Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies review: runaway jury

The process of cross-examination is the meat of Dual Destinies. Throughout each trial, witnesses take the stand and testify. After each testimony, I had the opportunity to press them for more information on their claims. Pressing witnesses often prompts a deeper level of questioning — sometimes I went through several rounds of new questions based on one statement, peeling away layers of lies and omissions to expose facts witnesses were hiding. This multi-step process of prodding deeper and deeper into statements felt empowering and never got boring.

On some occasions, subjects would twitch as I talked to them, prompting Apollo to use his Perceive System mechanic. This allowed me to pick out when someone is lying by pinpointing a physical change on their body, such as a twitching eye or restless fingers. Watching for visual cues on top of mulling over words adds an extra level of entertaining cerebral work.

New companion Athena provides another wrinkle to cross-examination. Athena can sense "discord" and detect conflicting emotions in people's voices. Using her Mood Matrix system, I picked through testimonies sentence by sentence to see if any conflicting feelings arise, such as a burst of happiness in the midst of paralyzing fear.

The Mood Matrix requires a more complicated thought process than Apollo's Perceiving. Four emotions can appear when analyzing a witness' testimony: happiness, sadness, shock and fear. Each one flares up with varying levels of intensity, so I had to mull each statement over carefully, sometimes several times, to determine precisely what object or event was causing what feeling. Sometimes two or three emotions would occur at once, making it difficult to pinpoint which was the most relevant to the case at hand. I was pushed to slow down and think hard about what I was hearing, which made pinpointing inconsistencies all the more satisfying.

Even when cracking the case comes down to regular courtwork, Dual Destinies often requires out-of-the-box thinking. The escalating difficulty of trials deepened my resolve to finish a case, and straightening out baffling pieces of evidence made me feel accomplished. I played for longer, more intense stretches as I got deeper into the game. There were huge chunks of time I sat with my stylus frozen in the air, utterly baffled and nervous to make the wrong decision. Coming to a trial's conclusion made me feel relief, almost like I was there in court with Phoenix and Athena. The game stretches logic in some scenarios, but I never felt like cases swerved unfairly.