The cases themselves are also much improved over previous games. First off, none of the cases ever go longer than two trial days, unlike the sometimes tedious cases of the original PW. Two of the five cases are more or less unrelated to the total overarching storyline, but are still very entertaining to play through. The other three cases, however, all focus on the same set of particular characters to tell a larger story. The final case is also one of the longest in the game; as the closer for the entire Phoenix Wright trilogy, it takes all the new elements for the mentioned three cases, brings in some of the most important elements of the rest of the series, and then brings everything to a head for an immensely satisfying conclusion.

This actually brings me to one of the few controversial points about this game. The story of PW3 is strongly linked to the other two games, and so without any sort of prior information, there are bound to be some plot holes. Conveniently, the game takes it upon itself to explain any missing context with brief flashbacks to the other two games, though these flashbacks never give any really critical spoilers. This allows you to play through and understand PW3 without having played the first two games. The problem with this is that playing PW3 without playing the other two games is not at all advised, not by me anyhow. The impact of many parts of the game will be severely less without a full understanding of the elements that came before, and the conclusion will be less satisfying as a result. But that lends itself to a problem: if you have played the first two games, PW3’s numerous explanatory flashbacks will probably be rather tedious. It’s more or less a lose-lose situation, though this is, again, a minor gripe.