May 282025
Three years ago, we talked about Nina Aquila: Legal Eagle, an Ace Attorney inspired indie game.
Season One included three cases, with the promise of more to come, and now Nina Aquila: Legal Eagle, Chapter IV: “Sacred Feathers” is available as its own separate release.
I was a little uncertain at first about buying a single case on its own, but Chapter IV took me a full 6 hours to complete, compared to the 8 hours I spent on all of Season One, so I’d say it’s well worth it.
Like Season One, investigation segments have you investigate environments and gather information from a top-down perspective, and trial segments play nearly identically to Ace Attorney, with witness statements to press for more information and then present evidence against when you find contradictions.
The trials in Chapter IV are fine, with some tricky contradictions to spot, although I couldn’t help but notice that almost all (if not all) testimonies have their contradiction in the final statement.
Now, when I reviewed Season One, I mentioned that I wasn’t too crazy about the investigation gameplay being broken up by mini-games. That happens here again, this time in the form of side-scrolling brawler battles. I didn’t mind it as much, however, because its inclusion into the narrative felt pretty smooth and the battles weren’t frequent enough to get annoying.
As for why there are brawler battles…
Do you remember how the first Nina Aquila game included actual supernatural elements? Well, this case involves investigating a murder during the rehearsal of a magical girl show, but it turns out magic is real and the city is under attack by monsters. Nina gains magical girl powers, complete with a transformation, to help defend the city. Although I did feel a slight pang of disappointment that the case wasn’t entirely mundane in nature, the magical girl aspect of the story is important enough that I warmed up to it.
Nina and Dylan both saw some good development in this chapter, and the case had a good cast of characters as well. I also really enjoyed the mystery itself and how all the pieces came together for the final revelations. Meanwhile, the new elements of the overarching story have me looking forward to the fifth case!
Nina Aquila: Legal Eagle, Chapter IV: “Sacred Feathers” might only be one case, but it’s a lengthy addition to the Nina Aquila storyline that anyone who enjoyed the first season should play.
It’s nice to see them finding the space to expand the story a bit more now! Though yes, marketing-wise, it does seem like calling it case 4 could be a difficult sell when compared to cases 1-3 and the preexisting expectation from that. Almost like how a lot of the Ace Attorney games have started kind of combining case 4 and 5 into one mega-case even if technically grouping them into separate episodes, except just making it one mega-episode.
Yes, I was confused when I first saw Chapter IV being advertised, haha. Although I believe that was the original release structure for the first three cases, as well, it’s just that they were eventually combined into Season One. You can still find the individual cases 1-3 on itch.io.
Just one giant seperate case huh? Well that’s kinda cool. I love to see more games that kind of spice up the ace attorney formula in a weird way.
Now I wanna see Phoenix fight some things outside of Marvel Vs Capcom 3
Yeah, I like that we’re getting more Ace Attorney inspired indie games, it’s fun to see what they do with the formula.
While the magical girl element compels me, I think I might give this one a pass. xD
Hah, well since that’s a feature only of this one case, you’d definitely want to play it more for the other aspects.