CLANNAD
it’s alright, I guess…
– Real player with 1000.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Drama Visual Novel Games.
this game.. what can i even say about this game? This is not just a game, but a part of my life now, one that i will cherish deeply forever. this game can make you laugh, cry, and just enjoy the simplicity of living. not a single moment is not perfectly made. I cant even begin to count how many times this game has made my cry more than anything else. This game was able to bring true love and happiness into my life, and i would choose to keep this over anything or anyone else in a heartbeat. This is easily the game ever made, and a masterpiece i will always look back on with love.
– Real player with 94.6 hrs in game
Nancy Drew®: Sea of Darkness
This game hands-down has the best graphics I’ve ever seen in a Nancy Drew game- from the gorgeous northern lights in the sky to the stunning ice caves to the characters themselves, the graphics were absolutely beautiful in my opinion. I found all of the characters to be likeable/ could sympathize with them to some extent as well. If anything, I wish there was even more dialogue so I could have spent more time getting to know some of the characters. This game was chock-full of puzzles and I found them to be quite challenging on Master sleuth level. Something that surprised/ disappointed me was how few “fatal errors” there were to make in this game- I’ve heard there were only three total. I weirdly enjoy the deaths in these games and was a little disappointed to have so few. All in all, an awesome game which I would strongly recommend. It took me 15 hours to complete.
– Real player with 15.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Drama Detective Games.
Not bad as far as Nancy Drew games go…
I’ve been loyally playing these since ‘Secrets can Kill’ first came out back in the 90s so I can assure you this is better than the atrocity which was ‘The Creature of Kapu Cave’ or the utter nonsense which was ‘Ransom of the Seven Ships’. This game was a much better ‘ship’ game that’s for certain and the ‘ship facts’ were fun to listen to.
It definitely ranks below the kings of the saga, but it is still enjoyable. The puzzles are not bad, though some of them use common themes and it feels a tad repetitive. The mini games are fun though and I enjoyed making enough money to purchase everything in the gift shop (because I can). Plus the Iceland scenery is nice. In general the plot was… a bit more mediocre than some of the other games - I suspected the guilty party immediately and the climax felt a bit stunted.
– Real player with 14.7 hrs in game
Nancy Drew®: The Haunting of Castle Malloy
7/10. I’ve been a Nancy Drew fan for a long time, and I enjoyed this one, with a few caveats. Many of the puzzles have very opaque directions that make it difficult to figure out how you are even supposed to approach solving them. The hint system of the “fortune teller” robot is not particularly helpful - you can only get one hint about puzzles/tasks, and many of them do not make sense either. It’s not even that the puzzles themselves are super hard, it’s just that it’s not clear how to solve them (the rocks, the pillars, the final puzzle sequence involving moving particular items in order). The fact that the game is all at night also made it more difficult to see things I was supposed to be noticing. If you can use a site like Universal Hint System that helps. But even with outside instructions, the final set of puzzles felt very tedious and frustrating. It made finishing less enjoyable and more “oh thank god I don’t have to do any more of these.”
– Real player with 14.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Drama Detective Games.
Pros:
-Beautiful soundtrack, scenery, and smooth gameplay.
-Interesting storyline, for the most part.
-The puzzles aren’t too challenging.
-A lot of places to go, though not necessarily to explore.
Cons:
-VERY dark gameplay throughout (minus the pub); it was very difficult to see what was going on when playing on my glassy-screen laptop during the day.
-Only 3 interactive characters.
-Not much direction from characters.
I think this is a pretty good ND game. After replaying it, though, I didn’t seem to enjoy it as much as I did the first time. Though it’s common in ND games, I found the dual storyline slightly confusing and strange. It did, however, make for a satisfying and complete ending. It’s pretty easy to understand what needs to be done, though there is barely any direction given from characters, except for some tasks that need to be completed. Additionally, it was slightly disappointing that the castle had very minimal opportunity for exploring (only three rooms with little-to-no mystery involved, and most of the castle was closed off). The storyline was shocking, frightening, and exciting in moderation, creating a nicely balanced pace. I think this game is a good experience, and it made me feel accomplished upon solving the case. I think the price is fair, but would recommend waiting for a sale.
– Real player with 12.8 hrs in game
Nancy Drew®: The Phantom of Venice
Probably one of my favorite Nancy Drew games. Most of the puzzles, save two monstrous ones, are enjoyable and fairly straightforward to solve. The environments in this particular game are quite something to behold as well.
This game isn’t perfect, however; the characters all have promise but wind up feeling a tad underdeveloped, and the phantom himself definitely doesn’t live up to the hype. And then of course, you have the Scopa minigame. (I actually really enjoy it, but I imagine that if you don’t like it as much, it must be agonizing to have to play a minimum two games of it to progress the story.)
– Real player with 20.0 hrs in game
My second Nancy Drew game since I got back to them recently after a decade. I really liked this one. It is set in Venice, Italy and really has a fantastic scenery and appeal about it. I also really liked the voice acting. The story is interesting and there is quite a few more locations and characters involved than the previous game I finished (Legend of the Crystal Skull). I went for a senior detective level this time and I must say the puzzles were great and managable and super interesting (I played Legend of the Crystal Skull on junior mode and it was probably 2x harder). There are two puzzles at the very end of the game which are super intense though. There’s a bunch of stuff I learned (from italian phrases to sending encoded messages in both binary code and chess positions to kanji characters). The game feels consistent overall and I highly recommend it. If not else just for the scopa simmulator game. That was fun as hell. I know how to play it now.
– Real player with 18.1 hrs in game
Steel Empire
The war between your nation, the Republic of Silverhead and the Motorhead Empire has been fought for many years. The Empire has maintained superiority over you because it is a wealthy nation with many resources. The Republic is known for its brave warriors; now it is time to take the war to the Empire. Lead the Army south to liberate the city of Rahl and drive out the Empire once and for all. Time to choose and board your Airship Captain. You can choose a lighter, faster, less-armored plane or a heavier, slower, more-armored plane, depending on your preferences. Choose your level of difficulty; there are 4 to choose from. Now take to the skies Captain, and lead your nation to Victory.
– Real player with 5.3 hrs in game
-=The Good=-
Nice-sounding battle music
Upgraded visuals over Genesis version
Good control and hit detection
An extra sub-boss near the end
Detailed spritework
Cool Steampunk setting
Extra parallax scrolling added to some backgrounds
-=The Bad=-
Noticeable artifacts in movies
Lots of typos
Odd mix of sprites and non-sprite effects
Strange sprite outline issues
Some stuttering at times
-=The Details=-
Steel Empire was a game originally released on the SEGA Genesis back in 1992, when the influx of shmups for the system was dying down. It made a name for itself by being a well made game with a Steampunk setting that differed from a lot of the other shmups coming out at the time, along with a somewhat movie-like presentation. In time, the game was ported to the GameBoy Advance in 2004 and the DS in 2014. And this game is more or less a port of the DS version.
– Real player with 5.2 hrs in game
Nancy Drew®: The Haunted Carousel
Nothing really haunting - but a lot of riddles to solve.
In this episode of Nancy drew you have to find out why an old carousel is going bump in the night. Since there was a piece of it stolen it start’s to run on it’s own will - or so it seems.
Again the game uses the standard routines of interviewing people, talking with friends and try to solve riddles in the amusement park. All to soon it comes clear that all of the people you can interview might have a motive.
Technically this game is a point and click adventure, the game is aimed for younger female audiences, but again it’s playable for all who like adventure and puzzle games. This series is famous for the sometimes creepy stories that are involved. Oh… have I told you that you can have serious accidents during the adventure? No… well… Now you know! Have fun bashing in your head. Don’t worry since there is a cute replay option, something we urgently need in real life.
– Real player with 14.3 hrs in game
Replaying this was an unexpectedly pleasant surprise, because this was the game that caused my Nancy Drew burnout ~10 years ago. It seemed boring to me, probably because there wasn’t as much of a history focus outside of the history of carousels and is set in a lame, drab amusement park. This time around, I thought it was a pretty strong entry to the series.
I remember having some trouble with the puzzles before, which I breezed through this time. As you need full access to the park to carry out an investigation, you receive a handbook that covers various topics relevant to puzzles throughout the game, including use of a lathe, Ohm’s law, soldering, and more. I think the handbook seemed overwhelming the first time, but it’s really not. There was a small programming-related puzzle, too. I learned a bit of programming since the my first play, so I wasn’t confused by that puzzle except that it didn’t actually make much sense (you had to write a game update into the code, which was done by making the update name the parameter of the gameover function). It was a nice thought, but that could have been a better puzzle that taught more than it did.
– Real player with 10.2 hrs in game
Nancy Drew®: The Shattered Medallion
I don’t really get why the reviews on this weren’t great. There was lots of puzzles and gorgeous art. I thought the reality show setting was a plausible explanation for needing to do a puzzle for every mundane task (other Her games are…a little less plausible). There was some re-use of puzzles and mini-games from previous Nancy Drew games, but that’s not the worst thing in the world. After all, there’s only so many good puzzles, and it’s much better than having barely any puzzles at all (looking at you, Midnight in Salem). Only three things bugged me. First, some of the activities were a bit repetitive (the submarine, the dial at the end). Second, a whole lot of the dialog was inscrutable. I know that it’s part of Sonny’s and Patrick’s characters to be goofballs, but it was a little too disorienting. Third, I wish there had been a Maori character, and more background on Maori culture.
– Real player with 13.2 hrs in game
I personally enjoyed this game for all of the puzzles. They come one after another, so be prepared to do a lot of puzzle-solving and exploration. Even though I played on the Master level, the puzzles aren’t too crazy. I did notice that most of the puzzles don’t necessarily fit in the theme of a reality show (which is the game’s main plot line), but they fit in the traditional “educational” angle of the Nancy Drew games.
There are some kooky conversations with the characters and a lot of references to past games. If you’re new to Nancy Drew, all of the references may sound strange. If you don’t take the story or characters too seriously, and just in it for the puzzles, I would recommend this game (especially over Midnight in Salem).
– Real player with 9.6 hrs in game
Nancy Drew®: The Silent Spy
Overall, I’d give this one a 7.5/10! I liked the story and the puzzles were a good level of difficulty, perhaps it was on the medium side. Some of the characters were great, some were alright. The setting of this game was a good one as well, however there weren’t that many places to explore. I’m glad that the “chore” type stuff in this one was super minimal - barely there at all. I also liked that most of the resources you needed were with you most of the time.
One of the weaker points to this one was that there was a lot of repetition in the conversations with the characters. I think Nancy asked the same questions like 10 times. But because I liked most of the characters enough, it was not unbearable, and you can skip through them. It also felt like a relatively short game compared to some others.
– Real player with 14.6 hrs in game
Scotland. Secret agent themed brain teasers. Scotland. Archery. Need I say more?
Seriously, if you are a long time Nancy Drew game fan, this one hits all the marks, not to mention it’s a rare and responsibly told foray into Nancy’s canon and they do such a good job with the story. The game flows well and there always seem to be something to do, even in lulls
(of which there were few). It has a good range of puzzles, ranging from fun, to medium to challenging (for me these are always the ones where you simply use association and intuition to put the clues together, and ultimately solve it using trial and error). Be warned there is a lot of text/letters to read and lots of dialogue.
– Real player with 10.5 hrs in game
Nancy Drew®: Secrets Can Kill REMASTERED
Unimportant little Rant:
People really want to find any flaw they can with the Nancy Drew series. I have been playing this game series since I was about 5. I’m 20 now. I love the clunky art style, and like 12 fps you get when scrolling around, it’s charming more so than ugly. It gives me a feeling of going back to 2007 and playing these kinds of games all over again, when I couldn’t just find a review or guide to it and beat it in half an hour, but actually had to use the in-game books and phone for clues and help. I guess as younger and younger people start to play this series, they might not fully appreciate it, much like I don’t think I could fully appreciate an N64 game. With that being said, I hope whatever your opinion on the series, you will try to rate it based on the time it came out and not now. It obviously is littered with problems if you think about it from a 2021 perspective, but if you could imagine yourself back in the 2000s, this game was one of the better series coming out for the point-and-click adventure genre at the time. Now you have much better story games like LIS and most of Telltale Games' series, but the Nancy Drew games to me still retain that old flair and charm of early 2000’s point and clicks.
– Real player with 29.0 hrs in game
ABSOLUTELY RECOMMENDED! :) :) :) :) For those who love playing Nancy Drew games, you are going to love this one, because it’s much better than the majority of the older Nancy Drew games. If you read 2 reviews I’ve made on 2 of the older Nancy Drew games (Treasure in the Royal Tower and The Final Scene), and read the problems that are in both of them, none of those problems are even in this one, because it’s actually a remake, that’s why it’s called remastered, it’s a newer and improved version of the original ‘Secrets Can Kill’ one that was made in the 1980s, so it has the feel of the older games, with a better story than the majority of ones in the newer games lately, but has the features of the newer ones, like:
– Real player with 28.1 hrs in game
Nancy Drew®: Shadow at the Water’s Edge
Staying in a Japanese inn you find out its haunted meaning theres a mystery afoot, Nancy Drew takes the case! The music is very fitting with a Japanese poppy kind of sound. The game has TONS of stuff to do from puzzles to playing pachinko and making Bento. This game has ALOT of content, it can be as short or as long as you want. There are all kinds of puzzles like Nanograms, where you make a picture out of boxes, to Renograms, and Soduku. There are 10 of each of those puzzles, but fear not there is only a few soduku things that need solving, having never done soduku before, I thought it was fun but not impossible. Some of the puzzles made no sense, like one where your underwater and cut some ropes, the pattern for cutting them is just strange.
– Real player with 24.4 hrs in game
Nancy Drew: Shadow at the Water’s Edge is a mystery sleuthing game that tells the story of Nancy’s time in Japan staying at a ryokan with a reputation for being haunted. Nancy decides to investigate the mystery to figure out what is going on and who is causing all the mysterious turmoil about the place.
This was… not an enjoyable experience. For one thing, it felt really insensitive, like replace all of the ls in a word with the r sound to give them an accent kind of insensitive. I’m not Japanese, so I can’t comment on the authenticity of the game, but it definitely used the popular cultural elements to its advantage, unfortunately, it didn’t really seem to benefit the game, or highlight the reason those elements would be enjoyable to play with in a game, so every time a task came up where you had to do something that was culturally significant, it felt tedious and underused rather than enjoyable and charming like I hoped it would be.
– Real player with 14.0 hrs in game