#likesdislikes

So uh.... overall, that was pretty bad. I will say it was better in some ways than I imagined and worse in ways I wasn’t expecting. 

The Good/Likes:

--Music was surprisingly decent. My guess is they probably just outsourced this portion so it was pretty likely it would turn out good, but it did set the vibe well.

--Elaborate plot. I don’t think it was perfectly executed by any means, but HeR definitely was trying to create a more grown up and more detailed plot than in the past. 

--I liked that they had a “Read text only” option for some of the old fashioned-y script-y text that’s sometimes on documents. I did not like that there was a typo in one of the text-only versions. That’s just sloppy.

The Bad/Dislikes:

--The graphics are really bad. Like it is true that the trailer is HeR picking out the 2 best minutes of content and even those were bad. The animation of characters is so sloppy, and the lighting of the environment is cartoonish.

--Navigation is rough. It’s a hybrid between point and click and free-roaming and it just becomes awkward and difficult to get to one specific point in a room using the system. Yet even with that, there were a lot of times where puzzles involved finding very specific items/locations to click on in a room which were virtually impossible to do using the interface.

--Not enough puzzles. I think I can count on one hand how many actual puzzles that took some thought were in the game. 90% of the game was wandering around and talking to people which brings me to:

--SO MUCH DIALOGUE. Thank the Lord we were able to skip through the dialogue because not only was the dialogue lengthy, it was so much filler. So much dumb banter between the Hardy Boys and Deirdre, or Nancy just recapping to a suspect what she already learned. And combining that with sloppy animation makes me think HeR just added dialogue for the sake of adding game time. If the animation had been good, I would’ve at least felt like HeR was just committing to this being a character-heavy game. But this just feels sloppy and lazy.

--It’s all very linear. Everything is really straight-forward with what you should do next and who you should talk to, etc. There’s not the same wandering and exploring freely that happened in the old games, and that definitely made the game feel shorter.

Overall thoughts:

Likes:

--So many puzzles. I feel like everyone else hated this about this game, but I actually really liked them. I thought there were some really unique ones(like the elements one to get into Soren’s computer, and the fishcolormaze thing in the captain’ chest) that took a good amount of thought and strategy. Although I am a little done with the dozens of variations of Sudoku ngl.

--Music was really, really good. I don’t usually comment on music but I was v impressed with the music in this game. I like the scary sounding music as well as the more melodic sounding bits. It had kind of a Syberia vibe to it.

--For the first time in like 8 games I actually liked (most of)the characters in this game. Gunnar was probably my favorite. He had funny dialogue and when I found his “box” of things I actually felt genuinely sorry for him. And, guys, if you’ve been reading my blog for a while that is a BIG DEAL since I’ve p much hated all of Nik’s characters until now.

--I like the amount of places to explore. It wasn’t so overwhelming but it still felt like you were really finding new things throughout the game.

--Not 100% sure on this, but I think your choices in conversations actually affected the character’s answer. It wasn’t that thing we’ve been having where regardless of what you choose the character finds a way to bring it back around to get you the same information.

--A very minor thing, but I like that when we dug with the hook, it didn’t just light up instantly and say “hEY U FOUND THE SPOT CLICK HERE.” We had to take a gamble ourselves and feel confident enough in following the directions to know when to take the hook out.

Dislikes:

--I was v disappointed in the interaction with the character Magnus himself. There was so much build-up beforehand that I thought when we finally met him it'd be super exciting and he'd be a really clever, interesting character. Instead we got a boring design(head was covered, face was plain), flat voice-acting, and virtually no conversation with him to "explain" himself. He was so flat and dull I thought he was gonna turn on us and steal the treasure.... but he didn’t... so????? kinda left me feeling disappointed.

--I still think there are some things that didn’t really get resolved. Will be compiling a full list later, but what comes to mind rn is a. who set off the alarm on the ship near the end of the game and b. why did they have a “fake treasure”?

--The Ned thing was weird and unnecessary but I liked that we had the option to be completely apathetic toward him (I chose that option).

Overall, this game reminded me a lot of the classic Nancy Drew games. It was incredibly formulaic. The fake treasure was something we’d done before(SSH). The villain trying to kill us in a cave in was something we’d done before(TRN). The logic puzzle as a cooking game was something we’d done before(SAW). The song passed down through generations since the lyrics are significant was something we’d done before(CUR). And yes, Gunnar is basically just Holt Scotto 2.0.

Yet.... It worked. And it was a very enjoyable game, better than a lot of what we’ve had recently. I know HeR tries to branch out and experiment, and you don’t want the games to be too formulaic, but there’s something to be said for “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.”

And HeR didn’t fix or change or really try anything new with this game but I loved it nonetheless and I think that’s a lesson to be learned.

ND33 Thoughts:

Likes:

--Lots of plot twists which lead to me actually having a desire to figure out more about the mystery.

--Really diverse and interesting puzzles. (although the marble weighing puzzle was literally the exact same puzzle as the mice/cat one in TMB which is the exact same puzzle as in Professor Layton) There were some that we figured out via trial and error pretty quickly, and others where we really had to sit down and think about them.

--A good amount of exploration, although finding Tartarus at first was almost overwhelming.

--Length was pretty good. I'd say it took us maybe 9 hours all the way through?

Dislikes:

--The music seemed pretty much non-existent. Every once and a while I heard a few notes that sounded like some of the music from HAU but I could barely hear it most of the time.

--The characters. They all fit into the same Nik-mold we've had for the past few games. There's the plain, nice woman, the nervous "silly" girl, the angry scary guy, and the generic probably pretty nice guy. The face design also makes them look really similar, and Xenia being voiced by the same person as Zoe(SPY) with virtually no changes made it feel really old. I've had issues with the characters in the past few games for the aforementioned reasons.

--Too many "quirky" things. I know a lot of people looooove the "silly" banter and the audio files and crap like that, but i just find them tedious and almost cringe-worthy. Something about the "ATAC FOREVER!" line was delivered especially flat and out of place humor-wise.

ND32 thoughts:

Likes(this is going to be so short i'm sorry...):

--Really good puzzles. They were unique and a good mix of challenging and simple.

Dislikes:

--Music was boring.

--Characters were so dull. The only person I moderately cared about was Patrick and I still had no desire to talk to him. Bess was beyond annoying and so painfully unfunny. I felt like Herinteractive was trying so hard to do "quirky" and "weird" characters and they're just becoming awkward and uncomfortable.

--Sonny Joon was a let down. My biggest fear for him was he was gonna be too zany and not what I pictured, but he was just so dull. I wasn't as mad about this as I should've, because I think I just started distancing the character in this game and what I previously thought of him as. I don't know who this guy was, but he wasn't Sonny Joon and I refuse to think of him that way.

--The whole point of the "game show" aspect was a sense of urgency and competition but that was completely pointless since it didn't matter how fast we did things, we had no choice but to play the game in one linear fashion.

--THE PLOT. There was pretty much no mystery until about 2/3 through the game. Then it was painfully obvious that Sonny wanted us to "find" something for him. Then there was a bunch of stuff about Jin that didn't make sense and oh hey Jamila's here too and apparently aliens? Oh, forgot to mention that we somehow betrayed Kiri who hates us now. Also Patrick is here now.

--It was hecka short.

--The ending didn't even have a real resolution. We won the show, which we didn't even seem to care about anyway. And the whole point of all the relics was to project stars on the ceiling?

--This game was worse than RAN.

ND31 thoughts:

I actually didn't understand half the words Nancy said but all I noticed was Greek and ancient Gods and POSSIBLY A HERCULES THEMED NANCY DREW GAME?

Likes:

--All the cool spy tools we could use, esp. all the stuff that magically appeared in the cabin.(though I'm still not sure -exactly- what the glasses actually did)

--The location wasn't overplayed up. We got to do some plaid designs and some bagpipes but they ultimately didn't make Scotland into that much of a gimmick.

--Really interesting and unique puzzles. I esp. liked the disarming the bomb at the very end.

--The terrorist organization thing defiantly made the game seem more intense and I liked it a lot.

--A good amount of places to explore without it getting to confusing.

--Money-earning was good. It wasn't a pivotal aspect of the game, and the way to earn money was both efficient and interesting.

--Not too much phone-friend talking with. I skipped the 50 billion questions Nancy could've asked Carson, but I like that the option was there if you wanted it

Dislikes:

--The characters. I knew it was Ewan from the very start, and none of the characters were very interesting. Moira and Alec were really dull and Zoe was so disappointing to me. When I found out she was Samantha Quick it bothered me so much. I felt like they just made her Samantha Quick for the sake of bringing her back and referencing it in this game but it kinda ruined my whole headcanon of her. I always thought of SQ as someone totally cool with everything together(able to find out what Nancy did, who Ned is, etc.), and then they just made her into a somewhat irritating "Nanncyyyyy you're blowing my coverrrrr!!!!" character.

--The resolution. I don't feel like we really "solved" the mystery. We suspected at the beginning that Kate was killed due to her stopping Revenant's plan and, surprise, we were completely right. I know they probably couldn't get super detailed with how she died, but I still feel like they could've explained more exactly how she specifically got so involved with it. Then the conclusion of like "yeahh I knew it all along" seemed a little weak with the Kate-Nancy relationship. I also didn't like how everything else seemed wrapped up with "well, it's classified~~!!"

--Revenant's logo looks way too much like the Islamic star and crescent for it to be tasteful to my liking.

ND30:

Maybe it was just my computer, but the ND30 teaser's audio and video were literally 5 seconds behind each other so it kinda confused me. I'm not opposed to the idea of it, but there's nothing super engrossing about it.

I knew Bess would be in the next game because in the file in the Cathedral computer she had a whole new look to her character. On the other hand, George didn't. In fact, George, as a character, didn't even appear in the trailer. Anyone wanna guess that maybe George is gonna be not available and we'll team up with Bess instead?