Shadow at Waters Edge was quite the pleasant surprise and is easily my favorite so far. The game didn't really follow the exact same pattern as the other games prior. Nancy wasn't there to investigate a case initially and there was no pile of gold or treasure used as a possible motive for the suspects. However, like every supernatural case that involves Nancy Drew the ghost is always an illusion invented by the culprit. What sets Shadow at Waters Edge apart from the other games I've played is that this game still manages to come off as creepy and unsettling which is something the other games failed to do. Between the haunting atmosphere, the music that bounced from peaceful to ominous in a matter of minutes and some hair-raising cut scenes, this game put me on edge at times.

I found the characters to be really fun and interesting even though some of the dialogue dragged a bit. I really enjoyed the mystery in Shadow at Waters Edge, probably because it was somewhat emotional, and I didn't really know what to expect outside of the ghost not being real of course. When it came to revealing the wrongdoer, I wasn't really surprised, but I wasn't disappointed either. The ending, like all the other games, is short but it was satisfying and had a good conclusion to the story which was nice.

Unfortunately, though, this is where I have to talk about the not so good parts of this game. This game has some of the worst puzzles I've played in this series. So many number puzzles...my god. I could use the word exhausting, but I really think that would be a serious understatement. Outside of a handful, most of these puzzles take way too long to solve even with a guide so that should give an idea of how truly awful these puzzles are. So, I hope you like Sudoku and nonograms, because if not well you're in for a bad time.

Overall:

Shadows at Waters Edge wasn't quite what I expected and that's a good thing. At its core it is a true Nancy Drew mystery, but it also generally tries to be spooky at the same time and honestly it does a good job at combining both together. The only thing that really weighs this game down is some of the gameplay and awful puzzles, but even still I'd recommend this game to other fans of the series who haven't played this entry yet.

Pro:
+ interesting characters
+ good mystery
+ good ending
+ good atmosphere

Con:
- annoying puzzles
- frustrating controls
- hints that aren't that useful

This is the first time I found myself glad it wasn’t a ghost. This is the first irony of Shadow at the Water’s Edge: considering this might be tit for tat the most explicitly and effectively frightening game Her Interactive has done, and my usual clamor for the supernatural to appear in earnest in these games that, scooby-doo-like, are constantly teetering on the cliff of indulging in it. But for once I was happy for one of these games to give me what I got, which in this case is easily the best writing in the series to date, a quietly unfolding story that first seems to be one of the failures of deep-seated cultural structuration and generational trauma that slowly reveals itself to be, while not NOT that, also one of deep and mundane inability for a small group of people to work through their own shortcomings, both to themselves as individuals and to each other as family. It’s a dark, fresh situation that Nancy walks in on, unusual for this series, where it’s much more common to parallel the modern day mystery with something in the distant past. Here, the supposed ghost that’s ruining the ryokan’s business is the mother/daughter of the main characters of the game; that wound is fresh, and open, and frankly none of Nancy’s business, and picking at it is a genuinely uncomfortable affair. There’s a real sense that Nancy is kind of out of her depth in this game, that she’s stepped in something a little bit over her ability to emotionally handle. No one has hired her, no one asked her to do this, she just kind of stumbles into somebody’s ugly past while she’s on vacation and she kind of brute forces it into the shape of one of her mysteries – seriously this might be the most unintentionally ghoulish Nancy has ever been she’s a fuckin sociopath in this game - but things can’t and don’t really resolve as cleanly or happily or whimsically as they always do for her.

This marks a moment of maturation for these games. In the past, even when we’ve tackled really difficult and sober subject matters, difficult questions tend to go unacknowledged and the themes of the work tend to get swept aside in the name of wrapping everything up in a bow (I think about the Mexican government official arm in arm with the American museum employees at the end of Scarlet Hand despite the situation of the violent robbery and exploitation of Mexico’s cultural artifacts not being even slightly different than it was at the start of the game all the time). Here there are gestures towards healing and Nancy certainly forces some wheels to turn, but nothing like the sunny rejection of any backbone the story might have had.

The second irony, then, is that all of the above is true while this game indulges in a not unexpected but certainly disappointing amount of LOL JAPAN SO WACKY racism of I guess you might, for lack of a better word, call a more “subtle” variety, coupled with overt racism like having three of the four Japanese characters in the game be voiced by white Nancy Drew Series Regulars who are all doing deeply offensive fake Asian accents. It does muddle things a bit, when you’re trying to tell an actually affecting story about how the strict social mores of traditionalist Japanese conservative politics have effectively destroyed three generations of a family, resulted in one actual death, and twenty years later almost a murder, when one of the characters driving the conflict sometimes borders on cruel stereotype. I don’t think it’s QUITE there, and it’s not as bad as some other depictions of other cultures have been, but I think that there is also a lack of care here that points to Her Interactive’s general lack of understanding of the responsibilities of the storyteller, especially in an educational role. Yes, this is a better depiction of Japan and its culture than, say, the outrageous caricatures of Ireland and its people in Castle Malloy, but the United States have done incalculable material harm to the Japanese people over the last 80 years and I think that in the context of a game like this with the kind of interests these games have, the bar for how they depict some cultures is higher than others, and if you ask me this game doesn’t QUITE clear it even as it’s not nearly AS fucked as others have been in the past.

That said it IS pretty funny that “taking the subway” is by far the most difficult puzzle in the game. That’s a solid goof, you got me there.

NANCY DREW CUCK WATCH: It’s been a minute but since she can’t namedrop him to ward off all the GAY TEENS at boarding school I do think it’s worth noting that Nancy just DOES NOT EVEN MENTION Ned he doesn’t even COME UP idk dude if I was going on a vacation of indeterminate length with my best buds I would maybe invite my boyfriend who is the fourth member of our friendgroup and is also best friends with my other two friends. Seems suspicious lol.

PREVIOUSLY: TRAIL OF THE TWISTER
NEXT TIME: THE CAPTIVE CURSE

ALL NANCY DREW PIECES

-0.5 stars for Takae dragging on so long
-1 star for the endgame nonogram
-1 star for the culprit's motives

Also, did they seriously just ignore the garden courtyard just for the one bit when Nancy looked through the peephole in the bathroom to find the (redacted secret area)? That's not how architecture works!

by FAR the creepiest Nancy Drew game I've ever played. The puzzles were decent and the minigames were endless and addictive. Not the perfect game because Lord, I spent such a long time navigating identical corridors and I did not care for it's stereotyping of Japanese people. Also spent such a long time waiting for people to call me back on the phone...

Still, gets points for the atmosphere and for having a weirdass awful dress-up game.

literaly took us 24 hours to complete because we play alllll the minigames to exhaustion.

Chega a ser esquisito nunca ter esbarrado com nenhum jogo da série Nancy Drew até mês passado. É um jogo antigo de PC, com mistérios e puzzles, totalmente minha geleia. Provavelmente jogarei mais coisas da franquia no futuro com muita curiosidade.

Shadow at the Water's Edge é uma proposta bem interessante, aparentemente um dos únicos jogos da série a se passar no Japão. A história é interessante, por mais que tenha um final um pouco menos espalhafatoso do que eu estava esperando. Os puzzles são geralmente bons, tirando a ideia de resolver um sudoku e um nonogram gigantes - o que é 50/50 pra mim, já que eu amo nonogramas e odeio sudokus. Alguns puzzles, entretanto, são bem inteligentes e eu gostei real. Podia ter mais!

A falta de QoL é o que mais pega (o que é entendível pela idade do jogo). Até mesmo andar nos cenários usando imagens estáticas é confuso, mesmo depois de horas jogando. Eu ainda foi burro e escolhi uma opção que tinha ainda menos QoL, então assim, um detonado foi muito bem vindo (além de ter as respostas do sudoku).

No geral, gostei bastante e quero mais. Vamos ver até onde vou.

• i totally understand her is a small company on a budget, but they couldn’t have hired japanese voice actors?
• “what happened to your mother?” JEEZ.
• i love getting to grade homework. <3
• doing the katakana lesson on a touchpad sucks.
• also the backing portrait has me in a fetal position.
• her interactive letting people use dave gregory as their phone background: the hoes gon loveeeeeeee this.
• why does nancy OPENLY admit to looking through yumi’s things?
• come to think of it, why does she do most of the things she does in this game? 🥴
• i wanna kiss savannah, she sounds so cute.
• are bess and george just dropping things off at the ryokan and not saying hi to nancy?
• “a ghost doesn’t need to be real to haunt you.”
• how did nancy record the conversation between yumi and miwako and not hear or see it happening? why did they not see her hiding behind a tree? why am i trying to make sense of this game?
• the puzzles in this one just make my head hurt. i’m looking at you, cache puzzle.
• so nancy says after many months of begging miwako allows rentaro to repair some of the damage he’s done… why am i writing a closing letter months later? was nancy in japan that long? 😵‍💫
• exploring themes of japanese traditions and a family struggling to grieve is wonderful, but the story her interactive is trying to convey is a bit muddled by clearly white voice actors trying to do accents, nancy being incredibly insensitive even for her standards, and some of the culture included seems a bit stereotypical. probably one of my least favorites despite it ranking so high for others.