This Game Had Some Good Points, But it Just Wasn't the Game For Me

[bluecat]

Hey Everyone! Well, I haven't posted on the boards in awhile. I actually wasn't going to write a review in the first place, but I thought it would be fun to share my opinion. Just for the record, I hate games with ghosts in them so I played the game with a bias which may or may not have affected my enjoyment of the game.

~Plot~

Basically Nancy enlisted by Savannah Woodam (Who we first met in SAW) to go the deep south to try to find out what happened to Jessalyn Thorton, a young woman who is supposed to be getting married. She's missing and it's up to you to find out why. On top of all that, Thorton Hall, the place you'll be staying in is rumored to be haunted by a family member who died twenty some years ago. Did Jessalyn just experience pre-wedding jitters, or is something more sinister at work here.

Well, like I said I hate games about ghosts so I didn't really care for the plot. I just don't think a ghost possibly being a kidnapper is a very good plot (at least that's what I think the plot was.) It was fairly well constructed in my opinion, but I just couldn't get into it.

I've seen some people say it looks like a rehash of several past Nancy Drew games, but I didn't find that to be the case. Yes, it has some aspects of other Nancy Drew games (HAU, SAW, and MHM especially) but it was also unique in many ways so I never felt like I had played this game before..

~Characters~

We have four living suspects and one dead suspect.

Clara Thorton: Clara is Jessalyn's mother. She is very cold and unresponsive. Once you uncover her backstory a bit, she becomes a little more interesting, but on the whole she was just dull.

Wade Thorton: Jessalyn's cousin. Eh........I talked to him as little as possible. He was slightly interesting at first but then he just....I don't know. I didn't feel like his character was very fleshed out. You uncover some stuff about him, but nothing is really done with the information, which turned a potentially interesting character into just another boring character.

Harper Thorton: Also Jessalyn's cousin. she's either the most interesting character in a Nancy Drew came or the craziest. I did sympathize with he a little bit, but she was just so creepy I couldn't really talk to her. She was the most interesting character in the game, but honestly I found her to be a little disturbing.

Colton Birchfield? (I can't remember his last name, haha. I think it's birchfield): Jessalyn's fiancee. He was probably the worst of the bunch. His fiancee is missing but he doesn't seem too concerned about it. He doesn't talk much either so in the end he was just kind of.....there

Charlotte Thorton: Jessalyn's dead cousin and Harper's sister. She's rumored to haunt Thorton Hall. Obviously you never speak to Charlotte, but her story plays an important part in the mystery.

I think these characters could have been better than they were. You found something out about all of them that could have been very interesting, but nothing was ever done with the information and by the time some actual character development happened, the game was over.

~Setting~

The setting fit the plot but I can't say that I liked it.

You can explore Thorton Hall (which looks huge on the outside, but is small on the inside. In fact when you first enter, it looks exactly the same as the Bolet mansion in CRY), the cemetery, and various other locations as the game progresses. They all suited the plot, but it was just so dark and grim I just didn't enjoy it. Perhaps if Thorton Hall had been a bit bigger I would have the setting a bit more. It's just that it looked a lot bigger on the outside than what we saw on the inside. And Nancy was sleeping in an upstairs hallway? You would think they would have a few bedrooms considering how many people were there.

~Music~

Truthfully, I didn't pay much attention to the music, but what I did hear fit the setting very well and was very creepy. There was one song that played whenever you encountered the ghost that was especially creepy. I'd say the music was a job well done.

Puzzles/Snooping

Puzzles: There weren't too many puzzles in this game and the ones that were there seemed very easy compared to the puzzles in the previous game (but let's not get into that). There wasn't one I couldn't have solved on my own with a little brainpower (that doesn't mean I did solve them on my own, the hint's and spoilers were just too tempting, haha. but I could have.).

Snooping: I loved the snooping in this game. We didn't really go through people's things, but we found secret passageways, spied on people, etc. It was fun and it had that old time Nancy Drew feel!

~Scare Factor~

This game was very creepy. You see shadows and hear strange noises (it kind of reminded me of MHM). We also see the ghost several times which was very eerie. I wasn't scared really, but this game was definitely creepy. Creepier than MHM that's for sure!

~The Ending~

In this game you have three alternate endings to choose from. It's pretty easy to decide which one is the right one, but it was fun to see what would happen with each one. I for one didn't really have any unanswered questions at the end, but I'm probably just a simpleton and didn't notice any plot holes (I'm sure there were some, I just can't remember any.) Overall I liked the ending well enough.

On a side note, I've seen a lot off people say they were unsatisfied with the way the "hauntings" were explained. I personally thought the explanation was logical and certainly wasn't impossible, but that's just my two cents. I thought it was a good explanation.

~Conclusion~

Honestly, I didn't rush out to buy this game like the others. The only reason I played it was because my sister got it and I wanted to say I've played all of the Nancy Drew games. However, I think every game has it's good points. The sub-plot about Charlotte's past was fascinating and I enjoyed finding out what happened to her, but that's about all I found enjoyable about this game.

Like I said before though, I was biased from the beginning so don't let this stop you from buying the game. Plenty of people on the boards enjoyed it, I just wasn't one of them.

Thank you for reading my review! If you have any questions or comments, please let me know!

[MysteryEye]

Hi BC!

Thanks for taking the time to review GTH. Your review was very detailed and well-thought out without giving away any of the game.

I agree with you about the characters. I found Colton to be very boring, and there was such a contrast between his character and Harper's character. I think the writers could have done a much better job there.

This is the first ND I did not pre-order. I waited for it to come out in the stores.

Great job on your review!
MysteryEye

[oceanxatlantic]

I loved your review, I felt it related very much to what I thought about the game, specifically when it came to characters.

I get the sense that with the couple past games, GTH being no exception, HER has started becoming more formulaic with their characters. Instead of centering characters around plot and utilizing them to add intrigue to the overall story, they are each their own entities. Each and every one has to have this big "secret" and/or "past" they reveal, I think in attempt to add depth to the characters themselves. I personally think this distracts from the game and makes the characters seem more one-dimensional. They just don't seem to fit as seamlessly into the plot as before, resulting in characters that grow very boring, because they don't grow with the plot.

Anyway, that's just something I realized when reading what you mentioned about the characters in this game.