single unambiguously evil final villain who also happens to be your client. This is how the game puts you into the moral quandary that Phoenix Wright was experiencing and forced the player to confront what they would have done in Phoenix Wright's shoes.

The the experience is an utter masterpiece. This is morality gaming done right. This is the one game that forced the player to question everything they thought they knew about how this game was supposed to work ("believe the client at all costs") and in turn question why the trial system exists in the first place. What is justice? And who is qualified to deliver it?

The answer? When defense attorneys and prosecutors go at each other with everything they've got, that's how they'll arrive at the truth. And exposing the truth is the only way to achieve justice for all.