Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice

Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice is the sixth main entry in the visual novel series about legal duels, in which defense attorney Phoenix Wright travels to the fictional country of Khura'in, where practicing law is banned and justice is decided through mystical rituals that reveal the victim's final thoughts. The game alternates between classic crime-scene investigation and evidence gathering, and courtroom trials in which the player searches for contradictions in witnesses' testimonies. Cases alternate between taking place in Khura'in and back in Phoenix's home city, which allows the local political conspiracy to be tied to characters and plotlines that series fans already know from previous entries.

New to the game is the Divination Séance mechanic, in which the player witnesses a vision of the victim's final moments and must find discrepancies between what they see and what witnesses claim, adding another layer to the series' traditional contradiction-finding system. Alongside Phoenix, the player also gets to play as Athena Cykes, whose ability to analyze emotions in testimonies via the Mood Matrix program further expands the investigative possibilities. The graphics on 3DS use 3D character models instead of the earlier 2D sprites, the animations are expressive, and the series' humor remains just as over-the-top as in previous entries; the music was once again composed by Noriyuki Iwadare, whose pieces underscore both the dramatic and comedic passages of the courtroom trials.

Spirit of Justice was well received for its bold expansion of the series' mythology and its interesting new characters, although some fans had reservations about certain story twists. Also praised was how the game handles the political undertones of the fictional country of Khura'in without losing its typically light-hearted tone. The title is considered one of the most ambitious Ace Attorney entries in terms of world-building, and together with the rest of the series it proves that the text-based courtroom adventure genre found a loyal, steady audience on the 3DS.