Though not as good as the first one (an admittedly hard act to follow), this game still shines on its own.
GAMEPLAY: This is a basic point-and-click adventure divided up into two parts: court and investigation. Court is easily the more preferable of the two since this is really where all the action happens. Investigation, while interesting, is a rather tedious diversion in itself. Luckily, these sequences usually don't last too long and you'll be back in court in no time. Both sequences are extremely linear; except for one minor exception in the last case, there is only one path to follow. Those who only like nonstop action, though, shouldn't bother; it's simply not made for those people. There is about a novel's worth of text (literally), and most of it is vital to be able to play the game, so you can't just skip it. If you get bored easily by reading text, don't even try this game; you'll hate it. As I said before, though, this game is extremely fun (mainly in court). Each case has a very in-depth storyline, and they all pack some sort of huge plot twist right at the end. In terms of which cases are best...4>2>3>1 in my opinion. It's surprisingly fun to uncover all the hidden secrets of the case and expose them with proof in court. There are a couple minor flaws in the gameplay, though. First of all, it's extremely linear. While I tend to enjoy linear games more than non-linear games, it gets to the point where literally the linearity starts to hurt the game's logic. For example, giving a very minor spoiler, there is one section in which you have to show that the reason for a criminal's murder of a police officer was that he saw the officer's uniform. If you try submitting the photo of the crime, which CLEARLY shows the officer's uniform and hat, you will still be penalized. There are a few plot holes, as well, but none of them affect the cases too much. The second flaw is simply the length of the last case. It's clear that Case 4 was intended to be the best, and it is. However, it took me upwards of 8 hours to finish the case; almost half of the time I spent playing the game. The developers knew that this was the best case, but tried WAY too hard to draw it out in the end. In the second portion of the court case, you already know exactly what happened, so there are no new plot twists. I won't spoil it, but they manipulated the storyline such that the actual objective of this part is to drag the trial out as long as possible. Mixed with the storyline, it's fun; for a couple minutes. Unfortunately, the game's climax takes about 2 hours to go through. Eventually, you'll even go through testimony which you already disproved. With about one and a half hours left, the game lost its fun because of this segment. The developers were clearly just grasping to make the game take a little longer, and it shows. Seriously, I think the characters say the phrase "We need more time." at least 20 times. There are so many "Oh no, we lost." "Wait, it's not over yet!!!" sequences that I didn't even think anything of it when I actually finished it; I was expecting another boring problem to come up. The dialogue becomes uninteresting which is a shame because this portion really had the potential to be the most memorable; instead, I remember it as the part I most disliked simply because the developers didn't know where to end the case. Finally, it would have been nice to see a unique DS-related case like in the first game. There is no such case here, and really the only unique DS feature that makes a difference is the ability to yell "Objection!", "Hold it!", and "Take that!". This gets old after about 5 times doing this, and you'll eventually just hit a button to make an objection.
Pros: -(Usually) fun court sessions
-Incredibly crafted storylines
-Great characters, who develop over time
Cons:
-Very tedious investigation sections
-Linearity hurts the plot's logic
-Last case should be two hours shorter since it gets boring by the end.
-Less DS features than the first game.
GAMEPLAY: 8/10
GRAPHICS: Not much to say here; the graphics are extremely good for a Game Boy Advance game (this is basically a port of a Japanese GBA game). However, it would have been nice if they'd maybe added 3-D graphics, like they had in the last case, but again, this is basically a straight port. The DS isn't even close to being pushed graphically here, but they are still pretty good graphics for a GBA game.
GRAPHICS: 7/10
SOUND: The music is great, but there's not any speech other that Phoenix's 3 phrases (listed above), and everybody else's "Objection!". Sometimes the voices don't match though; Payne sounds like a scared witch and von Karma, born and raised in Germany, sounds like a normal American woman, which doesn't make much sense. Other than these phrases, everything else is all text. Back to the music, though, they really do a good job of using the music to match the mood; revealing the killer is one thing, but doing it with some cool upbeat music is another.
SOUND: 8/10
VALUE: It lasted me about 15+ hours, which is extremely good for a handheld game. However, there's not much reason to come back; the real fun of the game is uncovering the storyline, and that's pretty hard to do the second time around.
VALUE: 7/10
CONCLUSION: Phoenix Wright 2 is definitely worth a buy; it's not as good as the original, but still enjoyable. Where I would rate my overall experience with Phoenix Wright 1 as a 9.3 about, this game gets a slightly lower score. I give it an 8 for my tilt, which means...
FINAL SCORE: 7.7/10
Rent or Buy?
RENT, if there is no time limit to the rental.