Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations is a visual novel adventure video game developed and published by Capcom. It was originally released for the Game Boy Advance in 2004 in Japan. It was translated into English by h3rmit. It has since been released for several platforms, including a Nintendo DS version that was released in 2007 in Japan and North America and in 2008 in Europe. It is the third game in the Ace Attorney series, following Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (2001) and Justice for All (2002).
Similar to previous games, Trials and Tribulations focuses on the careers of defense attorneys Phoenix Wright and Mia Fey. Other featured characters include Maya Fey, Mia’s sister and a spirit medium who acts as Phoenix’s secretary and assistant, and her young cousin Pearl Fey. After Mia was killed during the events of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney; Phoenix took over her law practice. Nevertheless, he regularly consults with her on cases by having either Maya or Pearl channel her spirit, which allows them to assume her appearance.
Phoenix also occasionally receives help from prosecutors Miles Edgeworth and Franziska von Karma as well as Detective Dick Gumshoe, who hold him in high regard. The game’s featured antagonist is Godot, an eccentric, coffee-loving prosecutor who keeps his identity concealed behind a mask and who seems to harbor a personal grudge against Phoenix. Trials and Tribulations is a visual novel adventure game in which the player takes the roles of Phoenix Wright and Mia Fey, defense attorneys who defend their clients in five different episodes.
The gameplay remains unchanged from Justice for All, the previous title in the series. From the start, only one episode is available to play; when the player completes an episode, a new one is unlocked. The episodes are divided into chapters, which consist of investigations and courtroom sessions. During investigation sections, the player aims to find evidence for use in the courtroom sessions; the game moves on to the next chapter within the episode when the player has gathered enough evidence.
The player moves and performs actions through a menu with four options: “examine”, which lets them move a cursor over the environment and examine items; “move”, which shows a menu with locations the player can move to; talk, which shows a list of topics the player can discuss with witnesses in the area; and present, which lets the player show evidence or character profiles to a witness.
Some witnesses do not want to discuss certain subjects, leading to a lock symbol appearing over the subject. By showing the witness a magatama, the player is able to see the secret they are trying to hide in the form of locks, called a “Psyche-Lock”; by presenting correct evidence or character profiles, the player can break the locks and be able to discuss the subject.