Nancy Drew®: The Secret of Shadow Ranch

I am a horse girl who's horrible at lasso-ing. It took me so many tries every time! A Nancy Drew classic with an unbeatable atmosphere and music, great puzzles that are just the right amount of challenging, and iconic characters. It's a staple. A great game to replay and a great intro to the series for newbies.

"Always remember to check your girth before hitting the trail." If you know, you know. This game has some interesting characters! Shorty and Tex I found humerous. The other two, Dave and Mary, are so-so. Like all Nancy Drew games, it has some puzzles that have unhelpful hints attached to them and you are left to blindly find your way around for the right answer. That said, I liked a lot of the puzzles, and they weren't terribly difficult even on Senior difficulty.

Big ND-Fan, but this one is just already a big no after 20 minutes. I dont know what they were thinking, the new inventory system is horrible, most voice actors are just weird (why is the horse guy doing ASMR?) and then the horse riding mechanic (or should I say the mechanic that will enable you to ride a horse) is so convoluted that I just couldnt get into it. Maybe I will revisit this one after im done with all of them, but for now, I am just gonna pass.

I love the storyline and puzzles in this game -- the story is one of my favorites in the entire ND franchise.

I love ND games and I'm aiming to play all of them, but out of all 14 games I've played so far, this one was my least favorite. The story line is very easy to stall in; you can accidentally miss a trigger very easily and end up getting stuck somewhere without realizing what you missed in order to get to the next part of the story. Some of the puzzles are very unclear and clunky, and the horse riding mechanic is not intuitive at all. I also found a lot of the characters to be kind of flat and uninteresting, and although I love the Western environment, the world feels limited.

Loved the chores and setting. Thought the character storylines were fun and really enjoyed this one! Great re-introduction after not playing in years!