Nancy Drew®: Mystery of the Seven Keys™

This is easily the worst Nancy Drew game I’ve ever played, and I’ve played every single one. Let’s start with the mechanics and graphics. The game looks painfully dated. I genuinely don’t understand why the developers abandoned the richly detailed 2D style in favor of this empty, early-2000s 3D aesthetic. The environments feel lifeless and unfinished, and the so-called “modern” free-movement system adds absolutely nothing. If anything, it only emphasizes how hollow the spaces feel. Worse, the game suffers from constant lag despite its unimpressive visuals. Even on “Ultra” settings, performance issues are frequent, which makes it clear that the graphical overhaul simply wasn’t worth the trade-off. Now for the truly unforgivable part: the story. It’s a mess. The game is riddled with continuity errors, the dialogue is clunky, forced, and often pointless, and there are literal grammar mistakes. The puzzles feel completely disconnected from both the story and the environment. In one particularly absurd instance, a puzzle is solved solely because Ned randomly info-dumps the solution to Nancy. Progression is strictly linear, with tasks needing to be completed in a precise order to trigger the next event, yet there’s often no narrative logic tying those events together. You’re left wandering aimlessly, trying to guess what arbitrary action will move the game forward; whether that’s speaking to a specific character for no discernible reason or entering a location the story hasn’t even hinted at needing to go. Overall, this was a massive disappointment and a complete waste of money. I’ve always loved the Nancy Drew games (even the weaker entries) but this one made me regret buying it at all.

This game is a disappointment on all fronts. First off - if you play this game, play on Junior Detective mode. I played on Senior Detective, which removes any hints which direct you to the next goal. I don't think I've ever used a walkthrough for a game so much, not because the game was difficult, but because the game gave no direction for me to go in, so I was just wandering. The story is the best part of the game, and even then, it's pretty lackluster. The weirdest part is the technical part of the game. This should be a fairly simple game. Basically it's just walking around, talking to people, and solving puzzles. Why does it have such long loading times? Why does it make you load new areas so often? This makes moving around a lot more tedious than it needed to be. The new modern walking mode could have been fine, but it adds nothing important to the game, while removing a lot from the game. The fixed views of the older games allowed you to be confident you found everything you needed to in a certain area, whereas now it's easy to miss an important clue you need because it's in a corner or something. I feel like they're trying to modernize the game without considering what actually made the games fun. I think the simplicity of the older games was a major asset that makes them replayable. I love the Nancy Drew games, and I really want to like this game, but I can't.

It took this game only 74 minutes to crash in a way that literally nearly bricked my PC. In those scant 74 minutes, the game managed to thoroughly un-impress me with a poorly written and awkward script, stiff and unnatural the voice acting, and annoying UI and puzzles. I cannot in good faith recommend this game, even to longtime HeR fans like myself. I own every single other ND game in a physical collection, but I refuse to keep this one. Returning immediately.

It took me awhile to buy this game based on the mixed reviews, but I'm happy that I caved because now I understand why. There were a few times I was confused by what to do next because it wasn't always obvious and a few puzzles were kind of ridiculous, but overall I think the game was fine.

For the price of this game, I would not recommend. As others have stated, it is just not the same as the others in the series. The voice acting for Nancy was robotic sounding and I seriously thought they used AI to do it. I enjoyed some of the puzzles, but felt like the story wasn't filled out. That there wasn't a clear reason for Nancy to be involved in this mystery thematically. Also, they dragged the ending out. It was probably 3x longer than it should have been. Midnight in Salem was better if we are comparing universally disliked Nancy games. Take with that what you will, but the only reason I got this game in the first place was because it was on a really good sale. With this type of reception from their last two games, I'd honestly be surprised if HerInteractive makes another one.

For reference, I played Midnight in Salem (MIS from here on) and enjoyed it while also having many issues and being uncertain about the future of Nancy Drew games. While not quite up to the bar of the previous style Nancy Drew games, they improved a lot with this entry. There were a lot of puzzles throughout the game, some of which were pretty obtuse, but I played on Master Sleuth difficulty and thus didn't have a checklist and hint system available to me in my journal. That said, it was nice to have a lot more puzzles to solve again! The character models and acting were also a step in the right direction from MIS, which had some trouble with the new engine at times. This one was a lot longer than most Nancy Drew games and felt like it had multiple "acts" which largely got better with each act reached. I was excited to come back to this game after each session to keep exploring and see where things would go next. Additionally, it was fun seeing a lot of easter eggs and tie-ins to the previous games, trying to make this one fit into the bunch better. Some of the issues that I still have with this game are occasional points where you can't move forward with things the game seemed to be telling me to do unless I went and did some random other task that may have been mentioned a while prior as well as the mixed control schemes not always getting along well. It felt like the "modern" controls which were more free roam than point and click were preferred by the developers as they handled better, but I mostly played with the classic point and click style. TLDR: It may still have some issues that were seen in Midnight in Salem, but this was a marked improvement seen in graphics, amount and style of puzzles, and connection with other games. This game made me more hopeful that if/when we get another game, it might get even more things right. It's a little pricier than the other games, but worth checking out on a sale!

I wanted to like this game... Gameplay is clunky, and the flat copy/paste NPCs littering the environment are awkward. I own a lot of Nancy Drew games, but this one has no personality.

The actual worst ND game.

While this game was far better than Midnight in Salem, it was still lack luster. The charm of the old point-and-click Nancy Drew games was not there for me. It seems as if HER is trying to create moody, suspense filled mysteries, but they have lost sight of what made Nancy Drew games so special. I can appreciate their attempt to branch out and try a new style of game that might appeal to a wide variety of audiences; however, HER is losing the loyalty of avid Nancy Drew players who appreciated the old games with a well thought out mystery/story and a good mixture of puzzles and tasks. The pace of the story felt rather slow to me and disjointed. It took far more effort to figure out how to continue the story than was necessary. It was difficult to know where to go or what to do next. There were also fewer locations to explore than you might think. There was a map available but it only showed one portion of square, which was easy to explore without a map. Useless. There were not as many puzzles as I was hoping for in this game, plus the coffee making portion of the game was simple, boring, and completely unnecessary. While I do enjoy making food or drinks in previous games, this task felt completely pointless and simple compared to the old games. I don't want to spoil anything, but the mystery behind the seven keys, and what it took to recover said keys, was disappointing and also lack luster. Let's just say that it is not as in depth as you might expect. Another nit-picky thing is that the timing of the dialogue lagged too much. There were pauses between each line of dialogue that made it unrealistic and distracting. The conversation did not flow as it should. Things I DID like about the game included the following: 1)you had the option to play the game in point-and-click or free roam 2)helping set the stage for the marionette show was engaging 3)the computer puzzle was challenging 4)there were mysteries within a mystery that I appreciated.

I have a deep love for the nostalgia of the early Nancy Drew games, and while the changes HER have been making the past two games have been somewhat oppositional to what feels like the heart of the original games, I do have to give them their flowers where they deserve them. KEY was fun, maybe not as fun as some of my favorites from the lineup, but it was entertaining. I think the story, while pretty predictable in some aspects, was well written and it did feel like a ND game. Nancy's voice actor seemed to struggle with being more loose and emotionally readable in KEY versus MID, but I really think that towards the end, during her conversation with the big bad, she sounded great and really shined there. I loved that HER stayed true to the almost never ending lore and history of the games location. You can tell it was a labor of love, and that they truly want to find that middle ground between modernizing the games and keeping the charm of the original point and click. It's not lost on any of us that it unfortunately loses a lot of that charm and appeal with certain modernizations, however. I love the new graphic and the models for the characters; they were super well done and didn't have that creepy uncanniness that I think many have complained about with MID and many of the early games. But the interface between free roaming and point-and-click modes, the menu, the phone, and the journal felt very clunky and lack that charm that even the simplistic borders of past games had. There is something to be said about the fact that people do not like change, and neither do I. But, I am not naive enough to believe a company can survive if it refuses to adapt either. I hope HER continues to put out games and find that sweet spot between the original and the new-gen versions of Nancy Drew. I remember being that little girl and so deeply admiring Nancy and being able to have a game series that was so heavily woman-focused while also defying the standard of what "girl games" were "supposed" to be. As a fully grown adult, I know I will be looking forward to the next addition to the series and the many games it has inspired as well. I hope HER knows that many of us do want to see more and hope for the absolute best for the company and the games, but that it may be worth listening to your audience more. On the other hand, I hope that the fanbase will also realize that change is inevitable and to have a little grace for a company who is essentially having to find their footing again.