Operation Backlog Completion 2024

May Mystery Game Madness: Nina Aquila: Legal Eagle Review

 May Mystery Game Madness, Reviews, Video games  7 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
May 232022
 

Nina Aquila: Legal Eagle makes no attempt to hide its clear Ace Attorney inspirations, so of course it’s a game I was excited to check out.

You play Nina Aquila, a rookie defense attorney. Nina Aquila: Legal Eagle Season One contains three cases, and while a fourth is teased at the end, I believe it will be part of the as-yet-unreleased Season Two.

Unlike its inspiration, Nina Aquila isn’t a visual novel. Instead, it’s presented from a top-down perspective and you walk around the game’s environments to gather evidence and speak with characters during the investigation segments. There’s even a city map, although I didn’t feel the map added much beyond a better sense of the game’s world.

The game also includes some gameplay to shake up the formula. In the second case, this comes in the form of a card battle game, where you summon monsters to fight your opponent’s monsters, since the crime took place at a card tournament. In the third case, which involves street racers, it’s a racing game that uses a rock-paper-scissors system with a couple twists. These are mandatory sections, but there’s an option to make them impossible to lose if you don’t care for that aspect of the gameplay.

Somehow, the racing game still manages to feel tedious in spite of that just for how long the races take and how many there are. Even if you put the races on auto, you still have to sit through the entire race.

If the second season continues to have special gameplay sections like this, I hope they aren’t as tedious as the racing. Adding gameplay is an interesting idea, but I found myself impatient during it. I didn’t want to do all these races; I wanted to look for evidence and investigate the mystery! As a result, I enjoyed the trials more than the investigations even though the investigation segments were lengthier and more unique.

During trial segments, you cross-examine witnesses by pressing their statements and presenting evidence when you find a contradiction, complete with “Hold it!” and “Objection!” voice clips (like I said, it’s not subtle about its inspiration).

The first case is pretty simple, since it functions as a tutorial, while the second and third cases are more involved. I particularly liked the mystery in the third case, since it was complicated enough to have me trying to fit the pieces together the entire time and feeling triumphant when I started to see where it was going.

Click for Nina Aquila spoilers
The second case was dragged down for me by the supernatural elements. That might be hypocritical from an Ace Attorney fan, but I really didn’t like the mystery’s resolution hinging on actual supernatural monsters being summoned (and everyone just taking this in stride).

Along with the individual cases, there’s also an overarching story. However, since it isn’t concluded in this season, I don’t have much of a feeling for it.

The characters are more or less fine. Nina bugged me at first but grew on me over time as she developed, as did her assistant Dylan, who joins the cast in the second case. The weakest member of the cast sadly is Prosecutor Chad Hawke, who is just… kind of boring. He’s smug and sometimes rude, but not enough to be interesting or feel like a threat. Strangely, the characters talk about him like he’s more interesting than he is; I can’t share in their shock at him doing normal things like a normal person when I don’t have that strong of an impression of him to start with.

(Thanks to Ace Attorney, every prosecutor I ever encounter in a mystery game is an Edgeworth in my mind until they distinguish themselves, and I’m afraid to say that right now he’s still just a much less interesting Edgeworth.)

Anyway, Nina Aquila: Legal Eagle Season One was a mixed bag for me. I enjoyed the trial segments (aside from wishing the prosecutor would be more interesting) and solving each case, while the investigations each had something that dragged them down a bit for me. Still, I look forward to hearing about Season Two whenever the next cases of Nina Aquila are ready.

Don’t forget, you have until the end of May to participate in the contest and win Ace Attorney or another great prize just by leaving comments!

May Mystery Game Madness: Who Killed My Father Academy! Review

 May Mystery Game Madness, Reviews, Video games  2 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
May 202022
 

We’re entering the final stretch now, with less than two weeks to go in our mystery game celebration! Don’t forget to participate for a chance to win prizes at the end.

Today’s topic of discussion is a short otome visual novel called Who Killed My Father Academy!

(The exclamation point is part of the title.)

As you might guess from the title, it is about infiltrating an academy in order to learn who killed your father.

One thing that took me by surprise the moment I started is that this visual novel breaks the fourth wall and uses that as part of its story. The protagonist is aware of your presence and counting on your ability to try different choices to get all of the answers by the end.

From the premise, I expected it to be a story filled with intrigue, where you spend time getting to know each character while looking for clues that might implicate them as the murderer.

Well, it’s not quite like that. In fact, the actual dating part is short and gets to the point very quickly. In that way, I’d say there isn’t nearly as much “mystery” here as I’d hoped, let alone investigation, so it might be closer to a thriller.

I’m not crazy about the art style, but that’s just a personal preference. The characters are likeable enough, with four male love interests and one female love interest (although the romance feels secondary to the plot).

The story has some interesting twists, but some parts feel a bit rushed or handwaved with humor, which is another thing I think could have benefited from a longer, slower story that lets you get to know each character better. You had better pay attention to the story while you play, though, because eventually you’ll need to answer questions – by actually typing the answers in.

That was a cool way of handling it, and probably my favorite part of the story.

Who Killed My Father Academy! is light on mystery and even lighter on romance, but it uses some interesting ideas. I believe it’s also free, so it’s worth checking out if the premise sounds interesting.

May Mystery Game Madness: Magical Eyes – Red is for Anguish Review

 May Mystery Game Madness, Reviews, Video games  2 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
May 182022
 

Today’s topic of celebration is a supernatural mystery visual novel called Magical Eyes – Red is for Anguish.

Magical Eyes primarily follows a teenage boy named Yuu who is a member of the Disobeyers, an organization that uses special powers to fight supernatural foes called Variants.

A mysterious case involving a man attacked by a doll puts Yuu on the trail of the doll and the numerous strange incidents linked to it, which soon becomes a much bigger case than he and his allies expected.

While Yuu is the main protagonist, other parts of the story are told from different points of view, some of which relate to the case while others follow Yuu’s classmate Chiharu in more of a slice-of-life story.

The game makes use of a map screen from which you choose each scene. Sometimes the next story scene is the only option available, but occasionally optional side stories are available for you to select first if you want. It makes use of this map a little too much, since most of the time there’s nothing to do aside from click the next story scene, but I liked having optional scenes included.

Magical Eyes also features something called Reasoning Mode, which comes into play after key scenes. However, this really is just a quiz about what you just learned. It asks you a few basic questions about the case, which you have to answer. Answering all the questions correctly unlocks additional scenarios to read.

Now, sometimes all of the answers sounded correct, and I’m not sure if it would have counted any of them or if I was just lucky enough to pick the one that was the most right. So while I like the idea of getting your thoughts in order by reviewing the key information you were given, it could be improved.

These gameplay elements are minor details, though, because the most important thing is the story. It’s an intriguing mystery that doesn’t focus on “Who?” so much as “What’s going on?” and “How deep does this go?”

It can be fairly dark, but it also has a good dose of humor to lighten things up (such as a running gag about how the restaurant owner, who is one of Yuu’s allies, cooks so badly that his food is potentially lethal).

The story is exciting, and as it neared the end, I started to hope it had a sequel. It’s a great story with interesting characters, and I wanted to see more. They’ve also built this whole universe of Disobeyers and Variants, so I was surprised that the story focused on a single case instead of multiple ones.

Sure enough, it began to hint at a couple loose ends that might tie into a larger mystery, even though the main case was resolved. One thing that puzzled me while playing was that the game began with a lengthy Chapter 0 and then I was in Chapter 1 for the entire rest of the visual novel, but it finally stated outright that Chapter 2 would be the sequel, Magical Eyes – Indigo Blue Heaven.

Unfortunately, when I looked up Indigo Blue Heaven, I found a deleted VNDB page, as the project is presumed dead since the studio hasn’t posted anything since 2017.

I suppose the one glimmer of hope is that the Magical Eyes site from both the Japanese developer and English publisher still list Indigo Blue Heaven as “in development,” but it might just be that it was never updated. All the same, I hope this visual novel will resurface someday!

In the meantime, Magical Eyes – Red is for Anguish is a great mystery visual novel on its own. If you want to read about a dark, supernatural case, I found it to be quite a good one, and the central story is resolved even without its vanished sequel.

And don’t forget, May is Mystery Game Madness month, so you have a chance to win games and other great prizes by participating in this year’s contest!

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