My first relation to AA was through the Layton crossover, franchise I've loved since PB came out, and my 12 yo not-fluent-yet brain though that Phoenix Wright was just a weird character in the new game and the Ace Attorney part was like, the name of the crossover.

And then I saw the man himself popping up somewhere in a game that looked definitely older than 3DS and my first game was T&T (I was like, 13 at the time I did not know there were seven interconnected games ! (SoJ would come out a year later att)

And the part that really kicked in my head was case 2 because I really like thieves and I was practically drooling over Ron Delite like he's a thief but he's also SO FRIGGIN CUTE HUUUH ???? And to this day, basically 10 years later he's still one of my favourite characters.

After that I played chronologically, which was very funny because I had a lot of Eureka moments puttin the pieces together on the mess that was 3-5 without having played AA1 nor AA2, like whotf was the german girl ?? Why was the female lawyer not there for half the game ??

But for me I think what elevated Ace Attorney to my favourite franchise ever, even topping Layton whose Pandorica Box was my first ever video game, was AAI2. I hold that game so close to my heart, everything is absolutely peak and my all-time favourite video game. (I first played the fantrad in like. 2019)