Should I play the Phoenix Wright games in order?...

[seba_boi]

So I just blind-bought Phoenix Wright III: Trials And Tribulations as well as Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney from Amazon.ca for the Nintendo DS... Yet some posters from another site told me that I should play the first two Phoenix Wright games first 'cuz I need to "play them in order"... Which is funny since of all the reviews I've read online, they never did once mention that I should play them first... Now I know the gameplay doesn't require that I play the first two but in terms of the story, does this diminish the fun factor and some of the info that are in the last two installments?...

[lav2k4]

You should. They reference each other, and if you play 3 you will be spoiled instantly.

[seba_boi]

You should. They reference each other, and if you play 3 you will be spoiled instantly.

Really?... So it doesn't play as a stand-alone game at all?!....

[Talon]

Of course you should play them in order, they are effectively a series of novels. Not playing them in order would spoil many things, confuse you when things are referenced from the past games, and confuse you when a character appears that was introduced in a past game.

The only one that can stand alone is Apollo Justice but I still wouldn't recommend playing that before you have completed the Phoenix Wright trilogy.

[seba_boi]

Well this is seriously bumming me out... I've just never heard of a sequel to a game where it doesn't play as a stand-alone apart from its previous installment... I don't like that at all... The fact that it'll confuse me with references from the first two games seems a tad extreme...

[Talon]

You'll still be able to play through the game and successfully complete it without playing the previous ones but for a game like Phoenix Wright where the reward for beating a case is unraveling more of the story I do not recommend it.

It would be like reading Harry Potter 7 before Harry Potter 1.

[Akito]

Well this is seriously bumming me out... I've just never heard of a sequel to a game where it doesn't play as a stand-alone apart from its previous installment... I don't like that at all... The fact that it'll confuse me with references from the first two games seems a tad extreme...
You can still play them out of order and enjoy them, but there are two things to consider. The first thing is that certain events will be spoiled. It's sort of like how if you were to play Smash Brothers Melee before playing Ocarina of Time, you're going to go into OoT knowing that Sheik is Zelda, so it won't be a surprise (and yes, everybody already knows that by now, but it was the best example I could think of). The other thing to consider is that you won't catch references, nor will you get that fanboy-ish thrill when a character from a previous game shows up. You can think of that as kind of similar to playing Suikoden II before playing the first one. The stories are disconnected enough to allow you to enter at any game, but you really get the most out of it by playing them in order.

[Vaikyuko]

They're visual novel games, really. You would get majorly spoiled by starting T&T first, before completing the other two. I highly advise you check them all out, you'd be missing the epic. Apollo Justice is more or less standalone compared to the others, because there's a new attorney and it jumps ahead slightly in the timeline, but there are appearances by people like Phoenix and it could very well get spoiled for you.

My advice: definitely buy the first two and play through them. Or rent them, since they have almost no replay value.

[The Million Dollar Prons]

THey shouldn't be too expensive used, should they?

[Vaikyuko]

THey shouldn't be too expensive used, should they?

They would probably be about US$10~15 used, since they're US$20 new. The third game will likely get a similar price cut at some point in the future, if it doesn't have one already.

[tenshi_a]

The first game is really good! Well, the first 4 cases were. That's another reason to start with the first one. :)

The second game wasn't as good overall, but the last case was excellent.

The first one for DS was actually the third GBA game, wasn't it? But they were never translated from Japanese.... I wonder what happened in the first two GBA games, and whether we missed the introductions of anyone!

[ryucross]

First Gyakuten Saiban is the First Phoenix Wright and so on. We got them in the right order. They just added the 5th case to the DS remake of the first (in Japan, there was a code to jump straight to it) to encourage repurchasing. That's also why Gyakuten Saiban 4 was such a big deal when it was announced. Japan hadn't had a really new one since 2004.

[Anamin]

That explains a lot.