The Ace Attorney Timeline – What Order Should You Play the Games?

This guide goes over the best order to play the Ace Attorney series games, as well as other timeline and release information.

Table of Contents

• Ace Attorney Series Recommended Play Order
  • What About Playing the Professor Layton Crossover?
• Ace Attorney Series Story Timeline
  • Where Does the Professor Layton Crossover Fit Into the Timeline?
• Ace Attorney Series Release Timeline

Ace Attorney Series Recommended Play Order

With ten entries, it can be confusing where to start (and end) with the Ace Attorney series. The recommended order to play the games in the Ace Attorney series isn’t the same as their chronological, timeline order, nor is it the same as their original release order. The following table lists the best order to play the games in the Ace Attorney series:

As you’ll see below in the story timeline, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles games take place before the two Ace Attorney trilogies. Still, it’s worth saving this great duology for near the end of your attorney adventures. It’s easy to tell they are more recent entries in the series (as explored in the release timeline section) due to their more intricate mysteries and storytelling.

You could play the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection before The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, but Ace Attorney Investigations does not feature any courtroom battles and instead focuses on arguments and, as the name suggests, investigations. Saving the Investigations series for the end is the best choice if you don’t want to jump between different gameplay mechanics as you play through the series. It’s especially worthwhile if you want to save taking down one of the series’s best main villains for last.

What About Playing the Professor Layton Crossover?

The crossover game Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is currently only available in English as a physical release on the Nintendo 3DS. It is very difficult to get a copy of the game as of now. For those with the means to play this unique crossover title, it’s recommended to play it after Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations and before Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. It serves as a nice way to wrap up Phoenix’s first set of adventures before moving on to the Apollo Justice trilogy.

Ace Attorney Series Story Timeline

Although no year numbers are explicitly given in the games themselves, there are enough details in the games’ cases for fans to get a rough approximation of the year(s) the titles take place. Even without the guesstimated years, the games have a clear story order. The following table lists the Ace Attorney games in their chronological, story order, as well as the approximate year(s) the games take place in:

This timeline gets a bit more complicated when considering some games have “flashback” cases (most notably, Trials and Tribulations), and some involve cases from the past that the main cast wasn’t a part of. Think of this timeline as the order you would play the games in if you really wanted to play them in their story order rather than release date or recommended order.

Where Does the Professor Layton Crossover Fit Into the Timeline?

Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney takes place at some time during the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy and the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection. The game isn’t meant to be “canon” to the main Ace Attorney series, so this “timeline” inclusion is mostly relevant to Phoenix and Maya’s appearances and character behavior compared to how they look and act in the main games.

Ace Attorney Series Release Timeline

The Ace Attorney games were released in North America in a different order than they were released in Japan. Sometimes, they weren’t even released on the same consoles, such as how the original Ace Attorney trilogy was first released on the Game Boy Advance in Japan, but on the Nintendo DS in North America. The following table lists the Ace Attorney games (including the Professor Layton crossover game) in their original Japanese release order:

The following table lists the Ace Attorney games in their North American release date order, and includes the Japanese release order numbers for comparison:

It may have taken 13 years for fans to get to officially play Ace Attorney Investigations 2 in English, but the games will all be easily available on current consoles now—save for Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, whose potential for re-release is entirely unknown.