playingstory | Nina Aquila

Name: Nina Aquila
Status: Incomplete (episodic)
Site: https://tanuki-sama-studios.itch.io/nale
Pairing: Gen
Description: Pheonix Wright, with maybe a lot more pop references

Nina Aquila is a game where you're a one-eyed defense attorney who takes apart witness statements and sometimes does independent investigating while maintaining full faith in the innocence of your client. I have never played a Phoenix Wright game, so I don't know how closely Nina Aquila hews to that mold, but it seems from a couple reviews I've read that it takes quite a bit from the format. Including stuff like a three day court limit. Objections! And so on. I can't compare the two at all, but as it's own game I thought Nina Aquila was well written, had an interesting enough mystery and some fun references, and only a few minor issues.

Although I suppose these sorts of legal adventure games are regarded as VNs there is no branching choice involved. The story is on rails and the goal is to pick the right choice that will solve the puzzle. The puzzles themselves are basically one case per episode, and each episode is sold as a separate game. The first episode is free and effectively a short tutorial. It takes place in a single day in court and is a good way to get a sense for how the game plays. The second game is significantly longer, and involves a murder at a trading card game convention. The games are made in RPG Maker and have a lot of assets or mechanical elements that are familiar to those who've played RPG maker games, but even with mostly generic assets the game does a decent job of polish.

There are basically two phases for the game. The first is the in-courtroom scenes. You have to investigate every line in the witness' statements, and then choose the right piece of evidence to counter the right line to break a hole in their claims. The game is generally well written and the solutions to these puzzles are typically easy to discover, though I did get caught once or twice trying to figure out the exact combo of evidence and claim that the game was going for, even though I knew what generally it wanted. The logic in the game was also generally decent. Unlike some mystery or crime games where the convoluted criminal plot doesn't make any sense, the reveals in these games build on each other pretty well and the conclusions make sense. It's still video game logic, and fantasy courtroom rules, but they were internally consistent.

The other section of the game is walking around and collecting evidence from various locations. There were parts here that felt like time wasters, including a section where you need to actually play slots to try to get enough money to buy something. Eventually after you've lost like 50 times the game just randomly tells you you've suddenly made the money you need and can stop now. Another mechanic that was added to the game was card battles. There's an option to "story mode" these so that it's impossible for you to take damage, ensuring that you will win each game, but even if you don't choose this option, the mechanics are a simple rock paper scissors choice and you just need to pass until your opponent puts down their own card, then play the counter. While the card game was integrated into the mystery, playing it out still felt a bit like a grind.

But that was my only real complaint. The case itself has a few possible suspects, at least in the beginning, though I pinned the guilty party relatively early in the plot, and there are a lot of fun little references to mostly older anime stuff. The story itself is a pastiche of card game stuff, like yu-gi-oh and magic the gathering. There's also a running gag about donuts, which is a reference to the Pokemon localization. The tone is very eclectic anime for the most part, but there are moments of emotional heft too. I ended up engaged the entire time.

There's also some sort of overarching plot involving a shadow figure manipulating all of the big events in the city where you work. Between episode one and two there's a strange tragedy in Nina's life that affects her throughout the second episode, and that episode ends with a bit of a cliffhanger about who is responsible for a bunch of stuff and what's going to happen to Nina now that she's involved. Because of that I can't say that Episode II is a self-contained game, even if its case does reach an ending.

While this isn't my favorite mystery game of the BLM Bundle (I think Dry Drowning still holds that title) It's one of the better ones, and was fun to play, even though as a "Visual Novel" it was restrictive.