I like the writing and the story. The rest of this post will be criticism of the gameplay, but I want to make sure to start by saying I think the writing and storytelling overwhelms the criticism.

You asked for a comparison, and the games that come to mind are Myst, Maniac Mansion, Secret of Monkey Island, Trace Memory, and any other point-and-click adventure game. That's a fine pedigree, and I think Ace Attorney has earned a spot with the best of them. It also reminds me a lot of dating sims, for having heavily dialog-driven gameplay where choices you make affect the outcome.

But if you've played any, you know that sometimes they're a bit... obtuse. Outside of the courtroom, you do "investigations". For the most part, this is straightforward. You go to a place, tap on things, talk to people, and collect evidence. What's frustrating to me is the game decides when I'm done, so it's easy to tell if you're missing something: no one's saying anything new. Occasionally gameplay degenerates into going to each location, tapping on everything several times, then visiting each NPC and showing them every item you have, until you find the right thing.

The backtracking in investigations can be frustrating. Say you need to get from the police department to the scene of the murder. It takes a couple of taps to move to a new location, and getting to that murder scene sometimes involves moving 6 times. You get there, find some evidence, then need to talk to an officer. 6 moves later, he tells you to go look for more clues. 6 moves later, you find a new person at the scene, and so on. I find it personally frustrating when something that's obviously a piece of evidence is in a scene, but I'm not allowed to tap it because it's for a court scene later than the current investigation. It sort of makes sense, except we're already in a universe where lawyers can legally hide evidence from the prosecution until the moment they need it, so I think I should be able to pick up a dang item from the crime scene even if Ace doesn't understand why yet.

In the courtroom, it gets worse. Instead of hunting for evidence, you try to match pieces of evidence to statements they discredit. Sometimes the game gets cute and asks you if you have evidence. 99.9% of the time the answer is "yes", of course, but the game shakes it up and at least once saying "yes" was instant game over. It doesn't really matter though, because if you get the multiple choice test that is the courtroom scene wrong you get to take it again until you pass, and you can't get to it if you're missing some vital evidence.

I don't find it as challenging as I do tedious. Playing it feels like playing a Professor Layton game, but I like Layton a little better. In Ace Attorney the puzzle is always "Which evidence do I click to get this witness to cough up their information?", but Layton has a varied buffet of puzzles to make me feel like a mental infant.

Again, all that aside, I'm nitpicking about whether the game is a 9.8 or a 9.7. I think you should get it and play it. Just make sure to set aside an hour or so for each session, trying to pick up in the middle of a court scene is rough.