Ace Attorney: still my favorite of the mainline entries, outside of the tutorial case, which is kept simple to get players used to the basics, I love all the cases in this one. Rise from the Ashes has some pacing issues, but I really have no problems with this game.
Justice for All: age makes me grow more critical of this game, I love cases 2 and 4, but the amnesia and circus ones are strong contenders to be my least favorites in the whole franchise, bottom 10 for sure. I find Franziska to be a much worse character than her father (let alone Edgeworth) and just a baby that throws tantrums, imo if you took away her whip she'd lose whatever presence she had in the courtroom, which would be great as the gimmick of whipping everyone because she's such a spoilt brat got tiring really fast. That it introduces Maggey doesn't help matters, she's still my least favorite character in the whole franchise, and that's saying a lot.
Trials & Tribulations: it took me sometime to grow on this one, but I do consider it a solid finale for the Phoenix saga. My only real gripe comes from the 3rd case, which I find pretty dumb and not very interesting as a whole.
Apollo Justice: so I kinda hated this game beforehand not even playing it as I didn't like the new character designs or the swap of protagonists, pretty superficial and dumb reasons I aknowledge nowadays, but I do kinda feel it was to the benefit of the game in the end as it proved me wrong in it being that bad. I'm still not a fan of it, I'm not a fan of its cases of its cases, I feel Apollo needed a bit more to differentiate himself from Phoenix as an attorney and the conclusion I feel was...disappointing, to say the least. How Phoenix lost his badge, the motivation behind the grand mastermind and the Gramarye troop backstory, didn't like any of those things. I don't hate it, but I also don't like it, big meh.
Investigations 1: people meme to death how much the final case goes on for, and I feel it's deserved, but I also found the first 2 cases to just be so boring, and since the 4th case is build up for the last one, that sort of falls apart as well from how its follow up was handled. So that only leaves me with one case that I fiind sort of decent with the 3rd one. It was pretty disappointing to not do that much of a prosecutors job in court given that we play as Edgeworth, but I guess the game is titled Investigations, so it makes sense that's the focus.
Investigations 2: the sole game that managed to surpass my love for the first one, I love every single case and I consider it the first game done right in terms of building up one grand story that has all cases line of events connect at the end.
Dual Destinies: this one was my 2nd favorite when I originally finished it, but it quickly aged to be around the same levels of indifference as AJ for me (a feeling I have with a lot of 3DS games looking back). I do like the games production values overall, I didn't mind the swap to 3D tbh, the music is among the best of the franchise, and I did enjoy some of the QoL additions and 3D investigations environments. It's too bad I can't sing the same praises for the games writing, cases 2 and 3 are way too convoluted for their own good, even for AA whacky standards, everything else is sort of meh. I feel one of these games biggest issues is how lame the villains are, and I'm not sure if this because their motivations suck, or how those motivations are presented suck. I also find the dark age of the law thing to be poorly told, if it was in direct relationship to events from previous games then sure (I think they brought Phoenix losing his badge as part of the reasoning why this started to happen?), but based on what happened in DD alone? Nah, it feels more a scary term to make the game look darker than it is than something you're truly trying to stop, IMO at least. The amount of voice acting feels like a massive waste given how featured the addition of it was, it's barely above what the GBA games offered and that's only because they have some meh animated cutscenes thrown around the beginning and end of every case, none of which I feel add much (one outright tells you who the culprit is from the get go, which I feel is bad direction).
Spirit of Justice: I'll give this game three things to its favour, the cases are generally easier to follow than DD, so their big twists as to how events happened feels better written as a whole, same goes for the villains/culprits, these feel better fleshed out, and the game does try to make a bit more use out of the 3D engine to do some cinematics the sprite based games would never do. But man, I just hate the Khura'In arc and how it ties with stuff like Apollo's backstory or the Fey clan. Maya's return feels like a waste for how little she's featured in the game, Athena feels like they didn't know what to do with her so she just got the fillerest of filler cases, Nahyuta is easily the worst prosecutor the series has had yet by a long mileage, the game chugs a lot more than DD ever did making it feel less pleasant to the eye, the music is probably the least memorable of the franchise, seanses are the most annoying gameplay gimmick and I feel the game sort of has an identity crisis with how many times the final case feels like it's trying to make you remember finales from the previous entries, but I recognize that last one in particular just be my general dislike for the game speaking and not truly being the case. Easily my least favorite, and while I might not have been a fan of some of the previous games, this is the first I'd call outright bad in my eyes.
Layton Crossover: I was pretty underwhelmed with this game, whether I look at it as an AA or Layton game. I feel the only moment I was all that hooked by the game was by the end of the I think 3rd witch trial? And a bit of the exploration after that. Everything outside of that was just boring to me, and for as much as people like to meme Investigations 1 final case, I think this game is even worse with pointlessly dragging on its final stretch. I know Takumi wrote this, but this feels like it treats Layton as the bigger protagonist than Phoenix. I know Phoenix is more flawed and a bigger goofball than Layton himself, but I'd have liked to see a bigger balance of showcasing both characters strengths solving mysteries rather than Layton sort of guiding Phoenix to the ""truth within truths". Probably my 2nd least favorite game overall, might be my least favorite Layton game too. I also despised with every fiber of my being the multiple witnesses thing, it made each of them all the more generic and it never lead to anything interesting mechanically over having a single witness.