When Shu Takumi and his small team of seven completed the original Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney for GameBoy Advance, their producer instantly insisted that the game become a series, and so came Capcom's iconic thriller visual-novels.
The gist of Ace Attorney was a simple twist on the conventional cycle of the detective-puzzle game: the player must investigate areas for clues (point-n-click style) and deduce contradictions from testimonies in court to prove witnesses wrong and persecute the culprit in cross-examination.
But to reveal contradictions can get pretty frustrating working with the game's rigid system: there will be moments where you realize the contradiction you're meant to catch (and ergo you've "solved" the bit like a puzzle), but then you will subsequently struggle to find a way to let the game know you did so, and you'll be forced to sift through all the witness's text boxes and present every item in the court record until you find the combination that breeds progress to the witness's inevitable breakdown.
That said, the stories therein each case make up some of the most bizarre and over-the-top in the history of literature. I could simply say "it's Japanese" and you'd probably picture the most of it -- outrageously intense villains, dull protagonists, tongue-in-cheek sex appeal, and ridiculously happy endings that may incline you to grab a barfbag.
Yet all this is forgiven since the game never fails to keep the general "energy" of the game to be cartoony (rather than unpleasantly dramatic and severe like most legal-thriller stories). The dialogue is often silly and each character's sprite animations are impeccably expressive. Shu Takumi's theory must have been that the writing had to be hyperbolic in order to be memorable, and boy, was he right.
Hence Ace Attorney's greatest acclaim is its peculiar approach to storytelling. If one was bereft of the active courtroom proceedings, the chippy music, and visual complements, no one would think twice about Phoenix and his dream of being the next Perry Mason or whatever. Ace Attorney is basically a fantastic demonstration of how to present your ideas in the right way to make them shine. Sure, none of them may be great ideas, but they can be fun nonetheless.
Other notes:
Ace Attorney's commitment to making the player read may stifle and alienate audiences, but even non-players can enjoy the jazz renditions of the soundtrack.
The original trilogy was remade for Nintendo DS in 2006, with a fifth case for the first entry with gameplay that incorporated more touch-screen interaction.