Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney − Trials and Tribulations  is a visual novel adventure video game developed and published by Capcom and is the third installment in the Ace Attorney series. It was originally released for the Game Boy Advance in Japan, including a Nintendo DS version that was released Japan, North America, and Europe.

Gameplay
One episode is available to play at the start; when the player finishes the episode, another one is unlocked. The episodes are split into chapters, which are made up of investigations and courtroom sessions. During investigation sections, the player attempts to find evidence for use in the courtroom sessions; then the game moves to the next chapter within the episode when the player has collected enough evidence.

The player can makes actions with four different options: "examine", which lets them move a cursor over the environment and examine items; "move", which displays a menu with locations the player can move to; talk, which shows a list of topics the player can discuss with witnesses within the area; and "present", which lets the player show evidence or character profiles to a witness.

By showing the witness a magatama, the player is then able to see the secret they are hiding in the form of locks, called a "Psyche-Lock"; by presenting correct evidence or character profiles, the player can break the locks and be able to discuss the subject. A life bar, representing the judge's patience, is shown in the upper right corner of the screen. Each time the player presents false evidence or profiles, the bar will decrease; if it reaches zero, the player loses and their client is declared guilty.

Story
Phoenix Wright, a young university student is charged with the murder of his classmate Doug Swallow. Mia, posing as his lawyer, exposes one of the prosecution's witnesses. Phoenix's girlfriend Dahlia Hawthorne, as the true murderer, revealing that she took advantage of Phoenix to conceal evidence tying her to the poisoning case of Mia's former partner Diego Armando and then planned to murder him as well. Due to her actions, Dahlia is arrested and sentenced to death. Threee months later, Phoenix fails to defend a former client, Maggey Byrde, against accusations that she poisoned a well-talented programmer, Glen Elg. Phoenix later finds out that Elg was creating a computer virus on behalf of loan shark Furio Tigre, and that Tigre, needing money to repay a large debt. With no conclusive evidence, Phoenix manages to get Tigre arrested by making him say something only the real killer would know. Phoenix reviewing Mia's first case five years earlier, in which she and Armando teamed up to defend a death row inmate Terry Fawles, who was under suspicion of killing a policewoman Valerie Hawthorne during an escape attempt. Mia laters discovers the truth, when Years earlier; Terry, Valerie, and her younger sister Dahlia faked a kidnapping to steal a large jewel from her family, leaving Terry to be accused of murder based on Valerie's testimony. Terry later kills himself by swallowing poison, forcing a mistrial and freeing Dahlia. After finding out that Armando was been investigating her further, Dahlia also poisoned him and gave the bottle to Phoenix, ensuring that they would both meet up again with Mia. Phoenix visits a mountain retreat with Maya and Pearl when a fellow guest, Elise Deauxnim, is killed. When Phoenix returns, he explains that Elise is really Maya's long-lost mother, Misty Fey, and that her death was the result of a plan engineered by her sister Morgan to kill Maya with the help of the now deceased Dahlia, who turns out to be Iris's twin.

With Mia's help, Dahlia is exorcised from Maya and Iris is declared innocent. Godot is revealed as the one responsible for killing Misty to protect Maya, leading to the discovery of his true identity: Diego Armando. Having spent many years blaming Phoenix for Mia's death, he sought for revenge, but concedes that Phoenix has done more to continue her legacy than him. Iris also reveals that she posed as Dahlia while Phoenix was attending college to protect him, ended up falling in love with him. Reuniting with his friends, Phoenix celebrates finally being free of his past.

Development
After development of the original Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney was finished, Takumi's boss, Shinji Mikami, told him that they should make an Ace Attorney trilogy, with a grand finale in the third game's last case. As Takumi wanted the three first Ace Attorney games to be parts of a larger work, he avoided making a lot of changes: art for main characters such as Phoenix, Maya and Edgeworth was reused from the first game, to avoid having the previous games look outdated in comparison to newer games in the series; and no new gameplay mechanics were added for Trials and Tribulations, as Takumi was happy with the gameplay after having added the psyche-lock mechanic for Justice for All.

Reception
Trials and Tribulations has received a score of 81/100 based on 45 reviews from Metacritic; meanwhile, the Wii version received a Metacritic score of 67/100 based on 9 reviews, indicating mixed or average reviews. Ryan Scott at 1UP.com called it "a perfect storm of everything that makes graphic adventures work", saying that it was apparent throughout the game that it had been created with a cohesive plot in mind, something he noted as a contrast to the previous games' more episodic approach. John Walker at Eurogamer said that the plot was the darkest and most complex in the Ace Attorney series, but also the funniest. He called the dialogue "consistently wonderful", and liked how Maya was given a bigger role than in Justice for All, with her often taking the lead during conversations with other characters.

Aaron Thomas at GameSpot found the cases interesting and the writing "top-notch", with the dialogue feeling natural and well written; he did, however, think that the new characters, except for Godot and Dahlia Hawthorne, were annoying or not developed well. Colin Moriarty at IGN liked how the game's cases fit together, and enjoyed learning more about returning characters from the previous games, but wished the game had been less linear.[38]Michael Cole at Nintendo World Report enjoyed how the story makes use of "brilliant twists of dramatic irony" by presenting the cases in a non-chronological order, and called it a "satisfying closure" for the series.

Trivia
      Phoenix: No, Maya, that is SPARDA. She won't tell us unless we say the right code word.'' The conversation is a reference to the infamous "This! Is! Sparta!" scene from the movie 300.
 * Hideki Kamiya, best known as the game director of Devil May Cry, voiced Godot in the Japanese version of Trials and Tribulations.
 * Upon first meeting Lisa Basil and hearing she's the company director, Phoenix will state "Sh-She's human?! She seems more like a ghost in a shell." This is a reference to the manga/anime Ghost in the Shell. The HMDs that she and her employees wear seem to also be a reference to the scouters in Dragon Ball Z.
 * When Mia Fey thinks about Dahlia Hawthorne in the first case, she says "Well, we know whose milkshake brings all the boys to the yard." This is a reference to the notable lyrics in the Kelis song "Milkshake".
 * When the Judge gets scared by Furio Tigre's constant growling, he says "Ruh-roh!". This is a reference to Scooby-Doo's titular character who also says "Ruh-roh!".
 * During the second case when going to Ron DeLite's apartment, you'll find a fish bowl like helmet and a tape recorder like machine on one of the stands. This is a reference to the previous game Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice For All where Wendy Old bag will be in a costume dressed as an alien like astronaut suit where those two pieces of costume are placed on the stand.
 * In the third case, when asking Lisa Basil for more information on some evidence or profiles, this dialogue can occur.      Lisa: Sorry, that data is SuPer-Admin Restricted Desktop Access password-protected.       Maya: ''SuPer-Admin Restricted Desktop Access password-protected!? What!? This is madness!
 * In the chapter "Bridge to Turnabout", Prosecutor Godot says that Maya's mind is like a "cafÃ© au lait" in which Phoenix's words are the milk and the Judge is the spoon. Then, the Judge says "I-I'm a spoon!? I'm no spoony bard, I'll have you know!". This is a reference to Tellah's famous line from Final Fantasy IV, "You spoony bard!".


 * The development team had troubles fitting the entire game on a single Game Boy Advance cartridge: while they had the same amount of memory available as when they made the first Ace Attorney game, Trials and Tribulations was 2.3 times as large content-wise. To accomplish this, they made use of "tricks and workarounds" they had figured out since working on the first game: for instance, they worked to create better structures for storing data efficiently, better compression of the graphical data, and good sounds that only use little data. Takumi found these constraints fun, as it was a chance to improve the team's abilities and a source of inspiration for doing as much as possible within the memory limitations. They still ended up having to cut or change several features: along with the art of the younger Mia, Phoenix and Edgeworth in the flashback episodes, they had planned to have new art assets for a younger Gumshoe, with his tie tied tightly and with only one hair spike, but had to settle for giving him a new coat. The character Oldbag from the first game was first cut, then included as a cameo at the end when they realized that they had just enough space for her; Takumi wanted to have her wear a lei as she would have just come back from a Hawaii trip, but was unable to due to memory limitations. Due to miscalculations of the game asset size, they had to make the character Bikini shorter in order to save some memory.