Being a lawyer may be the goal of a lot of people out there, but that wish may not relate to video games. This media platform can offer so much. Players can become space pirates and soar through the galaxy. They can have mutant powers and destroy evil in their path to world domination. With that in mind, who then would fantasize about being a lawyer in a video game?
Well, these characters may not have a lot of powers, but they are certainly cool. There aren’t a lot of games that focus on lawyers or the law, but lawyers still pop up in some of the best games out there. These are just some of the highlights when it comes to the best video game lawyers.
6 Daredevil
Daredevil may not be strictly associated with games. He is a Marvel character first and foremost. His only solo game was Daredevil for the Game Boy Advance, which was a tie-in with the Ben Affleck movie of the same name. Both the movie and the game don’t rely heavily on Daredevil’s lawyering background or many of his big villains. Neither do the games he has appeared as a guest in.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, for example, doesn’t stop the brawling action to get into some courtroom disputes. Despite all that, Daredevil deserves to be highlighted as a man of the people both inside and out of court. There have been a few successful games about lawyers over the years, so it might be interesting to see a modern solo Daredevil game that targets a split gameplay perspective.
5 Harvey Birdman
Birdman was a Hanna-Barbera character first. Also a superhero, like Daredevil, he derived his powers from the sun. Sometime in the early 2000s, Adult Swim started reviving old IP like Birdman. The reboot made Birdman a lawyer who represented other classic Hanna-Barbera characters like Fred Flintstone and Yogi Bear.
It was an interesting multiverse comedy cartoon that focused on jokes and had a few investigations thrown in for good measure. After the success of Phoenix Wright, Capcom helped make Harvey Birdman into a video game. The gameplay is very similar to the Phoenix Wright games, except it is much funnier. It’s short, but it is fondly remembered. There never was a sequel, however.
4 Sae Niijima
Sae Niijima is from Persona 5. She begins the game as an antagonist who is interrogating the player character. She is trying to find out exactly why he and the other Phantom Thieves did what they did. It’s an interesting storytelling device for an RPG, flashing back and forth between past and present.
Sae doesn’t do much lawyering in the game. In fact, there is a twist with her character later on in Persona 5. There won’t be any spoilers here but let’s just say that players get to see more of her than they might have expected. Whether she practiced the law a lot in the game or not, she’s still an ace attorney to fans of the series.
3 Makoto Naegi
Makoto is from the Danganronpa series, which begins with Makoto and his fellow students being put to sleep. When they wake up, they have no memory of who they were in the school other than that they are the best in their fields. Makoto, for example, is the ultimate pinnacle of luck. Also, everyone is trying to murder each other because of a robotic bear.
Players progress through the game as Makoto, finding clues in every murder case. He then uses these clues in a courtroom trial to prove that someone is either guilty or innocent. He plays detective and lawyer in the game even though he isn’t labeled as such. It’s a more violent take on the Phoenix Wright formula. This first game and the rest of the series offer enough twists to the formula to make it feel unique.
2 Takayuki Yagami
Takayuki Yagami is from the Yakuza spinoff, Judgment. The formula for both games is very similar: beat the crap out of Yakuza members and random dregs of society. There’s a lot of brawling action in Judgment but there are gameplay differences. Yagami begins as a lawyer before he is disgraced when it looks like a client may have actually murdered someone under his watch.
Yagami instead becomes a detective. Even though he doesn’t practice law, he is still technically a lawyer. He even has the badge, which players will have to use before the end of the game. Let’s just say Yagami gets a big redemption arc in the first game of this spinoff series.
1 Phoenix Wright
The Phoenix Wright series needs no introduction, nor does the man himself. It is the pinnacle of lawyer games, referenced many times over already. Technically, the series is called Ace Attorney since there have been many main characters across multiple time periods. The most recent one, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, took place in the steam age of London. There was even a Sherlock Holmes knock-off.
Phoenix Wright, no matter how many times he gets replaced, will always be the fan favorite as he was also the first. When that series was announced, many were skeptical of how good it would be. A game about being a lawyer? In a courtroom? Sounds boring. However, the series has been anything but that. It’s still going strong too, and, hopefully, the next entry will arrive sooner rather than later.