stupidest plot worst culprit hardest puzzles…. man fuck that spinning secret passageway in the dark fr!!!!
i want to live in a puzzle mansion fr
ethel always jumpscares me
ethel always jumpscares me
No, I thought I was done with Bul, you can't make me play that shit again.
one of the best ones and one of the most nostalgic for me. i remember being genuinely creeped out as a kid.
"Would you happen to have any ghosts?"
~~~
This is IT! After several attempts at spooky atmospheres, they finally nailed it. Does the bad character animation add to the creepiness? Maybe. But take a rich family with an obsession over their family's legacy and messed-up history, and throw them into a creepy huge mansion with dark passageways and a parrot for some reason... Add a cryptic curse in the mix... Some gargoyles, love those guys... Yeah. That's some Good Content.
The puzzles were TRICKY, too, and the clues weren't as obvious as they've been in the past games. (Maybe because I definitely just used a walkthrough when I played this at age 11.)
My biggest complaint is a very simple, petty one. I really missed Bess and George's presence. They're a staple tbh and it kinda hurt. Give me back my emotional support hint cousins.
P.S. Ethel looked like Dove Cameron and I couldn't unsee it.
This is IT! After several attempts at spooky atmospheres, they finally nailed it. Does the bad character animation add to the creepiness? Maybe. But take a rich family with an obsession over their family's legacy and messed-up history, and throw them into a creepy huge mansion with dark passageways and a parrot for some reason... Add a cryptic curse in the mix... Some gargoyles, love those guys... Yeah. That's some Good Content.
The puzzles were TRICKY, too, and the clues weren't as obvious as they've been in the past games. (Maybe because I definitely just used a walkthrough when I played this at age 11.)
My biggest complaint is a very simple, petty one. I really missed Bess and George's presence. They're a staple tbh and it kinda hurt. Give me back my emotional support hint cousins.
P.S. Ethel looked like Dove Cameron and I couldn't unsee it.
In this game I intentionally killed a parrot with poison and there’s not a jury on Earth that would convict me.
For as much as the Nancy Drew Cyber Mysteries have a reputation for being formulaic, actually playing through them in release order has so far revealed a series that is constantly pushing and pulling at the boundaries of its identity, always exploring new ideas, settings, and gimmicks. We’re deep enough in it now to have identified a comfortable stable of puzzles and premises, but I think its safe to say that Her Interactive is still interested in tugging at the thread of what these games can be, in both writing and in conventional gameplay, and more boldly in some games than in others. Curse of Blackmoor Manor falls firmly into the camp of games that are trying new things, this time an admirable attempt to expand the scope of the play style, but as with many first tries in these games I think it’s largely clumsy and comes at the expense of the other elements of the game. It’s a particular shame this time because this could easily have been a story about some interesting stuff, but in the game we got there’s just no room for any actual plot or characters.
Let’s get to that plot then because it’s possibly the flimsiest premise so far in the franchise (complimentary/derogatory). Okay hang on I gotta remember the correct sequence of words here…Nancy’s…Dad’s…Neighbor’s…Friend, Linda, has recently married a rich dude and moved in with him at his ancestral home, the titular Blackmoor Manor in England, but she has been sick for a while, and I guess this is concerning enough to the neighbor lady to for some reason ask Nancy to look into it? And the husband, who is actually away on business and never appears or is heard from throughout the game is like “oh sure this delinquent 18-year-old can come hang out at my house with my ailing second wife who I personally believe is faking her illness while I’m not there with the express purpose of investigating what’s going on why not?” It’s fucking weird, bro.
We only kind of get to meet Linda, who is bedridden and mysteriously hiding behind her bedcurtains for the entire game, and otherwise we spend most of the story interacting with her new step-daughter Jane, the manor’s caretaker whose name I’ve already forgotten, and Jane’s extremely creepy tutor Ethel, who is descended from a long line of attendant type people who have served the Pevellyn family for generations. I’ve written at length about how these games tend to split time between modern day stories and what I’ve been calling “historical plots” which usually intertwine with the villain’s plans in the form of some sort of buried treasure or historically important document or whatever, and in this game it’s a bit looser but the niche is filled by the Pevellyn family legacy, its rumored hidden treasure, and its supposed ancestral curse.
See, Linda thinks she’s been victimized by the curse somehow as a rejection of her marriage into the family, while Jane is fascinated with the house’s secrets and hidden passageways and weird puzzles, largely because she’s a bored 12-year-old who lives alone with three adult women and has nothing else to do all day (or so it seems at first). Nancy, being the unsatiable puzzle guzzler that she is, also starts solving the Blackmoor Manor secret puzzles immediately, more out of a lack of really anything else to do than any particular driving force? And that’s kind of the biggest problem I have with the game.
The structure here is different from previous Nancy Drews in that instead of a linear mystery and set of puzzles, this game is presented as a borderline open-world puzzlebox, where you’re basically free to wander about the manor and poke at any puzzles you have access to at any given time. It’s certainly an ambitious shakeup to the formula, and I appreciate the idea of a more freeform approach to a space (the manor is well-designed for the most-part, too – lots of little connective tissues across the areas to keep things flowing well MOST of the time). But I think there are two huge flaws that shoot this new structure in the foot and really make me wary of adopting it as the default style moving forward.
First is that there’s just like…toooooo much gameplay here? This sounds like a weird criticism to have but hear me out. The ratio is off. There are SO many more puzzles and minigames in Curse of Blackmoor Manor than your average one of these and way less plot propping them up. This might be fatiguing on it own, but the second flaw is that many of these puzzles are poorly designed time sinks on top of this.
Take, for example, my mortal enemy, Lou Lou the Parrot. There comes a point fairly early in the game where you have to twist the many hands on a dragon statue into the correct configuration to open a false wall to descend a secret staircase until you find a door with a word inscribed upon it, under which is a space for you to enter a related word. Your possible configurations are mathematically enormous, and the presentation makes them very difficult to guess. Helpfully, though, there’s a carving of a parrot over the door, so sussing out that you need to get Lou Lou the octogenarian parrot to tell you the word to enter, you go to talk to her. She refuses to speak to you. Okay, you go around asking people how to communicate with Lou Lou. Two conversations later you’ve got her password. Lou Lou will talk to you but she won’t give you the code unless you first feed her a cake. So you walk to her special bird kitchen and do a little minigame where you bake her a bird cake, take it back, watch her eat it, THEN she’ll give you the word, you walk back to the hidden passage, complete the dragon puzzle again, go back down the secret stairs, enter the codeword, and are presented with another word. So you go back to Lou Lou, who will happily tell you the next word, if you go make her another cake. Once you have it, you’ll return to the hidden passage, complete the dragon puzzle again, go back down the secret stairs enter the codeword, and oh my god a third one.
You repeat this sequence four times, all the while enduring Nancy’s own voice actor pulling double duty as the bird, obnoxiously screeching some of the most painfully drawn out parrot dialogue I’ve ever heard, tormenting me with unfunny references and bizarre non sequiturs. By the end of it could you possibly blame me for intentionally poisoning her?
This is only one example of needless, bizarre padding in a game that’s already competing for the longest playtime of the series so far. There’s an endless cavalcade of minigames here too, most of which are recycled from previous entries, all of which are forced on you two or even three times over the course of the game (more, if you fuck them up). Perhaps most offensively, two of these are variations on go fish? Why?? Why do we need two go fishes?? This is true excess.
It even applies to the good puzzles. The relentless gauntlets of nonstop solves led me to a feeling of fatigue, even when on an individual basis I was having a grand old time. It turns out that balancing all the different parts of these games is really important, and the guided experience of a linear structure maybe works for the kinds of narratives Nancy Drew games have thus far established themselves to be. I’m not saying that this is prescriptive – I would never do that – I think I’m just reacting particularly harshly here because there is SUCH potential in these characters and this narrative setup and none of it gets paid off.
So let’s talk about where this all ends up, and what it could have been. Curse of Blackmoor Manor, is, unfortunately, not the Nancy Drew game where we commit full on to some sort of supernatural thing, despite the CRUEL TEASE halfway through that Linda has been cursed to become a werewolf. Instead, at the end of all this, it turns out that Jane has used a combination of other people’s prescription drugs ground into her food to make her sick, hair growth formula mixed into her moisturizer to make her “grow fur,” and insistence on have Linda read her bedtime stories about monsters and shit to essentially incept the idea that she has been cursed into her brain and placebo her into thinking she’s a werewolf, because Jane is mad that her parents are divorced. Simultaneously but COMPLETELY separately Ethel has been training Jane in secret to solve the Manor’s hidden puzzle box elements herself and claim the treasure at the end, which turns out to be essentially worthless, and it’s suggested that Nancy has in fact ruined an old family tradition by coming in and solving things herself unwittingly. It’s suggested that Ethel is involved in the werewolf plot too because there’s some technology involved that’s used to scare Nancy away separately from Linda’s whole thing, but largely these two plots seem to be wholly unrelated. Everybody laughs, there was never any danger, this kid spent months psychologically torturing her stepmom but everybody’s gonna make it work! It’s 2004 bud and we do NOT talk about therapists.
Perhaps this all sounds fucking insane to you, and let me assure, you, it is, but what might be more surprising is that almost everything I just wrote actually comes out in literally the last like two minutes of the game. There is SO little happening with ANY of these characters for the preceding three and a half to four hours. Ethel doesn’t even appear outside of cutscenes. And there’s so much potential here. For a relationship between Jane and Linda, a real one. To explore the culture of dedicated generational master/servant relationships in noble houses; the loneliness and burdens that must come with the privileges and weird rituals of being a kid in the ever-dwindling mega-upper class of old British society. There is SO much shit here and it’s the kind of shit that the team at Her would normally eat the fuck up, which is why it’s so much more frustrating than usual to see it squandered in exchange for, essentially, nothing?
That’s not to say the game is without its upsides. I’ve talked about the bevy of new puzzles in the game, and how it seems like Her was making a conscious effort to kind of shake up their standard book of tricks (even if they also included all of the old ones, leading to a weird bloated mess), and that effort is certainly appreciated. And there’s a TON of the classic Nancy Drew Cyber Mystery Charm in this one, just a ton of goofy bullshit that I absolutely love to see, which I will be listing now:
1. Like, three different times in the game Ethel just APPEARS when Nancy turns around in the most effective scares in series so far.
2. There’s a point where you’re talking to Ned on the phone and he seems to legitimately not know what a picture book is, and to be confused by the very idea of one.
3. It’s extremely clear that nobody in this cast is actually British (the three main blood relatives you meet don’t even have remotely similar accents lol), but in particular the guy Nancy orders food from has the worst cockney accent I’ve ever heard, like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins but not one of Golden Age Hollywood’s most beloved character actors backing it up with charm. This character was also written so bafflingly that I had to enlist your friend and mine Woodaba to tell me if he was using actual British slang or if the game was making fun of me and/or British people before we realized that they were using cockney rhyme slang, which the book also comically provides you a very dry in-game dictionary for eventually.
4. There’s a guy in this whose computer you have to borrow a couple times and his desktop background is a picture of himself doing a cool pose, which is definitely like, you never see this guy stand up but that’s short king energy imo
5. One of the game overs in this game involves being eaten by a gigantic carnivorous plant and context won’t make that any more or less funny
So yeah I dunno this game is fine, it really tried some stuff that I personally think mostly didn’t work and I think it had some STELLAR opportunities that it completely failed to jump on but what is here isn’t the worst, it’s just littered with small annoyances and disappointments throughout. A real death of a thousand cuts, this game.
PREVIOUSLY: THE SECRET OF SHADOW RANCH
NEXT TIME: SECRET OF THE OLD CLOCK
ALL NANCY DREW PIECES
For as much as the Nancy Drew Cyber Mysteries have a reputation for being formulaic, actually playing through them in release order has so far revealed a series that is constantly pushing and pulling at the boundaries of its identity, always exploring new ideas, settings, and gimmicks. We’re deep enough in it now to have identified a comfortable stable of puzzles and premises, but I think its safe to say that Her Interactive is still interested in tugging at the thread of what these games can be, in both writing and in conventional gameplay, and more boldly in some games than in others. Curse of Blackmoor Manor falls firmly into the camp of games that are trying new things, this time an admirable attempt to expand the scope of the play style, but as with many first tries in these games I think it’s largely clumsy and comes at the expense of the other elements of the game. It’s a particular shame this time because this could easily have been a story about some interesting stuff, but in the game we got there’s just no room for any actual plot or characters.
Let’s get to that plot then because it’s possibly the flimsiest premise so far in the franchise (complimentary/derogatory). Okay hang on I gotta remember the correct sequence of words here…Nancy’s…Dad’s…Neighbor’s…Friend, Linda, has recently married a rich dude and moved in with him at his ancestral home, the titular Blackmoor Manor in England, but she has been sick for a while, and I guess this is concerning enough to the neighbor lady to for some reason ask Nancy to look into it? And the husband, who is actually away on business and never appears or is heard from throughout the game is like “oh sure this delinquent 18-year-old can come hang out at my house with my ailing second wife who I personally believe is faking her illness while I’m not there with the express purpose of investigating what’s going on why not?” It’s fucking weird, bro.
We only kind of get to meet Linda, who is bedridden and mysteriously hiding behind her bedcurtains for the entire game, and otherwise we spend most of the story interacting with her new step-daughter Jane, the manor’s caretaker whose name I’ve already forgotten, and Jane’s extremely creepy tutor Ethel, who is descended from a long line of attendant type people who have served the Pevellyn family for generations. I’ve written at length about how these games tend to split time between modern day stories and what I’ve been calling “historical plots” which usually intertwine with the villain’s plans in the form of some sort of buried treasure or historically important document or whatever, and in this game it’s a bit looser but the niche is filled by the Pevellyn family legacy, its rumored hidden treasure, and its supposed ancestral curse.
See, Linda thinks she’s been victimized by the curse somehow as a rejection of her marriage into the family, while Jane is fascinated with the house’s secrets and hidden passageways and weird puzzles, largely because she’s a bored 12-year-old who lives alone with three adult women and has nothing else to do all day (or so it seems at first). Nancy, being the unsatiable puzzle guzzler that she is, also starts solving the Blackmoor Manor secret puzzles immediately, more out of a lack of really anything else to do than any particular driving force? And that’s kind of the biggest problem I have with the game.
The structure here is different from previous Nancy Drews in that instead of a linear mystery and set of puzzles, this game is presented as a borderline open-world puzzlebox, where you’re basically free to wander about the manor and poke at any puzzles you have access to at any given time. It’s certainly an ambitious shakeup to the formula, and I appreciate the idea of a more freeform approach to a space (the manor is well-designed for the most-part, too – lots of little connective tissues across the areas to keep things flowing well MOST of the time). But I think there are two huge flaws that shoot this new structure in the foot and really make me wary of adopting it as the default style moving forward.
First is that there’s just like…toooooo much gameplay here? This sounds like a weird criticism to have but hear me out. The ratio is off. There are SO many more puzzles and minigames in Curse of Blackmoor Manor than your average one of these and way less plot propping them up. This might be fatiguing on it own, but the second flaw is that many of these puzzles are poorly designed time sinks on top of this.
Take, for example, my mortal enemy, Lou Lou the Parrot. There comes a point fairly early in the game where you have to twist the many hands on a dragon statue into the correct configuration to open a false wall to descend a secret staircase until you find a door with a word inscribed upon it, under which is a space for you to enter a related word. Your possible configurations are mathematically enormous, and the presentation makes them very difficult to guess. Helpfully, though, there’s a carving of a parrot over the door, so sussing out that you need to get Lou Lou the octogenarian parrot to tell you the word to enter, you go to talk to her. She refuses to speak to you. Okay, you go around asking people how to communicate with Lou Lou. Two conversations later you’ve got her password. Lou Lou will talk to you but she won’t give you the code unless you first feed her a cake. So you walk to her special bird kitchen and do a little minigame where you bake her a bird cake, take it back, watch her eat it, THEN she’ll give you the word, you walk back to the hidden passage, complete the dragon puzzle again, go back down the secret stairs, enter the codeword, and are presented with another word. So you go back to Lou Lou, who will happily tell you the next word, if you go make her another cake. Once you have it, you’ll return to the hidden passage, complete the dragon puzzle again, go back down the secret stairs enter the codeword, and oh my god a third one.
You repeat this sequence four times, all the while enduring Nancy’s own voice actor pulling double duty as the bird, obnoxiously screeching some of the most painfully drawn out parrot dialogue I’ve ever heard, tormenting me with unfunny references and bizarre non sequiturs. By the end of it could you possibly blame me for intentionally poisoning her?
This is only one example of needless, bizarre padding in a game that’s already competing for the longest playtime of the series so far. There’s an endless cavalcade of minigames here too, most of which are recycled from previous entries, all of which are forced on you two or even three times over the course of the game (more, if you fuck them up). Perhaps most offensively, two of these are variations on go fish? Why?? Why do we need two go fishes?? This is true excess.
It even applies to the good puzzles. The relentless gauntlets of nonstop solves led me to a feeling of fatigue, even when on an individual basis I was having a grand old time. It turns out that balancing all the different parts of these games is really important, and the guided experience of a linear structure maybe works for the kinds of narratives Nancy Drew games have thus far established themselves to be. I’m not saying that this is prescriptive – I would never do that – I think I’m just reacting particularly harshly here because there is SUCH potential in these characters and this narrative setup and none of it gets paid off.
So let’s talk about where this all ends up, and what it could have been. Curse of Blackmoor Manor, is, unfortunately, not the Nancy Drew game where we commit full on to some sort of supernatural thing, despite the CRUEL TEASE halfway through that Linda has been cursed to become a werewolf. Instead, at the end of all this, it turns out that Jane has used a combination of other people’s prescription drugs ground into her food to make her sick, hair growth formula mixed into her moisturizer to make her “grow fur,” and insistence on have Linda read her bedtime stories about monsters and shit to essentially incept the idea that she has been cursed into her brain and placebo her into thinking she’s a werewolf, because Jane is mad that her parents are divorced. Simultaneously but COMPLETELY separately Ethel has been training Jane in secret to solve the Manor’s hidden puzzle box elements herself and claim the treasure at the end, which turns out to be essentially worthless, and it’s suggested that Nancy has in fact ruined an old family tradition by coming in and solving things herself unwittingly. It’s suggested that Ethel is involved in the werewolf plot too because there’s some technology involved that’s used to scare Nancy away separately from Linda’s whole thing, but largely these two plots seem to be wholly unrelated. Everybody laughs, there was never any danger, this kid spent months psychologically torturing her stepmom but everybody’s gonna make it work! It’s 2004 bud and we do NOT talk about therapists.
Perhaps this all sounds fucking insane to you, and let me assure, you, it is, but what might be more surprising is that almost everything I just wrote actually comes out in literally the last like two minutes of the game. There is SO little happening with ANY of these characters for the preceding three and a half to four hours. Ethel doesn’t even appear outside of cutscenes. And there’s so much potential here. For a relationship between Jane and Linda, a real one. To explore the culture of dedicated generational master/servant relationships in noble houses; the loneliness and burdens that must come with the privileges and weird rituals of being a kid in the ever-dwindling mega-upper class of old British society. There is SO much shit here and it’s the kind of shit that the team at Her would normally eat the fuck up, which is why it’s so much more frustrating than usual to see it squandered in exchange for, essentially, nothing?
That’s not to say the game is without its upsides. I’ve talked about the bevy of new puzzles in the game, and how it seems like Her was making a conscious effort to kind of shake up their standard book of tricks (even if they also included all of the old ones, leading to a weird bloated mess), and that effort is certainly appreciated. And there’s a TON of the classic Nancy Drew Cyber Mystery Charm in this one, just a ton of goofy bullshit that I absolutely love to see, which I will be listing now:
1. Like, three different times in the game Ethel just APPEARS when Nancy turns around in the most effective scares in series so far.
2. There’s a point where you’re talking to Ned on the phone and he seems to legitimately not know what a picture book is, and to be confused by the very idea of one.
3. It’s extremely clear that nobody in this cast is actually British (the three main blood relatives you meet don’t even have remotely similar accents lol), but in particular the guy Nancy orders food from has the worst cockney accent I’ve ever heard, like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins but not one of Golden Age Hollywood’s most beloved character actors backing it up with charm. This character was also written so bafflingly that I had to enlist your friend and mine Woodaba to tell me if he was using actual British slang or if the game was making fun of me and/or British people before we realized that they were using cockney rhyme slang, which the book also comically provides you a very dry in-game dictionary for eventually.
4. There’s a guy in this whose computer you have to borrow a couple times and his desktop background is a picture of himself doing a cool pose, which is definitely like, you never see this guy stand up but that’s short king energy imo
5. One of the game overs in this game involves being eaten by a gigantic carnivorous plant and context won’t make that any more or less funny
So yeah I dunno this game is fine, it really tried some stuff that I personally think mostly didn’t work and I think it had some STELLAR opportunities that it completely failed to jump on but what is here isn’t the worst, it’s just littered with small annoyances and disappointments throughout. A real death of a thousand cuts, this game.
PREVIOUSLY: THE SECRET OF SHADOW RANCH
NEXT TIME: SECRET OF THE OLD CLOCK
ALL NANCY DREW PIECES
HELL YEAH, this is where it got good
Played this as a kid. Gave me nightmares back then. Tried playing it more recently and it was too cheesy for me. Great kid game tho
The Nancy Drew games are actually really solid adventure games that sometimes have cute emo NPCs.
One of better atmosphere games great to play during October 👻, but some of the puzzles are a little annoying and difficult (looking at the you spinning chambers).
Ethel Jumpscare 🧍♀️
Ethel Jumpscare 🧍♀️
I'm not sure why I got my hopes up while playing this game, but maybe it's because I thought it was going to be better or a little different than the other two games that I played previously. The Curse of Blackmoor Manor isn't a bad game, it's just more of the same. So far, every game I've played in the series follows a basic formula, which is Nancy is called in to investigate the mystery, meets a questionable cast of characters that all have various motives, and there is some kind of treasure involved.
I will say that I liked the story a little better than Message in a Haunted House, and I thought the characters were more intriguing. The reveal of the culprit was done better as well in Curse of Blackmoor Manor than the previous games and I was a little surprised about who it was considering that most of the suspects had a decent motive to do the crime. I did think the conclusion was a bit dull and felt a little lazy, but maybe that's just me.
The biggest complaint I have with this series so far, and I doubt it's going to change in the next two games I play after this, is that nothing supernatural actually happens. I mean what's the point of putting Nancy in these situations when there are no ghosts or creatures that are real and by the end of the story there is always a perfectly logical explanation. I'll admit it is interesting to learn how the culprit planned out the crime to make it look that way, but it's mostly ruins the fun. At least in Message in a Haunted House during the ending cut scene it was hinted that the house could be haunted even though it wasn't ghosts doing the actual crime.
As for exploring, I felt that both A message in a Haunted House and the Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake had a little more aesthetic appeal and I just didn't really enjoy searching the environment for clues or puzzles this game. It didn't help that this game also has an extremely annoying maze just like in Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake and just like that game it's poorly designed. I'm not joking when I say that one wrong turn and you could be lost for hours. If you do decide to play this game, make sure to have multiple saves just in case you can't find your way out.
Overall:
Nancy Drew: Curse of Blackmoor Manor is alright and if you're a fan of the games/books than you're probably going to really enjoy this, but personally speaking I'm already getting a little burnt out with the formula of these games. I've learned so far not to get my hopes too high with this series because every game that I've played up until now has dissapointed me in some way.
Pros:
+ decent voice acting at times
+ games offers hints through phone calls
+ decent mystery
Cons:
- annoying puzzles
- glitch that causes certain items to despawn from inventory
- frustrating controls
I will say that I liked the story a little better than Message in a Haunted House, and I thought the characters were more intriguing. The reveal of the culprit was done better as well in Curse of Blackmoor Manor than the previous games and I was a little surprised about who it was considering that most of the suspects had a decent motive to do the crime. I did think the conclusion was a bit dull and felt a little lazy, but maybe that's just me.
The biggest complaint I have with this series so far, and I doubt it's going to change in the next two games I play after this, is that nothing supernatural actually happens. I mean what's the point of putting Nancy in these situations when there are no ghosts or creatures that are real and by the end of the story there is always a perfectly logical explanation. I'll admit it is interesting to learn how the culprit planned out the crime to make it look that way, but it's mostly ruins the fun. At least in Message in a Haunted House during the ending cut scene it was hinted that the house could be haunted even though it wasn't ghosts doing the actual crime.
As for exploring, I felt that both A message in a Haunted House and the Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake had a little more aesthetic appeal and I just didn't really enjoy searching the environment for clues or puzzles this game. It didn't help that this game also has an extremely annoying maze just like in Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake and just like that game it's poorly designed. I'm not joking when I say that one wrong turn and you could be lost for hours. If you do decide to play this game, make sure to have multiple saves just in case you can't find your way out.
Overall:
Nancy Drew: Curse of Blackmoor Manor is alright and if you're a fan of the games/books than you're probably going to really enjoy this, but personally speaking I'm already getting a little burnt out with the formula of these games. I've learned so far not to get my hopes too high with this series because every game that I've played up until now has dissapointed me in some way.
Pros:
+ decent voice acting at times
+ games offers hints through phone calls
+ decent mystery
Cons:
- annoying puzzles
- glitch that causes certain items to despawn from inventory
- frustrating controls
this is definitely the weakest out of the string of good games i mentioned in my last review, but i still love it for the nostalgia and atmosphere alone. i'm not a huge fan of the puzzles however, and the characters are sort of boring.
i got stuck in the greenhouse. i just dont get it
spooky scary
Ive always found the Nancy Drew games to be at their best when they trap you in a confined single location and this proves my point by quite some margin.
This is probably the one more people think about when they think Nancy Drew games and its not without reason, the cold castle is full of gothic style creepy horror but at the same time theres plenty to see and do around the various walls and gardens with silly minigames, bird feeding and other puzzles that, despite being occasionally obtuse, really try and get away from some of the repeated puzzle tropes in previous games.
If there is one big problem with this one, its the characters. Most of the limited cast just are kinda dull and they very much take a backseat to the overall atmosphere and Rodger Corman-esque Poe plotting.
So yeah, while nowadays I wouldnt start with this one for newcomers, its not exactly a horrible place to begin either.
This is probably the one more people think about when they think Nancy Drew games and its not without reason, the cold castle is full of gothic style creepy horror but at the same time theres plenty to see and do around the various walls and gardens with silly minigames, bird feeding and other puzzles that, despite being occasionally obtuse, really try and get away from some of the repeated puzzle tropes in previous games.
If there is one big problem with this one, its the characters. Most of the limited cast just are kinda dull and they very much take a backseat to the overall atmosphere and Rodger Corman-esque Poe plotting.
So yeah, while nowadays I wouldnt start with this one for newcomers, its not exactly a horrible place to begin either.
People really like this one and I do think its got some interesting themes about the dangers of family legacy vs. personal identity. How that legacy can tarnish personal relationships.
But it doesn't go far enough in on that idea and there's too many obtuse puzzles to derive much enjoyment out of it.
But it doesn't go far enough in on that idea and there's too many obtuse puzzles to derive much enjoyment out of it.