It really says something about the quality of a game when even the most annoying parts are enough to get you coming back for more. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney exemplifies this.

The game starts off well enough. It feels a bit silly having it hold your hand throughout the entire first case, but it’s serves it’s purpose. After the first case though… that’s where the tedium kicks in. Every case after the first one is split between investigation segments and courtroom segments. During investigations you visit crime scenes, talk to witnesses, and discover evidence to use during the trial. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Well the investigation segments last well over an hour in some of the later cases and are a real pain in the ass. Not because they’re difficult by any stretch of the imagination, but because they’re so damn tedious. It basically works like any other adventure game out there in that you can only do certain things after activating certain switches. For example, you can’t talk to Person A until you’ve talked to Person B first, or a door/location is completely inaccessible until you do something to trigger making it accessible. So if you ever get stuck during an investigation - which I was in the last case - you’ll basically be spending your time re-talking with everyone and presenting them with every item in your inventory until you trigger whatever it is you need to trigger to get the plot moving again. Another problem is that new questions become available for you ask characters but sometimes you won’t know when that is. Most of the time the game does an excellent job of hinting you that a new question is available to ask, but not always.

But you know what? I don’t care. This game has such an addictive quality to it that you’ll be dragging your feet through the crappy parts with a smile on your face. The characters are so well developed (mostly due to the excellent English translation) and the stories are so well planned out that you’ll be crawling back for more. You have to find out who committed the murder, you have to catch a witness lying through their teeth. It’s almost sadistic in a way… but I like to think of it as a nice little addiction. Digital crack on the DS.