This is not a Nancy Drew game. My sister and I started playing these games with our mom when we were kids. Nancy has always had a special place in our lives and something we looked forward to every 6 months. This game was a huge disappointment. There is zero nostalgic feel, because there's not a single aspect of the game the resembles the old ones. This does not feel like a Nancy game, it feels like something entirely different. Music is different, Nancy's voice is different, quality, graphics, controls, puzzles, everything is different. We were not expecting it to be great, but we never could've imagined it being as bad as it was. Our whole family was shocked that they even released it like this.
Nancy's Voice & Music
The new Nancy voice is lame, another reviewer said it sounded so generic they could never tell who was talking because the voices all sounded the same - I couldn't have put it better myself. Nancy's voice and all her silly sayings was an important part of what made the games special. There was none of the nostalgic music that give the Nancy vibe.
Quality, Graphics, and Controls
This looks like it was made in the 90s. This took FIVE YEARS it should have been amazing. There are so many games that come out in less time with immensely better graphics. I have a newer Mac and it ran terribly. It had to be on the lowest setting to run smooth, medium setting was laggy, high graphics crashed it. Even on the lowest setting the sky was constantly glitching. The graphics and artworks were better in the older games. Look at Message in a Haunted Mansion. The controls are impossible. It was so hard to navigate, getting around places & people was difficult. Dierdre being right in your face every time you turned around was beyond bizarre, annoying, and scared us every time. Some objects could not be clicked unless you turned the screen to a certain angle. The hold and click to rotate was obnoxious. You cannot play this with a laptop trackpad and we didn't want to continue playing so we didn't even try with a mouse. They kept saying the changes would be that it be more than a point and click game. It is still a point and click game (which we had no problem with it being in the old games). But this is still one. Just because the screen zooms when you click to the next spot doesn't make it less of a point and click.
Puzzles
We did not play this game for long so the only "puzzles" we came across was the first desk puzzle and then door lock. Neither were really puzzles. We may have struggled through all the talking and terrible controls and graphics if we knew there were some good puzzles throughout the game. But from reading everyone else's reviews there were only a few in the whole game and everyone said they easy and nothing involved collecting any kind of clues.
Story & Gameplay
I can't say much for the story because we didn't get very far. The conversations were so excessive we just kept skipping through them. This was barely a game because it was all talking and the gameplay was so linear. It was more like a click through movie.
I'm still very confused about why they decided to change Nancy the way they did. I know they wanted to gain more customers, but anyone that plays this is not going to be happy and never going to try another Nancy game. The current Nancy fans that have been playing these games since the beginning are now sharing them with their kids - they had a built in ongoing customer base. They need to rehire the old staff or hire long time Nancy fans to consult or something. They need a new PR manager. The way they kept us waiting for 5 years by continuously delaying the release with almost no updates was ridiculous. I wouldn't be surprised if they released this game as badly as it is just to get some money.
If it ain't broke don't fix it. We would rather play the original un-remastered Secrets Can Kill than this. This was an incredible franchise with so many die hard fans. We will not be buying another game unless they return to the old style. We are so upset that Nancy may be gone forever. At least there's always the old games to replay.
