Spirit of Justice is far and away The Worst One for me but that's a one-game anomaly in a series with, what, ten other games that I love wholeheartedly for different reasons? It's my favorite series ever and a lot of that has to do with the series as a whole and how it all plays well together. Different writing teams have different strengths - the drama and overarching plots of AAI2 or DD are fantastic, but the down-to-earth subtle nature and realistic handling of serious situations of Takumi's original trilogy, AJ, and DGS are great too. I do agree that a big issue with Yamazaki's games - and this was one of the reasons SOJ bummed me out so much - is that they felt like they had to swerve hard and "course correct" into something familiar which lead to Athena being shafted, Phoenix regressing, and Apollo getting a third nonsensical backstory and "Hey look, Maya is the defendant again! You like that, right?". It's part of why DGS has felt like such a breath of fresh air. I'm on case 5 of TGAA1, and it's been a very interesting and unique experience throughout that tackles some heavy themes (though I'm glad we're getting both games in one, I'll say that much).
I don't think I prefer one style over the other. To me, it's all Ace Attorney, and all of it works together to make my favorite series in the world. I just have one deep hope and that is that Ace Attorney 7 doesn't shaft Athena again.