TL;DR: Pacing is the problem.

I've played every single Phoenix Wright, every single Apollo Justice, and Miles Edgeworth.

The problem with the games has always been that they're not that memorable overall - not because they don't try to be, but the lack of voice acting makes it extremely difficult to remember.

At least with Apollo, some of the climaxes are clearly remembered, and Phoenix Wright had memorable characters.

Ace Attorney Chronicles suffers from a very unfortunate thing: they worked very hard to fix the main problem with Phoenix Wright, which was creating a singular, contiguous, logical thread of a story together; but they failed to retain what made Phoenix Wright enticing in the first place: everything else, from the courtroom to the investigation segments.

Instead, they took parts of Apollo Justice, dumbed them down, then added in their own twists by way of "Herlock Sholmes", and what we ended up left with was basically the best storytelling of the series, but a very boring overall experience to get to that story.  While it's intertwined very well as some sort of alternate universe version of Sherlock Holmes' various adventures (Man in the Iron Mask, Hound of the Baskervilles, The Three Garridebs, Speckled Band, Inspector Lestrade, etc.), the payoff to these great tidbits involves slogging through extremely slow pacing.

What I Liked

✅ As mentioned, the overarching story is deep, and each case ties into it in small ways that don't spoil it.  It's a very well done WHODUNIT that, while the "big bad" is rather obvious the first time you lay eyes on the guy, it's still near expertly done.

✅ What little cutscenes there are, were very well done as well.

✅ The music is the best of the series, bar none.

✅ Pressing is actually very important this time around.  You'll need to press more often than not, unlike Phoenix where it was about 60/40.

✅ Ryonuske comes off as creatively deductive, unlike Apollo where it felt unnatural and forced.

✅The plot twists were done decently well, especially when you learn about Iris and what really happened with Kazuma.

✅"Story mode" is basically letting the game play itself through and watching it. Not very fun without voice acting, but it has the singular benefit of allowing you to continue past points that have you stumped as it will select the right evidence and/or press. You can engage and disengage this at will (of course, it will cost you accolades for that case).

✅Lord van Zieks kicking his boot up on the desk for no reason is hilarious every time it happens.

What I Didn't Like

⛔ As I mentioned, the cases in general were not that exciting.  There were slim few situations where I truly felt up against the wall, as in the one Phoenix Wright episode where you have one Press before being found guilty, or the episode with a bunch of fake evidence thrown at you.

⛔ The translation isn't the greatest.  It appears to have been a localization issue, where they spell "fulfil" differently than standard English ("fulfill"), but also straight up missing words in places.  There was also one voiced scene where the voice line didn't match the text on screen.

⛔ Way, WAY too much reuse of characters.  We're not talking Larry Butz showing up with different jobs, we're talking only one prosecutor the vast majority of the time (Apollo Justice rotated prosecutors well, Phoenix Wright also did on the later half), and a jury with the same characters.  You'd think there were only 15 people in all of London.  This slightly helped with character development, but it also made some of the cases boring, as there was nothing new going on.  The first few cases had a variety that started to suffer as the games went on.

⛔ Some of the points to present evidence are illogical.  I had to use Story Mode to past because what was asked made no sense compared to the evidence it wanted.  Then when it was explained, it's like, "yeah that's a contradiction, clearly...but that has nothing to do with what you asked."  Then there are other points where they clearly say something contradictory, you present the evidence and it's wrong - and it turns out they wanted you to press some statement to unlock something else, then examine that same evidence, then present it.  Silliness.

⛔ Some of the press points are ambiguous.  Taken straight from Apollo Justice, there are cases where one person is testifying and someone beside them reacts - great.  The problem is, if you try to interact with other people before they react, you might get the judge annoyed at you, but there's one case where you're supposed to interact with others despite no reaction.  If you were really there, it would make sense, but given you got chewed out by the judge in other situations you'd think you're never supposed to do it.

⛔ A few plot holes in the cases. One case involves drugged chicken, but they got the timing screwed up, because based on how the case goes along, there'd have been no need to drug the chicken.  Another case involves Susato basically interfering with a crime scene in a completely ludicrous explanation that doesn't even follow what normal people would do in that situation.  There are others, trust me.

⛔ The juror system. They could have had something amazing here.  Instead, it's just a basic plot device.  Nothing you do has any negative impacts on the jury outside of the story.  Imagine, you picking a wrong answer causes a juror to switch their position, or you picking a correct answer but at the wrong time causes a juror to question you, something like that.  None of that happens, and the juror segments are basically the same scripted events that you would have had when it's just a judge.  Then what's the point of having them?

⛔ The "Moving Pictures" extra is in Japanese.  It feels like the translators completely ignored this whole section.  Which is unfortunate, because it's more entertaining at times than the actual game. (and in Japanese, they actually call him "Sherlock Holmes".)

Again, if you're in it for the overarching story, it's the best in the series.  But if you're in it for the cases, I personally feel it fell flat compared to the others