I have a lot of experience against Ghost Rider, and I think overall while he’s really hard to deal with at first in the end Phoenix Wright can not only deal with him but is favored to accomplish what he needs to. Note that I believe in Phoenix Wright as the best character in the game and is probably favored against everyone so expect my perspectives to be optimistic.
I assume a point Wright strategy with assist B selected which I believe to be the best way to use Wright. I assume that your team is constructed in such a way that your second character is one you intend to hard tag to after getting three pieces of good evidence and switching to trial mode, and I assume that second character is someone who is going to be capable of landing a hit and then converting into a TAC to get you into Turnabout at which point you intend to switch Wright for the last character on your team and proceed to abuse the assist until you win (and you will if you get that far and are good since that assist is broken).
Ghost Rider
[details=Spoiler]So the first trick against Ghost Rider is figuring out how you intend to gather your evidence without getting killed. This should go without saying, but the single most important thing is to know how to block and to block a lot and block well. Ghost Rider’s mix-up isn’t even that good; without a good high or low assist, he should never be hitting you when you’re trying to block. If you sometimes block j.:s: low or get caught off guard by c.:h:, your blocking really needs work, and Ghost Rider isn’t realistically beatable if you can’t defend against that. In a neutral position, you should always be thinking about how you are going to block Ghost Rider’s next attack, and if you keep blocking everything, you’ll take chip slowly and not die.
Once you are in a position wherein Ghost Rider is pressuring you with his various long range normals, you have to think how you are going to make time to find evidence. j.:s: gets over Maya too easily to rely on her in this match-up, and few assists can safely be called against Ghost Rider (though a few can, more on that later). The only reasonable option is push-blocking, but luckily, it’s a pretty awesome option. Outside of the corner, any safe j.:s: from Ghost Rider can be pushblocked such that Ghost Rider won’t be able to use another j.:s: on your guard without giving you time to get a piece of evidence. He will likely be able to tag you with a grounded normal, but if you either call Maya or in my opinion better just block the grounded normal and pushblock it to force him to real full-screen, you have an absolutely guaranteed piece of evidence unless he has an assist call ready to tag Wright. Do remember that while finding evidence is important, there’s not a huge hurry since Ghost Rider can only kill you slowly if you have good defense, and it’s okay if you lose most of your life getting ready as long as you get there at all. You also need to be mindful of his options when grounded and think about spacing. Remember that he can special cancel his normal chain into the projectile, and that doesn’t quite reach full-screen. The projectile gives you really great position if you pushblock it, but if you assume it’s not coming and go for evidence, you can get hit by it taking some damage you don’t want to take and being denied your piece of evidence. You kinda just have to read the GR player to figure out when he’s likely to throw it, and from larger spacings, pushblocking his normals will put him too far to hit with the projectile. Remember you can also backdash before going for a piece of evidence to make that space!
If you get cornered, Ghost Rider’s pressure naturally gets a lot better, but his options to deal with an empty super jump out of the corner after pushblocking a j.:s: are very poor. If you are very close to being done (like you have all your evidence or only need one more piece), consider remaining in the corner and continuing the play footsies and pushblock cleverly to try to just finish up, but if you have a ways to go, it’s definitely worth your while to uncorner yourself.
Eventually Ghost Rider will get sick of never doing real damage to you and will try to be close enough to threaten to throw you. Again, the most important thing is having good defense; you should be teching throws pretty consistently especially air throws since in throw range Wright’s OS on his throw is way better than GR’s even though GR has monstrous throw range and PW doesn’t. Also note that in sneaking in close, GR is likely to leave himself open. Moving forward yourself and throwing him first is the best thing since that gets you two easy pieces of evidence (sometimes three but it seems rare and situational, I haven’t figured out the exact conditions). Your normals at close range are also honestly very competitive with his so you could just throw out some attacks and try to start a combo or something. If he has three meters, be safe and consider jumping a lot more heavily since Penance Stare is your death, but honestly, with how defensively Wright should be played GR should never land it. Speaking of throws, GR is likely to be apprehensive of being too close to you so if you move forward and then block stuff and posture for throws, you can sometimes bully yourself a little wiggle room out of the corner.
I dunno if this is the most popular way to lay it out, but this was as much detail as I could muster for the basic lesson of “block a lot and pushblock smartly, grab evidence in the openings that makes”. If you do a good job, you should be able to get all your evidence fairly consistently.
Step two is setting up your hard tag which means you have three pieces of good evidence and are in trial mode. The most important thing to remember is what should be your worst case scenario. GR needs to jump to play his game, but his j.:s: doesn’t convert well to a full combo (it can but the height has to be too particular to be practical against someone who fights back). You can usually hard tag in response to his jumping, eat a j.:s:, and then go from there. Granted, you have to be careful since a smart GR will consider just going for a snapback to pull Wright right back in (snap is easier to combo than anything else!), and in general, that puts your incoming character in a lousy situation. I’m saying just remember it since it’s not worth getting Wright killed to save your second character starting off an unconverted hit behind. A basic pushblock strategy can still be employed; if you push GR out, that’s likely enough time to back up and hard tag. If you are cornered, you have a kinda cheesy tactic to force GR to play respectfully enough to probably let you sneak a hard tag. Just super jump in the corner and throw out raw Objection! as you come down. If you time it carefully, it will be very hard for GR to punish since the hitbox is massive and lingering and risking getting hit is simply not a viable option for GR, but more importantly, if he postures to punish it correctly, it gives you a prime chance to pushblock him out as he does something like s.:s: which is going to give you eons to hard tag safely. You can also use your evidence to help you out. The flower vase is really good against GR since it controls his main jump arc; usually a single hit or even a trade lets you force him to block several more, and trades of other pieces of evidence can convert into flower vase barrages (most commonly comes up with the daggar). Speaking of which, the daggar is pretty good but if you are careless it can easily trade and that’s to GR’s favor unless you have some good follow up (mostly going to be the flower vase). The photo is a hard piece of evidence to safely pull against GR, but if you think he’s about to call an assist from a distance, it can easily tag the assist for good damage and will discourage him from doing things like that to lock you down so much in the future. The cell phone is really great if you have some extra time since the delayed attack easily sets up for a hard tag. The document and the watch are IMO really bad and mostly shouldn’t be used though I think there’s some room for creative use of them. You can also throw Paperwork (High) :h: to get out a lingering hitbox behind which you can safely tag. GR’s chain is long enough to snipe someone though it so you can’t just be careless, but if you use it as an anti-air (usually requires evidence pressure to find the time), the chance to hard tag just seems to arise. Of course, you can also just anticipate an attack and hard tag it. Lastly, if you land Objection, while comboing into a kill and then hard tagging out is preferred, you can hard tag safely right after hitting since the hitstun is just so massive.
If your anchor Wright gets pulled in to fight GR in Turnabout, you have some good options. GR likes to be jumping around, and of course Wright does too in Turnabout. The thing is that even if his j.:s: outranges your finger, your finger is faster and far more rewaring on hit. You can easily win that dance. If he starts blocking, you can just try to chip him out with evidence. Rapid flower vase and cell phone spam require GR to play carefully to get past which means lots of chip for you. Alternating the daggar and anything other than the document provides really great pressure as well (I prefer the photo!), and you really could do worse than rapid daggars (it’s what I go for if I have daggar/watch/document as my evidence set). Again, don’t use the document unless you have a really good reason and don’t use the photo twice in a row since you can only have one beam active at a time, and you are probably making a good projectile pressure in turnabout. The only real problem comes if you honestly have photo/document/watch in which case I’m sorry your configuration just sucks for fighting GR do your best alternating photo and watch literally every other configuration is a lot better than that one. GR also seriously can’t do anything without risking gettin hit by Ace Attorney so if you have three meters and can afford to go out of Turnabout (for instance, GR is their last character), go nuts on the chip game GR has basically lost. If he goes into X-Factor and starts turtling trying to run out your time, use evidence for cover as needed, get close, and just throw him and then OTG with c.:h: (or Ace Attorney as is viable).
Assists are very hard for Wright to use against GR since he’s so good at punishing your assist calls and you aren’t really offering any offense that could cover your assists (Maya can cover assists but GR is way too good at getting around her). A few are really helpful though, and there are doubtless more these are just the ones I’ve found.
Strider’s Vajra is great. Any time you have time to find one evidence, you can safely call Strider. If GR gets hit by Strider, there’s two evidence right there, and even if he blocks you get your one so that’s two total (since of course you grabbed one evidence while calling Strider!). This assist is just so good for Wright here and probably everywhere; it really bears consideration.
I don’t think Haggar is good for Wright overall, but you can use his assist here. Move forward and block while calling in Haggar. It will mess up j.:s: and get you time to grab evidence. Even if GR doesn’t throw out a move and blocks Haggar, you still get evidence. I can’t really communicate it with typing, but there’s a timing and spacing to move in to get Haggar to disrupt GR’s patterns best, and it’s not hard to find.
Gold Hsien-Ko is a hilarious gimmick to pair with Wright for a few reasons. A big one is that if GR blocks her you get two evidence but if he just lets her hit him you only get one though you could use the opportunity to hit with Wright and try to get more that way. Realistically GR can’t stop Wright from getting his evidence against Hsien-Ko, but then again, it’s going to be hard for the Wright team to proceed with the rest of the match burdened by a character like Hsien-Ko so pluses and minuses.
More importantly though, you need to be ready to deal with GR’s assist calls. A good beam assist will be the backbone of a good GR’s chip game, and honestly just jumping over part of it when you are going to have to block anyway is sometimes all you can do to fight back. You need to always be watching the assist readiness and know when it’s safe to go for evidence and when you’re about to get tagged by that beam. If these beams didn’t exist GR would be free for Wright though so don’t feel too bad about them.
Strider assist can be dodged by super jumping with the right timing (if you’re moving too fast, Strider assist whiffs) so if you were about to try escaping the corner anyway, you can kill two birds with one stone if you are dodging a Strider assist.
High and low assists tend to underrange GR so he has to move into the ranges at which you can threaten him with throws to call them; be ready to do that if they are in play. The big exception and a big problem for PW is ironically Phoenix Wright-y. This gives GR some really, really dirty unblockables, and as PW on the defense, you are the worst equipped to deal with it. So far all I can say is that you should be chicken blocking like it is going out of style, and there’s not a lot else to do. The good news is that if you get Wright out and ready against such a team, they have no real chance since Wright-y later in the match will come back to haunt them as a massive liability.
If GR is setting up for a meter intensive anchor (like Dark Phoenix), you basically just have to accept that he’s going to get it. It’s okay because strong characters backed by Wright assist can beat Dark Phoenix very realistically by just cleverly turtling in the corner and calling Wright as often as is needed to make any form of offense ineffective for her, to run out her X-Factor, and then to punish her constant life drain. So yeah, it’s okay that these things are coming, but just be aware that as Wright you can’t stop them since just playing your game against GR leaves you no room to accept setbacks to prevent these kind of things so don’t even waste the mental energy on trying to avoid Dark Phoenix or whatever.
As an assist, the trick with Wright against GR is not to pushblock quite so much since if GR lands near you after a j.:s: he just set himself up to be the victim of Wright assist. Otherwise you can pretty much just normal jump and assist call, and GR won’t be able to avoid that easily since even if he hits you with one of his faster anti-airs Wright will make the trade massively favorable to you (just don’t let him hit you with a really early s.:s: and launch you to safely get out of the way; time your assist calls early enough and/or bait the s.:s: to avoid that). GR will try to zone you out and stay too far for Wright assist to touch him, but being forced to block Wright assist even once well let you mix him up however you want so it’s not going to be hard for you to move in. If you’re using a keepaway character, just be sure to make good use of air projectiles and such to prevent GR from avoiding all problems with j.:s:. Once you realize that that’s GR’s only option to get around Wright assist combined with your ground projectile rain, it’s a lot easier to stop and all. If Wright assist scares them badly enough, GR players might try to snap in Wright; watch for that since GR’s snapback is ridiculous, but you shouldn’t be throwing out anything unsafe at all without Wright leading the way for you. GR really lacks to tools to force you to take risks, and in a conservative game, Wright assist is extremely unlikely to be unhinged.[/details]
Sorry if I basically just said block, pushblock, and go for single pieces of evidence a lot and didn’t say a whole lot about actually killing GR, but that’s kinda the nature of Wright. Unlike most characters who become progressively more rewarding as you build offense, Wright becomes progressively more rewarding as you build defense, and it’s a lot harder to sound interesting when talking about how to build a strong defense.
