Makoto Wakaido's Case Files Trilogy is the perfect warm-up for Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice

rockpapershotgun.com:

Listen, I know we've spent the better part of the holidays harping on about all our favourite games of 2023 (and many more besides as part of our bonus Selection Boxes), but here's another one for you that I mainlined in a single day over Christmas and absolutely loved. It's Makoto Wakaido's Case Files Trilogy Deluxe - a collection of not three, but four detective stories in which you go about solving grizzly murders across different towns and villages in Japan. In short: if you like the investigation bits of Ace Attorney and need something to whet your appetite before the Apollo Justice Trilogy comes out on January 25th, this will be 100% up your street. It's currently just over a fiver in the Steam Winter Sale, and there's a free demo you can try as well for good measure.

This was yet another game I had hoped to review properly when it came out in the middle of October last year, but alas, time. Really, though, time wasn't much of an excuse in the end, as each case only takes just over an hour to solve. They're quite diddy and compact in that respect, a bit like a serial police drama you can just binge watch all in one go and then wonder where your afternoon went. You can play cases in any order, too, though I'd recommend playing them as they're presented number-wise, as while they're all standalone cases at the end of the day, there are a couple of call-backs in later cases to some of the earlier ones.

The first case, for example, "The Executioner Linchpin", sets up the eponymous Makoto's backstory as he listens to his grandpa telling him about an old case he worked in the 80s trying to solve a series of mysterious beheadings. You then take control of adult Makoto in case two, "The Bogeyman's Woods", and continue