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A Veteran's Review of SSH
Allow me to preface this review by saying that I have been playing the ND games for almost thirteen years. Over those years, I have probably played each game over twenty times--the older ones probably over fifty--and I do at least one full marathon of all 33 games (i.e., all 32 and SCK Remastered) annually. As I have gotten older, I have found myself ranking the games, characters, music, etc. in my spare time during marathons, and this year I thought I would write--and subsequently post--reviews of each game while I go through my 2018 marathon (I'm starting a month early). I have lost access to/forgotten about my previous accounts on here, including my very first one 
, so I made a new one solely for this purpose. That being said, I hope you enjoy my review.
Plot: This game is the first in the series of games where Nancy gets an incredibly cool internship and conveniently finds a new case to solve.
The game starts off a bit slow plot-wise, and would be especially slow during an inexperienced player's playthrough, as the first "day" in the game--which can take the course over many in-game days--involves a hefty list of puzzles to solve and chores to accomplish. Of course, anyone with an interest in museum studies and Mayan culture will find the game interesting from the start. During my very first playthrough in 2014, I personally loved having time to gather information about the culture and thoroughly explore Beech Hill before that glaring red hand print became my primary focus. That being said, once things start to pick up and the story gets complex, it is quite good. Unraveling how several thefts, an amnesiac, a smuggling racket, a monolith, and a missing Mayan scribe fit together--and discovering that they are related--proves to make an engaging game, even if some threads are not tied as nicely as others.
Setting: I'll say right off the bat that I have mixed feelings about this setting. Beech Hill Museum is pretty neat location, and it is certainly eye-catching with that Mesoamerican pyramid and all the Maya antiquities on display both inside the museum and out in the garden. The color palette is varied--lots of gorgeous earth tones accompanied by red, blue, and green--and it is an undeniably beautiful space (the floor inlay is great). Unfortunately, the space doesn't feel realistic to me. As a lifelong museum-goer and as someone who revisited numerous Smithsonian museums in D.C. this April, I can say that I have never seen a museum with that kind of layout, even in small-scale museums and small exhibits. I'm sure the purpose of the layout was to make navigation easier for the game, but no exhibit designer would ever create such a space. The temple full of games and some exhibit pieces is larger than the actual indoor exhibition space--I am also questioning how and why this place was created, unless Beech Hill has only ever shown Mayan artifacts or has the budget to completely remodel their indoor exhibition area by building a temple facade--which only makes things more unrealistic. Museums often offer kid-friendly areas, or all the exhibits are created entirely for kids, but to have a three-story temple with games and quizzes for, as Henrik puts it, "little rascals" and only six displays in the indoor space (what's this about Beech Hill having one of the largest, most impressive collections of Mayan artifacts ever assembled???) is incredibly unbalanced. To add insult to injury, they put the star of the show, the monolith, and the relief sculptures (i.e., the proper name for the stone sculptures) outside in the garden, exposing them to the elements! Preservation and restoration of ancient artwork and artifacts is difficult enough, but to do so and then just sit them outdoors where temperature changes, rain, animals, insects, and everything else can damage them is unbelievable. Many museums have outdoor sculptures, but I would bet money that none of them include thousand-year-old Mayan reliefs!
The other locations are okay (i.e., the Eleanor Roosevelt Memorial Hospital, the Mexican Consulate, Taylor Sinclair's office, and The Colonial Hotel) and look realistic, but they aren't very memorable from an aesthetic standpoint. What is unfortunate about both these spaces and Beech Hill, however, is that not a single one of them reflects Washington, D.C., properly. When most people think of D.C., they assuredly think of the famous monuments, historic governmental buildings, and perhaps some of the Smithsonian museums, but there is so much more culture to the city than the landmarks. I wish that some part of that culture was reflected in the game, rather than only a fake hotel and hospital giving reminders that this game takes place in the nation's capital.
Characters: The ND games' character development takes a drastic turn southward in the sixth installment in the series. Joanna Riggs is possibly one of the worst characters in any of the games. She brings you in to help her, and then either doesn't give you the time of day for the rest of the game or insults you (e.g., "if you want to put your little magnifying glass up to the scene, it's fine with me" and "I'm not here to babysit"). I think the most lines she ever says to Nancy in the game is what she says in her desperate voicemail. I happened to pick alternate dialogue options this time and got her to be a little more chatty at the opening of the game, but I swear she literally says "Henrik can help you with that" or "I'm afraid I can't help with you that" or "Who knows?" to over 75% of Nancy's questions. Like, why does she even exist, except to add to the possible culprit tally, if all she is going to do is send me to Henrik and stare in her microscope all day?!
I think I noticed this problem even on my first playthrough, but the latest one made it painfully clear that she is only around for plot convenience. Also, I love how she gets low-key offended when Nancy asks her if she knows where Henrik is because she needs a glyph translated, and Joanna is like "I can read glyphs" even though she didn't even know the significance of the red hand print and literally sends Nancy to Henrik for any other question. Ugh. 
Taylor Sinclair is another complete dud in the game. His hideous tie, shiny lips, awful mustache, and disgusting-looking hair make more of an impression on me than anything else about him, except maybe that his taste in art is also garbage (Poppy Dada's work is horrific, I'm not sorry). Anyway, he is an incredibly boring character and sounds shady from the get-go, making him overall pretty creepy. Alejandro del Rio, our third POC character and first POC male, is significantly more interesting than Sinclair, but even that isn't saying much. I admire his desire for justice and hatred of how his country is constantly exploited by the art world and archaeological communities--he has some nice dialogue on these topics--but that's really all there is to him at the end of the day.
The last non-phone character is Henrik van der Hune, who is inarguably my favorite in the game and actually has character development. I'm not going to lie, when I first saw Henrik in the mask in the lab, I had two visceral thoughts: "This guy looks like he could be Hannibal Lecter...with more hair, a paper mask, and a background in epigraphy instead of psychiatry." and "They put a mask on this guy to save on animation. Wow." However, I did not let his slightly disturbing appearance get in the way of my initial opinion of him as an incredibly intelligent and generally helpful person. After he lost his memories and revealed aspects of his plan to Nancy, I found myself liking him even more. He clearly has more complex moral beliefs than most characters in these games for going to the lengths he did at the risk of personal loss. His trust in Nancy and their friendship is one of the highlights of the game. His background is also quite interesting (i.e., the journal mentioning Big Bunny) and morally complex, so I find his present motives all the more fascinating.
There are an ungodly number of phone characters in this game, and I don't really feel like mentioning them all. The true gems of the phone characters, or in one case a non-phone, not-present character, are Prudence Rutherford and Sonny Joon, as well as Poppy Dada (her dialogue is refreshing). Prudence is easily one of the most hilarious characters in the games. Her incredible voice-acting adds to the humor, but her lines are pure gold, from talking to her husband like a pet and talking about frolicking in orchards in her dreams. Sonny Joon, another fan favorite, makes his debut in this game with his iconic doodles, obsession with Koko Kringles, and capability of destroying everything in his path.
Music: For all the things done poorly in this game, the soundtrack was thankfully not one of them. I love the Latin and indigenous music influences heard in the compositions, especially the instrumentation. I loved how Pacal and the Whisperer were both sonically represented in the game. I think her theme is particularly strong because it starts out so soft with only a single flute, then another layer is added--chanting, strings, percussion, and brass--and the quiet voice becomes boisterous and confident. My two favorite songs, though, are the ones called "Town" and "Exotic" on the soundtrack. "Town" was the first one I heard during my first playthrough, and I was immediately in love. It's such a soothing track. "Exotic" is one of the few upbeat tracks--I am such a sucker for the classical guitar, and it is fantastic in that song--and it reminds me so much of the music from The Amazon Trail: Rainforest Adventures (a PC game from The Learning Company that I practically worshiped as a child. and I got it out of a cereal box), so there's a massively unrelated nostalgic factor as well. So good!
Puzzles: There's a good many puzzles in this game, and a lot of them are pretty challenging, or at least require that I write things down on a piece of paper. I can't say that any of them are stellar or standout to me in a good way, except the monolith (but even then I just wing it by trial and error). I honestly don't have much to say about the puzzles. They are related to the plot--even the ones that are part of Nancy chores are educational about Mayan culture--and require some thought.
Graphics: The environment graphics in this game are on par with the previous games, meaning they are very well done. The most impressive location would obviously be the museum. The character design is hit-or-miss in this game. Joanna looks significantly better than everyone in the game, and she looks better than the characters in The Final Scene; however, the remaining characters have some problems. Henrik's model is probably the second best, but his hair is stiff and strange and his arm in the lab coat is terrifying. Alejandro might be kind of cute, but he is suffering from the shoulder/arm/neck problems that other models have in previous games. His face is also slightly weird...maybe because he is still smiling at rest? Taylor Sinclair's model is an abomination to my eyes, but they did a decent job of making his face look aged. Still clay-like though.
Ending: I have mixed feelings about this ending. The build-up to the culprit reveal is great; the final puzzle is challenging and exciting! That reveal was entirely unexpected--I didn't do a lot of reading in my first playthrough--and slightly horrific, but incredibly cool. However, as soon as the culprit was revealed, I was disappointed. It was so obvious that it was going to be this character that I wasn't even remotely surprised; I was suspicious at almost the beginning and then when the twist happened with another character, it was completely obvious that I was right all along. Unfortunately, the culprit's dialogue was on par with the culprit's dialogue at the end of Treasure in the Royal Tower, so cheesy and just plain awful. Then, in true ND style, Nancy was thrust into a perilous situation with a "solve-it-or-you-die" timed puzzle. It isn't difficult, but I died a thousand times in my first playthrough because I hadn't read that important clue in Henrik's translation notes. Once Nancy is no longer in danger, suddenly everyone EXCEPT the culprit is just standing there smiling and quoting weird stuff at her when they could have, oh...I don't know, gotten her out of said perilous situation! It's so cringe-worthy and awkward, like how did they know she was there but did nothing to help and didn't apprehend the culprit??? On top of that, we pan over to the culprit and they scream "ARRGHHHHHHHHHH! Confound you, Nancy Drew!" while shaking their fist at the screen, even though the reason they are angry has literally nothing to do with Nancy's actions.
Truly, another one of the endings that could be fantastic and is ruined with incredibly cheesy dialogue and obvious villains.
Other points of interest: The voice acting in this game is pretty good, although Alejandro del Rio's accent is clearly put-on. One of the things that really bothers me in this game is how much reading is involved. I normally don't mind having to do a bit or even a lot of reading in a video game, but almost all of the reading material is stationary, written in awful fonts/colors, and at incredibly inconvenient locations. I have no desire to go to Nancy's hotel room every time I need to check Henrik's or Sonny's notes, or rummage through Henrik's desk to find only half of what I need to do the HAM radio puzzle. It's incredibly frustrating, and even now I find myself ignoring that content even though it would probably make aspects of the game make more sense. I also hate how much time Nancy spends on the phone--there are more phone characters than in-game characters--and how she can only call from certain phones, but no matter what phone you're using none of these 11 digit phone numbers get logged in the registry at the bottom of the screen.
The Takeaway: It's worth noting that the first time I played this game was in 2014, at which point I had played games 1-5, 7, 8, 10-14, 17-31, and SCK Remastered. I had been unsuccessful at finding physical copies of some Nancy Drew games (specifically games 6-9, 15, and 16) for years, but I finally got the last few games I was missing from my collection between 2012 and 2014. Thus, I had played the majority of the Nancy Drew games--and all the stellar ones--hundreds of times before I got to these games, meaning that the nostalgia factor was missing and I had learned how to distinguish between a good and not-so-good Nancy Drew game. The first time I played Secret of the Scarlet Hand, I had just beaten Creature of Kapu Cave, a blight in the series for certain, and Danger on Deception Island (honestly, I think it's overrated, which I will explain once I review it) the day before, so I was feeling a bit depressed that these last ND titles I hadn't played (and this was before SEA came out and before all this mess with MID) were not up to par with the other titles I loved. Hence, I was overwhelming excited that SSH was not a bad game, or at least not like the ones I had just played, and my response to it was incredibly positive. However, on replays, I have become more shrewd, as time and familiarity allows, and noticed the numerous flaws. With that being said and those caveats in mind, I would give this game five stars out of ten, largely because of the poorly developed characters, obvious culprit, and cheesy ending.
So the final question is obviously whether I think you should play this game. It depends. If you are a dedicated fan who wants to play all of the games, even the really bad ones, then you should go for it; it is definitely not the worst game in the series by any stretch. If you've got a good many games under your belt and you're looking for another game to play, I'd say it depends on what else you haven't played, but this is a decent game, so it may be worth looking into. If you're new to the ND games, I'd advise you to give this one a hard pass and go for one of the classic titles or fan favorites to get you started. Of the classics, I would recommend Treasure in the Royal Tower and The Final Scene (both in my top ten), and I would recommend the legendary fan favorites (also in my top ten): Curse of Blackmoor Manor, Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon, and Secret of Shadow Ranch. If a new(er) game is more your speed, and especially if you have already played the aforementioned titles, then I highly recommend Shadow at the Water's Edge, The Deadly Device, Ghost of Thornton Hall, and The Silent Spy (again, all in my top ten).
Thank you for reading my review! I hope that my perspectives and ramblings inspire someone to play this game, replay this game, look at it through fresh eyes, or try it for the first time. I should be posting a review of Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake sometime over the next few days, and I will continue to post them as I complete my 2018 Nancy Drew Marathon...it won't be many moons until I start posting more reviews.
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Next review: Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake
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, so I made a new one solely for this purpose. That being said, I hope you enjoy my review.Plot: This game is the first in the series of games where Nancy gets an incredibly cool internship and conveniently finds a new case to solve.
The game starts off a bit slow plot-wise, and would be especially slow during an inexperienced player's playthrough, as the first "day" in the game--which can take the course over many in-game days--involves a hefty list of puzzles to solve and chores to accomplish. Of course, anyone with an interest in museum studies and Mayan culture will find the game interesting from the start. During my very first playthrough in 2014, I personally loved having time to gather information about the culture and thoroughly explore Beech Hill before that glaring red hand print became my primary focus. That being said, once things start to pick up and the story gets complex, it is quite good. Unraveling how several thefts, an amnesiac, a smuggling racket, a monolith, and a missing Mayan scribe fit together--and discovering that they are related--proves to make an engaging game, even if some threads are not tied as nicely as others.Setting: I'll say right off the bat that I have mixed feelings about this setting. Beech Hill Museum is pretty neat location, and it is certainly eye-catching with that Mesoamerican pyramid and all the Maya antiquities on display both inside the museum and out in the garden. The color palette is varied--lots of gorgeous earth tones accompanied by red, blue, and green--and it is an undeniably beautiful space (the floor inlay is great). Unfortunately, the space doesn't feel realistic to me. As a lifelong museum-goer and as someone who revisited numerous Smithsonian museums in D.C. this April, I can say that I have never seen a museum with that kind of layout, even in small-scale museums and small exhibits. I'm sure the purpose of the layout was to make navigation easier for the game, but no exhibit designer would ever create such a space. The temple full of games and some exhibit pieces is larger than the actual indoor exhibition space--I am also questioning how and why this place was created, unless Beech Hill has only ever shown Mayan artifacts or has the budget to completely remodel their indoor exhibition area by building a temple facade--which only makes things more unrealistic. Museums often offer kid-friendly areas, or all the exhibits are created entirely for kids, but to have a three-story temple with games and quizzes for, as Henrik puts it, "little rascals" and only six displays in the indoor space (what's this about Beech Hill having one of the largest, most impressive collections of Mayan artifacts ever assembled???) is incredibly unbalanced. To add insult to injury, they put the star of the show, the monolith, and the relief sculptures (i.e., the proper name for the stone sculptures) outside in the garden, exposing them to the elements! Preservation and restoration of ancient artwork and artifacts is difficult enough, but to do so and then just sit them outdoors where temperature changes, rain, animals, insects, and everything else can damage them is unbelievable. Many museums have outdoor sculptures, but I would bet money that none of them include thousand-year-old Mayan reliefs!
The other locations are okay (i.e., the Eleanor Roosevelt Memorial Hospital, the Mexican Consulate, Taylor Sinclair's office, and The Colonial Hotel) and look realistic, but they aren't very memorable from an aesthetic standpoint. What is unfortunate about both these spaces and Beech Hill, however, is that not a single one of them reflects Washington, D.C., properly. When most people think of D.C., they assuredly think of the famous monuments, historic governmental buildings, and perhaps some of the Smithsonian museums, but there is so much more culture to the city than the landmarks. I wish that some part of that culture was reflected in the game, rather than only a fake hotel and hospital giving reminders that this game takes place in the nation's capital.
Characters: The ND games' character development takes a drastic turn southward in the sixth installment in the series. Joanna Riggs is possibly one of the worst characters in any of the games. She brings you in to help her, and then either doesn't give you the time of day for the rest of the game or insults you (e.g., "if you want to put your little magnifying glass up to the scene, it's fine with me" and "I'm not here to babysit"). I think the most lines she ever says to Nancy in the game is what she says in her desperate voicemail. I happened to pick alternate dialogue options this time and got her to be a little more chatty at the opening of the game, but I swear she literally says "Henrik can help you with that" or "I'm afraid I can't help with you that" or "Who knows?" to over 75% of Nancy's questions. Like, why does she even exist, except to add to the possible culprit tally, if all she is going to do is send me to Henrik and stare in her microscope all day?!
I think I noticed this problem even on my first playthrough, but the latest one made it painfully clear that she is only around for plot convenience. Also, I love how she gets low-key offended when Nancy asks her if she knows where Henrik is because she needs a glyph translated, and Joanna is like "I can read glyphs" even though she didn't even know the significance of the red hand print and literally sends Nancy to Henrik for any other question. Ugh. Taylor Sinclair is another complete dud in the game. His hideous tie, shiny lips, awful mustache, and disgusting-looking hair make more of an impression on me than anything else about him, except maybe that his taste in art is also garbage (Poppy Dada's work is horrific, I'm not sorry). Anyway, he is an incredibly boring character and sounds shady from the get-go, making him overall pretty creepy. Alejandro del Rio, our third POC character and first POC male, is significantly more interesting than Sinclair, but even that isn't saying much. I admire his desire for justice and hatred of how his country is constantly exploited by the art world and archaeological communities--he has some nice dialogue on these topics--but that's really all there is to him at the end of the day.
The last non-phone character is Henrik van der Hune, who is inarguably my favorite in the game and actually has character development. I'm not going to lie, when I first saw Henrik in the mask in the lab, I had two visceral thoughts: "This guy looks like he could be Hannibal Lecter...with more hair, a paper mask, and a background in epigraphy instead of psychiatry." and "They put a mask on this guy to save on animation. Wow." However, I did not let his slightly disturbing appearance get in the way of my initial opinion of him as an incredibly intelligent and generally helpful person. After he lost his memories and revealed aspects of his plan to Nancy, I found myself liking him even more. He clearly has more complex moral beliefs than most characters in these games for going to the lengths he did at the risk of personal loss. His trust in Nancy and their friendship is one of the highlights of the game. His background is also quite interesting (i.e., the journal mentioning Big Bunny) and morally complex, so I find his present motives all the more fascinating.
There are an ungodly number of phone characters in this game, and I don't really feel like mentioning them all. The true gems of the phone characters, or in one case a non-phone, not-present character, are Prudence Rutherford and Sonny Joon, as well as Poppy Dada (her dialogue is refreshing). Prudence is easily one of the most hilarious characters in the games. Her incredible voice-acting adds to the humor, but her lines are pure gold, from talking to her husband like a pet and talking about frolicking in orchards in her dreams. Sonny Joon, another fan favorite, makes his debut in this game with his iconic doodles, obsession with Koko Kringles, and capability of destroying everything in his path.
Music: For all the things done poorly in this game, the soundtrack was thankfully not one of them. I love the Latin and indigenous music influences heard in the compositions, especially the instrumentation. I loved how Pacal and the Whisperer were both sonically represented in the game. I think her theme is particularly strong because it starts out so soft with only a single flute, then another layer is added--chanting, strings, percussion, and brass--and the quiet voice becomes boisterous and confident. My two favorite songs, though, are the ones called "Town" and "Exotic" on the soundtrack. "Town" was the first one I heard during my first playthrough, and I was immediately in love. It's such a soothing track. "Exotic" is one of the few upbeat tracks--I am such a sucker for the classical guitar, and it is fantastic in that song--and it reminds me so much of the music from The Amazon Trail: Rainforest Adventures (a PC game from The Learning Company that I practically worshiped as a child. and I got it out of a cereal box), so there's a massively unrelated nostalgic factor as well. So good!
Puzzles: There's a good many puzzles in this game, and a lot of them are pretty challenging, or at least require that I write things down on a piece of paper. I can't say that any of them are stellar or standout to me in a good way, except the monolith (but even then I just wing it by trial and error). I honestly don't have much to say about the puzzles. They are related to the plot--even the ones that are part of Nancy chores are educational about Mayan culture--and require some thought.
Graphics: The environment graphics in this game are on par with the previous games, meaning they are very well done. The most impressive location would obviously be the museum. The character design is hit-or-miss in this game. Joanna looks significantly better than everyone in the game, and she looks better than the characters in The Final Scene; however, the remaining characters have some problems. Henrik's model is probably the second best, but his hair is stiff and strange and his arm in the lab coat is terrifying. Alejandro might be kind of cute, but he is suffering from the shoulder/arm/neck problems that other models have in previous games. His face is also slightly weird...maybe because he is still smiling at rest? Taylor Sinclair's model is an abomination to my eyes, but they did a decent job of making his face look aged. Still clay-like though.
Ending: I have mixed feelings about this ending. The build-up to the culprit reveal is great; the final puzzle is challenging and exciting! That reveal was entirely unexpected--I didn't do a lot of reading in my first playthrough--and slightly horrific, but incredibly cool. However, as soon as the culprit was revealed, I was disappointed. It was so obvious that it was going to be this character that I wasn't even remotely surprised; I was suspicious at almost the beginning and then when the twist happened with another character, it was completely obvious that I was right all along. Unfortunately, the culprit's dialogue was on par with the culprit's dialogue at the end of Treasure in the Royal Tower, so cheesy and just plain awful. Then, in true ND style, Nancy was thrust into a perilous situation with a "solve-it-or-you-die" timed puzzle. It isn't difficult, but I died a thousand times in my first playthrough because I hadn't read that important clue in Henrik's translation notes. Once Nancy is no longer in danger, suddenly everyone EXCEPT the culprit is just standing there smiling and quoting weird stuff at her when they could have, oh...I don't know, gotten her out of said perilous situation! It's so cringe-worthy and awkward, like how did they know she was there but did nothing to help and didn't apprehend the culprit??? On top of that, we pan over to the culprit and they scream "ARRGHHHHHHHHHH! Confound you, Nancy Drew!" while shaking their fist at the screen, even though the reason they are angry has literally nothing to do with Nancy's actions.
Truly, another one of the endings that could be fantastic and is ruined with incredibly cheesy dialogue and obvious villains.Other points of interest: The voice acting in this game is pretty good, although Alejandro del Rio's accent is clearly put-on. One of the things that really bothers me in this game is how much reading is involved. I normally don't mind having to do a bit or even a lot of reading in a video game, but almost all of the reading material is stationary, written in awful fonts/colors, and at incredibly inconvenient locations. I have no desire to go to Nancy's hotel room every time I need to check Henrik's or Sonny's notes, or rummage through Henrik's desk to find only half of what I need to do the HAM radio puzzle. It's incredibly frustrating, and even now I find myself ignoring that content even though it would probably make aspects of the game make more sense. I also hate how much time Nancy spends on the phone--there are more phone characters than in-game characters--and how she can only call from certain phones, but no matter what phone you're using none of these 11 digit phone numbers get logged in the registry at the bottom of the screen.
The Takeaway: It's worth noting that the first time I played this game was in 2014, at which point I had played games 1-5, 7, 8, 10-14, 17-31, and SCK Remastered. I had been unsuccessful at finding physical copies of some Nancy Drew games (specifically games 6-9, 15, and 16) for years, but I finally got the last few games I was missing from my collection between 2012 and 2014. Thus, I had played the majority of the Nancy Drew games--and all the stellar ones--hundreds of times before I got to these games, meaning that the nostalgia factor was missing and I had learned how to distinguish between a good and not-so-good Nancy Drew game. The first time I played Secret of the Scarlet Hand, I had just beaten Creature of Kapu Cave, a blight in the series for certain, and Danger on Deception Island (honestly, I think it's overrated, which I will explain once I review it) the day before, so I was feeling a bit depressed that these last ND titles I hadn't played (and this was before SEA came out and before all this mess with MID) were not up to par with the other titles I loved. Hence, I was overwhelming excited that SSH was not a bad game, or at least not like the ones I had just played, and my response to it was incredibly positive. However, on replays, I have become more shrewd, as time and familiarity allows, and noticed the numerous flaws. With that being said and those caveats in mind, I would give this game five stars out of ten, largely because of the poorly developed characters, obvious culprit, and cheesy ending.
So the final question is obviously whether I think you should play this game. It depends. If you are a dedicated fan who wants to play all of the games, even the really bad ones, then you should go for it; it is definitely not the worst game in the series by any stretch. If you've got a good many games under your belt and you're looking for another game to play, I'd say it depends on what else you haven't played, but this is a decent game, so it may be worth looking into. If you're new to the ND games, I'd advise you to give this one a hard pass and go for one of the classic titles or fan favorites to get you started. Of the classics, I would recommend Treasure in the Royal Tower and The Final Scene (both in my top ten), and I would recommend the legendary fan favorites (also in my top ten): Curse of Blackmoor Manor, Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon, and Secret of Shadow Ranch. If a new(er) game is more your speed, and especially if you have already played the aforementioned titles, then I highly recommend Shadow at the Water's Edge, The Deadly Device, Ghost of Thornton Hall, and The Silent Spy (again, all in my top ten).
Thank you for reading my review! I hope that my perspectives and ramblings inspire someone to play this game, replay this game, look at it through fresh eyes, or try it for the first time. I should be posting a review of Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake sometime over the next few days, and I will continue to post them as I complete my 2018 Nancy Drew Marathon...it won't be many moons until I start posting more reviews.
Previous review: The Final Scene
Next review: Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake
Other reviews: SCK STFD MHM TRT CAR DDI SHA CUR CLK TRN DAN CRE ICE CRY VEN HAU RAN WAC TOT SCK2 SAW CAP ASH TMB DED GTH
. I feel like she sounds like someone trying really hard to impersonate a sophisticated and slightly cooky old woman, and her voice just genuinely bothered me during my playthrough. I LOVED her dialogue though, and she was a great character overall! I also loved Poppy Dada, I thought her voice actress did a great job.
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