Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice is a visual novel adventure video game developed and published by Capcom, and the sixth main entry 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 is planned to be 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 Fey, who is about to conclude a two-year period of ascetic training needed to perfect her spirit-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 security guard Paht Rohl. During Ahlbi's trial, Phoenix discovers that Khura'in is intensely prejudiced against defense attorneys. Under a law known as the Defense Culpability Act, enacted 23 years prior, if a criminal is found guilty, anyone who defends or aids them will be given the same punishment. With the addition of the Divination Séance, all trials in Khura'in since have led to guilty verdicts, with most defense attorneys having been executed. Despite the stakes of the DC Act and the supposed absolute truth of Rayfa's Divination Séance, 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.