An amazing adventure game that will have you hooked from the start.
Gameplay: The gameplay is almost all text based and is split into two distinctly different types. The first type of gameplay you will experience is the trial itself. You will be in court with all your evidence and you must cross-examine witness's in order to prove your defendent is not guilty. Once the witness gives his/her testimony, you have the chance to go line-by-line through the testimony and finding all the holes and contradictions that the witness makes. You must also answer questions given by the prosecutor and the judge in order to truly figure out what happened in the murder. The trials are extremely intense and, while most of the puzzles aren't that hard, it feels very satisfying to figure out exactly what happened before Phoenix does. Also, when the trial begins to turn against you, it's a major adrenaline rush for you, the player, as well. The second type of gameplay is more detective work than anything else. You must interview witnesses and find evidence at the crime scene in order to get your case ready for the trial. The pacing to these parts of the game can feel extremely slow especially if you get stuck for a while but they do add a nice break to the intense trials. Also, you generally won't be stuck for too long as most of the information can be gathered by simply going around and making sure you talked to everyone. There are a few times when you simply have to guess what to do but these parts are thankfully few. When you are stuck like this, simply try presenting evidence to all the witnesses and wait till something happens. This part of the game will end once you have all the evidence and information so you don't have to worry about not having everything you need for the trial.
Story: The storyline is probably the best aspect of this game in that all the characters are extremely likable and quirky in their own ways. You will grow very attached to all of them and their over-the-top emotes can prove for some pretty entertaining scenes. The story centers around 4 different cases most of which have something to do with an unsolved case that happened 15 years ago. While the cases are all different, they are all just as important and nothing feels like filler at all. Also, once you are done with the main 4 cases, you will unlock a 5th bonus case to attempt. All together, the game is quite lengthy and will definitely last you for that long car ride.
Graphics: The graphics are probably the strangest thing about this game. They are undoubtably good but you can tell how little effort they really put into the graphics. The characters are entirely stationary and just make little emotes that always fit with what they are saying. The backgrounds are nice looking though.
Sound: The music can really change the mood in Phoenix Wright and go a long way to increasing the games quality. There are no voice-overs but the text is so well written that they aren't really needed anyway.
Overall, this is a great game that should not be missed by anyone.