Ace Attorney Deep Dive: “The Lost Turnabout” (Justice For All – Case 1)

After the success of the first game, Shu Takami – Ace Attorney’s primary writer – was ordered by Capcom to make an entire trilogy. After months of writing and re-writing, and after being rushed by tight deadlines, it wasn’t long before “Justice For All” released in Japan. Its first case “The Lost Turnabout” has a kind of infamy in the Ace Attorney fandom … so it’s time for another of my Deep Dives!

I’ll be deconstructing the case in ten distinct categories and giving a score out of ten for each. This will give a definitive score out of a hundred, if the maths checks out!

Before we begin, you can check out some of my related blog posts below:

Micro Story

Dustin Prince, a police officer, is killed in a public park after falling from a great height and breaking his neck in what could only be cold-blooded murder. His girlfriend – Maggey Byrde – is accused of the crime, and Richard Wellington is the key witness to it all.

As you can tell by the brief synopsis, “The Lost Turnabout” doesn’t exactly have much meat on the bone. I know it’s just a tutorial case, but compared to the past few incredible Micro Stories this one feels under-baked and forgettable. There’s a small sub-plot about a vague “group of conmen” that Phoenix and Maya were tracking down prior to this case, but we get the tiniest details that aren’t vivid or engaging in the slightest.

Score: 4/10

Macro Story

“Justice For All” opens fairly strongly with a short dream sequence involving a nightmarish, giant Judge berating Phoenix for being “unworthy of being an attorney”. This is the bare minimum required to set up a character arc for the main character, but at least it’s something.

Maya doesn’t do anything, so we can skip over her, and that just leaves Phoenix to talk about. You may be wondering – how do they justify Phoenix regressing in order to be dumb enough to defend a simple tutorial case? The answer is simple: the writers don’t justify it at all. At least, not in a remotely clever way.

Within two minutes we get the pitiful excuse of “Phoenix has amnesia so forgets how to be a lawyer for the remainder of the first case”. Pathetic. It’s a classic example of what not to do when writing a sequel, and any use of amnesia in general is treading on dangerous ground in the first place.

Score: 3/10

Mystery

We know Richard Wellington did it. The developers don’t even try to hide his guilt. That’s typical of Ace Attorney first cases, so I suppose I can’t really complain … but I know other tutorial cases in the series with much better mysteries!

The only other aspect of Wellington that might be “mysterious” is his ties to the group of conmen, but there’s no build-up to that reveal and it’s painfully obvious to begin with.

Score: 2/10

Side Characters

“The Lost Turnabout” doesn’t have much going on in the Side Character department – we’ve met Winston Payne, The Judge and Gumshoe before, and we didn’t know the victim in the slightest.

That just leaves Maggey Byrde, the defendant and girlfriend of the victim. She’s fine. I like how enthusiastic and at times hot-headed she can be, but her screen time is limited and her character does nothing I haven’t already seen before a dozen times.

Score: 6/10

Soundtrack

Even when every other category is putting up stinker after stinker, you can usually rely on an Ace Attorney Soundtrack to save the day.

We get an absolute butt-load of new tracks to replace the old ones, such as “Courtroom Lobby 2002”, “Objection! 2002”, “Telling the Truth 2002” and “Pursuit – Questioned”. My personal favourites are the new “Trial” and “Cross-examination” themes, and I liked the use of Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor BWV565” as an intro.

I wouldn’t exactly say all of these new tracks are improvements on what came before (in fact, it’s a downgrade in a lot of departments), but I really appreciate the new sonic direction and darker tone.

Score: 8/10

“Investigations”

While having an “Investigations” category is useful when analysing 80% of Ace Attorney cases, every now and again we have the unfortunate circumstance of no investigation at all to throw a spanner in the works.

Lacking any investigations or any new locations to explore (since I talked about the Courthouse in “The First Turnabout”), I guess I’ll use this category to talk about the location of the crime – the public park that Dustin Prince was murdered in. It’s boring. It’s a public park. A few benches here and there, a few trees. Nothing special.

Score: 3/10

Trial

This case is 95% Trial, so you’d hope that it would be a good one. It isn’t.

Gumshoe begins with a brief overview, it’s revealed that the killer left their glasses at the scene, Wellington is questioned on why he didn’t use the park’s public phone, a baseball glove is mistaken for a bunch of bananas, and a list of conmen in Phoenix’s swapped phone is the definitive piece of evidence … in other words, Phoenix solved the case off screen ages ago.

It’s all really simple stuff, even for a tutorial case, and Phoenix’s amnesia is the final kick in the nuts. It’s just not that fun to play a case that doesn’t take its mystery or characters seriously.

Score: 4/10

Case Logic

I’ve been fairly lenient on the past few Case Logic sections, mainly because the writers were juggling lots of plot points and there were bound to be a few small mistakes here and there. “The Lost Turnabout” has no such excuse.

The whole “Maggey’s name is spelt wrong” / “wrong hand used because of the custom baseball glove” fiasco is ridiculous because the victim already broke his neck after the fall and so wouldn’t be able to write anything, the bananas = glove reveal is insulting and unintuitive, and Phoenix should be in a hospital after a serious head injury rather than suffering amnesia (which gets cured the instant the case concludes, mind you).

This is one of those cases where you can tell the writers were rushed, as almost every contradiction and plot development falls apart under the slightest scrutiny.

Score: 3/10

Culprit

As “The Lost Turnabout” is a mere tutorial case, I wasn’t expecting much in the culprit department. I would have been happy with a moustache-twirling baddie with a simple motive, but the writers couldn’t even get that right!

Richard Wellington – if that’s his real name – is a pompous douchebag with no likeable traits. As for his motive, he doesn’t really have one – he killed Dustin Prince in a panic, as Dustin was wearing his police uniform and Wellington thought the police were onto him.

I’m trying to rack my brain for a worse culprit in the series, but I’m struggling to think of one. He’s hateable, sure, but like with Redd White in “Turnabout Sisters” I hate him for all the wrong reasons. Maybe I’m forgetting a doozy and this Deep Dive will bring it to light down the line, but for now we have a new series low.

Score: 2/10

Charm

The amnesia angle sucks, the crime sucks, and the culprit sucks. As you can probably guess, I don’t find “The Lost Turnabout” to be very charming.

The Judge dream sequence at the beginning is a kinda cool way to start the game, I guess, so that stops this from getting an abysmal score … but it was still a pretty bad gaming experience.

Score: 4/10

FINAL SCORE: 39/100

With the worst overall score so far by a country mile, it’s no wonder why so many fans despise “The Lost Turnabout”. It’s exactly how not to do a tutorial case, and if anything it got even worse on retrospective.

Aaaaand that’s my list! You can check out some of my latest blog posts below: