Recent reviews by Kanaev

My second favourite ND game so far (Blackmoor in the first place and Ghost Dogs in the third) - it has interesting puzzles, characters, plot, setting, lore.. Everything! The game flows even better than a Final Scene, so there's never a downtime. Each time I moved trough the train I had something new to talk about with characters or solve a new puzzles, which are just hard enough to be a challenge but without being tedious.

I can't write anything else, because it just would be praise after praise. What an amazing game.

I found this part to be quite boring. The setting is nice, but most of the puzzles are either too easy, or too tedious (hello, sewing, or chore run across the whole town. Two times over). The end challenge was interesting, and so were characters, but location design is quite bland and I don't think I liked anything outside the "esper's" house (that magnificent cat!). The fact that I'm just off a genuinely fantastic game doesn't help either.
The plot was also a big mess, the fact that they've frankensteined three books into one story is partially a reason, but even without that - there were so many little annoyances with the way it was presented. The kitchen burned and possibly a place of a crime with clues? Why, you can never go there. A banker that's quite willy-nilly about his job and let's you have the contents of another's deposit box? Sure! A suddenly resurfaced will, typed out on a type-writer with no witnesses? Perfectly acceptable. The original Nancy Drew book stated quite clearly, that for a type-written will at least two witnesses are required for it to be accepted.

Overall - I didn't like the game in many ways. I could recommend it for it's unique setting and an entertaining realization of the town with driving around, but many aspects are either underused, or used in a bad way.

Good thing the next game is also one of my favourites and should not disappoint.

This was my first Nancy Drew game and it's probably the best one. Would be able to say for certain when I replay all of the others and catch up to the most recent one. Who would've thought there would be more than ten of them since the last time I touched the series! (Ransom of the Seven Ships, the twentieth, if not counting the two Dossier games)
Outstanding setting, flow, puzzles, music, atmosphere; interesting characters - everything in this game is top-notch. They've fixed up the new interface, introduced in the previous game and now the inventory navigation is better.
The game sets the tone immediately by an FMV opening and then drops you into a gorgeous room, that Nancy will sleep in for duration of the plot. Every corner of this manor is beautiful.
The puzzles in this installment are somewhat non-linear and I like it. There's one giant bottleneck of a puzzle, which you can approach bit by bit at any point of the game, or not to touch at all until the very end. It expects you to take things at your own pace, learn interesting history of Penvellyn family and their ingenious contraptions. It magnificently utilizes fairly small game world, by using every nook and cranny. The puzzles are also quite challenging, but their open endedness contributes to the flow, since you can drop them and go do something else, while thinking of the solution at the back of your mind. Or just abandon everything and play games with Jane. Her games are quite fun!

Overall - this is a masterpiece, with interesting plot, lore, puzzles, visuals - everything! Easily the best game out of the first eleven and boy it was lucky for me to accidentally pick it up in store back in 2006. It kickstarted my love for the series and I've bought and played them all, until Ransom of the Seven Ships killed my passion. I'll see how truly bad it was when I get to it, but I hope the games after still have the passion of Blackmoor Manor.

Also finally reading/hearing everything in English is nice, since the games were fully localized in Russia, and localization was quite good, I might add. Gosh I love this game.

I adore the past story we uncover in this game and how it's presented. The locations are interesting and great looking.
HeR has revamped the interface in this part, to allow more "play area" space, so now we can see even more detail in locations. Sadly, there is a downside with this new interface - the inventory screen. Before it was on screen all the time and easy to access/use. Now it's a separate button and it gets cumbersome to close it after you chose an item or to open and close it, when you want to put an item back.
Most of the puzzles were great, but then there are daily chores... You spend three days during the plot and each day you have to do two of the same boring "puzzles" with picking up ripe vegetables and getting eggs from the chicken coop. Both have their game over conditions. Nancy is here on vacation and the staff forces their chores on her and, if she gets them wrong - she's kicked off the ranch! She's not even working there, but failing at a task when you are a guest? Get out of here and never come back, you are scaring our best chicken.
There are a couple other frustrating puzzles, like baking a cake or picking up arrow heads. With cake it's easy to mess up and either you start the long process again, or get a game over. With arrow heads - they are scattered over most locations and you need to find them all in order to progress at one point. Missed one? Good luck checking every single location with a fine tooth comb. It's akin to a bug hunting in Ghost Dogs, but even worse.

Despite the flaws - it's a great game in the series, with many good gameplay additions, lore and most of the puzzles.

This is not a bad game, but it was so dull for me. I couldn't get interested in anything at all, even the puzzles. The game also starts with an awful puzzle of connecting pipes, which is not intuitive at all and took me a lot of guessing until I found where to even start.
Plot wasn't intriguing, even though there was a room to make it so, with sailor kidnapping and all. I liked only one character and the whole theme didn't interest me.
I'm sure there are many fans who like this game, but I wouldn't replaying it again.

Once again, HeR Interactive doesn't disappoint with setting and atmosphere. Good flow of puzzles and plot, as well as a better defined improvements to the overall gameplay, that started appearing since Scarlet Hand - now you can finally close books just by backing away from them! No need to flip back to the first page. Task list, ranks at the end of the game. Small, but welcome QoL changes.
The only problem with this game is it's length. I got used to the games being ~3,5 hours long, but this one is only ~2,5 hours. Sure, Nancy Drew game doesn't need to be long and what's there is enjoyable enough, but I feel like they were running out of time and didn't include everything planned.
Still a great ND game. Play it.

One of the best games in the franchise. Loved it as a child and it holds up all these years later. DOGS! GHOST DOGS! CUTE DOGS!
My only gripe with this game is the forest maze. It's a good maze, but you have to go there like five times mandatory and a lot more than that, if you mess something up. You can easily rank up ten or more trips, even if you learn it by heart.
Puzzles are great, plot and lore are interesting and characters are enjoyable. Also - DOGS!

I do not have warm memories about this game. It requires a lot of note scribbling. Years ago I wasn't diligent enough with my notes and didn't write down one phone number and then wasn't able to find it anywhere else in the game. Since my internet access back then was quite limited - I had to replay about half of the game to get back to that point.
This could describe a lot of puzzles in this game - they are seriously great, require a lot of cross-referencing and taking note of everything there is.
Alas, a lot of appeal from Nancy Drew games comes from the setting of the chosen game. I'm not to keen on Maya culture and, after this game, I'm fine with not hearing about them ever again. Their number system, multitude of gods, dozens of hieroglyphs, half of which look like faces.

tl;dr - the game is great, if you are into Maya or somewhat interested, but if not - there's so much of their culture, that you will drown.

This game has great pacing, which led to me finishing it in one sitting (a bit shy of three hours). Once again - Nancy Drew doesn't disappoint with it's setting. Puzzles were good, characters - quirky and the story is the best out of the first five games yet.

Now this is a good Nancy Drew game. The puzzles, location and the characters were all interesting. It was fun reading up on the castle's history, correlations to real-life history of french revolution and talking to most of the characters and your phone pals.
For the cons I would say that there should've been an option to prop up the hidden wall, so that you wouldn't have to go trough the elevator shaft each time to get to the tower and that some of the direction arrows for movement are not in the ideal spots. Even after moving trough the castle many times over I could forget where on the screen is the next arrow.
Main villain was a tad boring. There were interesting threads on "it's" real characters, but they weren't explored in any way.

Overall - the game is quite good. While it wasn't my first ND game, I think this would be a good place to start. Took me three and a half hours to beat and they were all enjoyable with good puzzles and locations.