This game is brilliant.

I’ve just done the first day of episode two’s trial.

I’m sure it’s just as linear as episode one, but the game makes me feel like I am Phoenix Wright himself. There’s enough choice to allow me to make the odd mistake and maintain the illusion (yes, just like the investigation phase, I know I’m repeating myself), but it’s probably the presentation that really does it. Flashes and crashes and outstretched-arms, it’s got the dramatic stuff turned up to eleven and it works.

Some people are going to hate it. The kind of people who see the Civilization games as, well, games in the traditional sense, with rules and goals and statistics and formulas and who try to maximise their chances of winning. Phoenix Wright is for those of us who aren’t playing a strategy game when we play Civ, it’s for those of us who are building empires.

If you see a game’s ‘skin’ – and I’m not just talking graphics – as a coating above the important bits, then Phoenix Wright probably isn’t for you. But if the skin is important, if you can suspend disbelief and lose yourself in worlds and fill in the gaps in the stories with your own invention, then grab Phoenix Wright.

Earlier this evening I took a look under the hood, as it were, as I mentioned. Just out of curiousity. But much as I sometimes like engines, it’s the experience of driving that’s really important.

I don’t know if I explained that as well as I could have, but I hope you get the point.

Is a Nintendog a cute puppy or polygon wrapped around some simple AI rules? Is Advance Wars an abstract game of strategy or a life and death struggle between opposing armies? Is the princess on another level or in another castle? Is Phoenix Wright a linear adventure game with limited interaction and relatively easy puzzles… or is he a man stuggling to prove the innocence of his clients against terrible odds?