Recent reviews by prettypaz

Amazing game, just like the old Nancy Drew games, steeped with mystery and fun exploration. Completely recommend. The puzzles didn't take over, they felt very natural and made sense in the world. Incredibly high quality and interesting plot, interesting characters, and beautiful scenes. Very high production and worth the price point. Genuinely surprised and very impressed a small team can make a game like this, and with such clear love and adoration. Loved playing this, and can envision replaying multiple times. Going to put the next game in the series in the immediate buy category- I don't need to know anything but a release date because I'm a fan already.

Overall, I regret spending the money on this. I can't recommend it to even diehard fans. I got it on sale for around $20 and it’s the worst of the entire series (yes, far worse than Midnight in Salem). I believe a fair price would be $10-15. If you want the experience of being a game tester but still want to pay over $32 for a game that’s still in development and will stay in a complete unpolished state, then this is the game for you. Reading the credits to see they had game testers honestly astonished me. You cannot play this without the guide. It is not intuitive or user friendly. I thought it would be bad, but this was worse than I expected.

The good: the game world is beautiful. Theres a bunch of suspects. You get to snoop in almost every character’s things. Theres a cat you can pet! The days progress and you get really cool dusky evening atmosphere. Characters are pretty cool. Some interesting twists. That’s about it.

After completing the game, my immediate thought was “whew that was exhausting, I need a beer”. Not because the game was a fun challenge, but instead because it was unnecessarily emotionally taxing. I spent over 40 min trying to figure out how to progress on a super simplistic puzzle only to have to watch a playthrough on youtube (they also took around the same amount of time as myself) and this a video that had been a live recording, where the audience kept offering suggestions to progress. Yes, you read that right; a large group of people could not figure out a basic color puzzle even after everyone pooled ideas together.

It does not have the charm or coziness of previous games. Not much to explore, nothing much to interact with, everything felt like I was in a demo where I had to pay to unlock the rest of the world. Point and click was so clunky I wouldn’t recommend playing it. The camera will not show you everything on point and click, even vital elements needed to progress. I was going to replay on free roam to see if it was any better, but honestly if I pick this game up again it won’t be for a long while.

Theres also weird rules like being unable to use the computer charger when other people are in the café, you must wait for closing for no reason and no explanation. Why can I make lattes but never drink any? Why is there a doughnut stand if I can’t eat 30 donuts and get a fatal error? Why can I walk all around the city if there’s only one thing to do there? The secretary is mysteriously absent at all times, which seems like a mistake instead of a feature, especially because the NPCs are clones.

Zoom feature was not zoomed in close enough, so I still had to bring my screen right up to my face for several puzzles (and I have good eyesight, rip everyone with glasses).

Nancy Drew’s voice sounds like a robot, not sure why because none of the other voice actors sound like siri. Nancy also never goes to sleep, never eats or drinks, has no luggage, hotel, just a bobby pin, her phone, and the clothes off her back for around 48-72hrs.

As for Nancy’s character, she would constantly make these egregious mistakes, seeming like a total rookie. It’s hard listening to the dialogue make references about Nancy’s past cases, because this truly seems like her first mystery ever. Firstly, in the beginning Nancy tells one of the characters that she’s trying to keep her status as a detective under wraps. Later, she puts her phone on speakerphone while with a suspect and tells them the CIA on the line is working with her and lets the suspect listen and partake in the conversation. If you think that’s bad detective skills, Nancy then gives the real keys she created to the culprit so she can (hopefully) track them down. Since she made them and has the recipe could she have created identical decoy keys. That way she wouldn’t risk letting the culprit into the room of crown jewels. Did she do that? No, she used the real keys as bait. I’m sure hiring her will be no risk, please future clients, entrust her with your irreplaceable valuables. Nancy then confronts the culprit, completely alone, hoping she can… talk them out of it? She had no plan I’m not sure what she was hoping would happen. Culprit obviously has no reason to listen to Nancy, so they escape, and Nancy decides to open the room holding the jewels (probably worth millions of dollars but priceless to country) in case they aren’t already stolen. So, Nancy really aided and abetted a criminal, and frankly I think they could convict her if her father wasn’t a lawyer. Theres also a side story about how someone may be missing/kidnapped, and Nancy has no idea how to verify that someone actually went on a flight. No thoughts about calling the airline, checking the missing person’s credit card records, who they were supposed to meet after landing, etc. Just hoping that they turn up.

This game makes me really apprehensive to buy any future games. I'm definitely going to wait for a sale before any future purchasing anything from HeR.

Overall, yes I enjoyed this! I grew up playing Nancy Drew games and I feel like this evokes the same feeling I was looking for. I feel like some of the world was not explored enough, and not all of the loose ends were tied up, but the story and environment was very interesting. After all, the detective is only hired for one job, not to figure out what happened years ago. A few times I was wandering around trying to figure out how to progress, and had to look up the walkthrough, but I feel as though thats not uncommon. The puzzles were organic and the inn had a good backstory. I loved the addition of eating breakfast every morning and getting to snoop most places. The plot also surprised me, and kept my interest piqued with finding dirt on all of the suspects. I also like how Alex isn't plucky. She's more sarcastic and I like that direction. Cassandra's VA really stood out to me, such a fun character I hope will be a staple in the series. Really great start to a series that I'm looking forward to playing more of! And kudos to the team, I have no idea how game development works, but I can't imagine such an undertaking.