Miniature spoilers for plot, but no big reveals.
At the moment of writing this, I have played 8 Nancy Drew games.
I simply do not like this game. It was the first ND game I played, and if I hadn’t already bought two other games (which I ended up loving) I would have never played another ND game ever again. I suppose there are people who could find this nonsense campy, or charming, but definitely not me. There are aspects you can appreciate if you already are a fan of the series, but it absolutely sucked as a first entry!
Storyline is dumb, none of the characters are likeable, the mystery is so unrelated to the plot, and honestly comes out of nowhere. It’s not even related to the final confrontation. This games tries to do everything at once, and succeeds at nothing at all.
The puzzles are so tedious, I, for the life of me, couldn’t do more than 1-2 on my own, and I played as a junior detective! Because this was my first ND game, I felt really discouraged, because I assumed all games were going to be like this. Glad I was wrong!
Even with the guide, there were puzzles I still couldn’t understand or complete. The dark room puzzle (which is also the first puzzle of the game, so, not a terrific introduction), Minette’s tea puzzle, for which I didn’t properly read the instruction dialog, and since it’s non-repeatable, I couldn’t solve it by myself, the god-forsaken final code puzzles, which I honestly didn’t even bother with much on my own (learned helplessness after a game like that). There’s probably more, but when you just unlock stuff with guide it doesn’t stay in your memory as much.
Oh, that final confrontation was also painful, since I was already so checked out, and wanted it to be over, I had to really force my brain to remember punch combinations.
This game is also very tedious. Did I already mention that? After playing a bunch of other ND games, I now know that all of them are like that. I mean, they are a product of their time. But here? You have to do a lot of pointless repetitive bs, especially if you’re trying to figure everything out on your own. My biggest waste of time in this game was trying to buy stuff for Minette without a guide. I ran out of money and had to paint that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Mona Lisa like 60-70 times, I think. And when I finally gave up, and opened the guide, I still had to paint-paint-paint again and again. What a draaaaaag.
Jing Jing cookies is another ridiculous puzzle that should be illegal. I usually love baking puzzles, but I loathe those garbage mint-cookies. Just as there happens a shortage of mint (what??) JJ needs those ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ monstrosities, so I have to buy a bunch of mint, WITH MY OWN MONEY, for 400 euros!! I hate this!! This game made me feel so exploited, and I honestly was so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stressed before starting that puzzle, because I was afraid that if I fail, I would have to buy mint again, which meant I would have to paint yet ANOTHER ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of Mona Lisas. This game gave me performance anxiety over a puzzle, what the hell.
This game, unlike most other ND games not only forces you to write down phone numbers, you also have to manually dial them each time. So, not really the biggest pet peeve, but these things just kept piling up and making me more frustrated and impatient with the game. Taking-pictures-on-camera task is probably totally fine on its own, but placed in a middle of a game like this, it drives you up the wall.
I mentioned that other games are also tedious, but a lot of them make up for it with story, dialog, setting or puzzles. Here I didn’t feel any of it. It was just tedious clicking over a boring drag of a game.
This game also somehow feels really ugly, and I’m not talking about graphics. Don’t get me wrong, I love how a lot of older games look and feel, I’m not scared of pixelated graphics. So what I mean by “ugly” is that DAN is dull-looking, charmless, and has a day-time television color palette (saturation is really hurting this game’s aesthetic). Honestly, the colors of the poster are a lot more appealing, and if the game’s designers relied more on reds, oranges and greys, it would likely create a better atmosphere. But that’s just my opinion!
The only somewhat good locations are the gold tower and Minettes office, the latter of which was really sullied by the presence of roaches. My most hated location is the park. I don’t know why; I just hate it. I hated going back there, or navigating through it, or talking to all the loonies who live there.
Speaking of the loonies. All of the characters were irritating and I couldn’t stand talking to any of them. None of them had a full storyline. Biggest mystery of the plot is the story of that guy’s ancestor and he is implied to be onto it, but he just… not at all a part of it. Minette is backwards though, she is really big in the plot, but her own mystery is veeeeery background until like, the last five seconds.
Not a single character to root for aside from the assistant, but she is so back-ground, you even have an option to lose her for 2/3 of the game. I feel like, she was only given that aspiration of being a designer, so that there could be someone with a happy ending.
Storyline, like I said, is everywhere and nowhere. It felt like HER couldn’t decide what should be the main focus, so the game just doesn’t have one.
It’s so mish-mashed and underbaked. Usually, in ND games all elements, motivations and plotlines come together in the end, to form a SINGLE COHERENT plot, but here everything just felt so out of left-field. Minette’s failed romance and her abuse towards her assistant don’t factor in at all when it comes to the main mystery.
Also, just because I call it the main mystery, doesn’t mean it is treated as such by the story. It’s simply the only thing in this game that I can call that. It has almost zero build up, that is muddled by the aforementioned unrelated nonsense.
Just as a side-note, any man who pines after Minette is probably crazy. That german dude is a deeply disturbed man. But so is Minette, so I guess they are a perfect pair.
To avoid sounding like a complete hater I will add that there probably are elements that could make this a better experience. Most of my frustrations were exacerbated by the fact that I was new to the series, so I ended up missing out on a lot of potentially fun stuff. For example, I didn’t really use my phone contacts, because I assumed they were useless dialog repetitions (they are not, they give hints and content). Nor did I seek speaking with characters to get their opinions on new info. I talked to Jean-Michelle only twice, when it was necessary, but apparently you could have a gossip session with him?? (FOMO is real now, in every new ND game I play I talk to characters hundreds of times just to not miss out on content).
There is also a fun mechanic, when the daily newspaper foreshadows something within the story (MINT!!!!!), but only if you bother reading it.
In retrospect, I probably could try to replay the game just to have a more nuanced look at it, but definitely in a few years, for now the dread is too strong.
1/10, this game, like Minette, is not “rude”, it just hates you.
