Nancy Drew®: Shadow at the Water's Edge

Shadow at the Water's Edge is the 23rd Nancy Drew adventure game. Nancy is staying at a ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn, that has a reputation for being haunted. There’s plenty of ghostly activity, but Nancy doesn't think it's a real haunting, so she decides to get to the bottom of the mystery. To solve the mystery, you explore the ryokan and several other locations around the city. You get to know the family who owns the inn and try to gather information about the family, their tragic loss, and what’s been happening at the inn. The family hasn’t asked you to be there and won’t talk to you about much directly, so you have to gather most of the information you need from other sources. I was interested in finding out about the family’s past, but the main mystery, what was really going on with the haunting, was fairly predictable. [spoiler] The true culprit was the only one with a motive that made any sense. Compared to some of the other games with supernatural elements to the case, this game is pretty direct about pushing a rational explanation right from the beginning of the game, which also helps clue you in to who was really behind it from pretty early on. It’s also weird that they straight up try to kill you and somehow end up with no real consequences. [/spoiler] This was one of the most difficult Nancy Drew games I've played so far. I had a lot of trouble with the puzzles and I had to rely heavily on a walkthrough. The self-contained, minigame-style puzzles were usually fun but pretty challenging, even from the beginning of the game. They were all solvable but some were very time-consuming (the last big one in the game took me about an hour!). If you don’t like number puzzles, like sudoku, you might not enjoy this one. I had more difficulty with finding the items. This game relies more on picking up items than some of the previous ones, but some of the items or areas you need to interact with are easy to miss or hard to navigate to. Most of the times I needed a hint, I was having trouble finding something easily missable. This is easily one of the scariest Nancy Drew games. There aren’t actually that many scary scenes, but they’re well-timed, and the spooky atmosphere helps keep up the tension. The music is pretty but also very creepy in places. You get the feeling that you’re all alone and the ghost could pop out at any time. The only issue is the pacing. If you struggle with the puzzles or find yourself at times wandering around trying to figure out what to do, the ghost scenes are too spread out and it makes the atmosphere less tense. Shadow at the Water’s Edge stands out for its spooky atmosphere. The story wasn’t perfect but was still pretty entertaining. Some of the puzzles were frustratingly difficult and made the game too slow, but I enjoyed many of them. 7/10

pachinko goes hard but the asian accents dont.

Russian language please or subtitles

The little girl inside me couldn't of been more overjoyed to be able to play this game again since I never finished it back in the 2000. The soundtrack was terrifying honestly, music was nicely done. If you like puzzles like Sudoku and Nanograms, you'll like this! Honestly, those got very played out at the end, there was a ton. The ending was anti-climatic and I feel like I didn't get closure with most of the characters. Bento building was so much fun! Price is also a little steep when you consider that it's mostly just paper puzzles.

Almost every Nancy Drew game is great! I especially like the music and puzzles in this one, but I really enjoy Nonograms, Renograms, and Sudoku, and not everyone might like those kinds of puzzles. They're mostly optional though. :D

0/10 made me jump far too many times for a silly point and click mystery.

I wish i was nancy drew

This game made this 32 yo fully grown adult cry. Not once, not even twice. But four times. ON JUNIOR MODE. How is this game meant for children?? HOW??? WHO MADE THIS GAME SO HARD? I STILL HAVE TEARS ROLLING DOWN MY FACE. TWELVE HOURS!!! TWELVE HOURS I WILL NEVER GET BACK!!!!!!!! The clicking...going to the wrong staircase EVERY TIME... I can't believe I had to look up TWO DIFFERENT GUIDES. And I still struggled to finish this game!!! I should have let Nancy die and stay dead tbh. The voice acting of Japanese characters being (primarily) white people was also CRAZY WORK. Who decided this?? I clocked that granny's voice IMMEDIATELY. Disgraceful. I'm so glad I was too scared of the Grudge when I was a kid in the 90s because I think I would have had a complete psychotic BREAKDOWN over trying to finish this godforsaken game. Nancy Drew is a stronger soldier than I ever could be.

Puzzles are very repetitive (hope you like sudoku because here is another giant sudoku) and suspects are slim and obvious. Very creepy atmosphere.

great atmosphere that offsets how much i don't LOVE some of the other aspects. a slim cast means a slim plot and that is definitely on display here, and unfortunately "Japan" seems to equate to "doing a ton of sudoku" in the world of puzzles - i really did not like how incredibly focused on basically Japanese newspaper puzzles this was. HOWEVER the setting is great and it does often take the crown for spookiest Drew for a reason - genuinely not afraid to try and be actually scary which is fun!