Okay so I recently watched a full play-through of MID (for numerous reasons, it wouldn’t have been worth it for me to purchase the game), and... Gosh friends, I really, really wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt, but, honestly? Ugh. I enjoyed the overall story, but so much of the rest of the game was SO distractingly bad that it was hard to focus on the good.

I also understand that I may have had a different experience if I’d have played it myself, but some things are universal regardless of how you intake the game.

It reminded me of some RPGs I played in the early 2000s—think horse and Barbie games. It felt really unprofessional and unfinished in a ton of ways that feel unacceptable for 2019. Also I watched a play through and didn’t navigate myself, but it seemed a bit tricky to maneuver??

There were so many typos, some dialogue didn’t make sense and/or was repeated, some voice intonations didn’t fit with the context of the dialogue, the subtitles were often mismatched (and one-line subtitles made it hard to follow along, at least in the ways that things were divided). And the GRAPHICS—some skins were well done, but the sculpting, movement (oh my gOsH the movement of characters), and rendering of some stuff was just... Very “Ehhhh?” for the age of technology it was produced in. I understand part of this would have to do with your hardware, but still. HeR was supposed to make a game for the Nancy Drew community, not necessarily for those who have the hardware specs commonly found in console games (I’m reminded of games like MassEffect or Asassin’s Creed). I think of ND as just a different type of game with a different audience.

I also had some unanswered questions, but also understand that maybe this is because I wasn’t playing firsthand—maybe I missed some dialogue, or the video uploaded didn’t explore certain things that I would have. So if this is true, PLEASE DEAR READER give me the info! I have questions like: - What were the protesters protesting? - Did Ned and Nancy ever have that discussion he talked about? Who was the woman he was with on the phone? - What’s Lauren’s background story? Like how did she end up at Hathorne House and what happened to her parents? - Jason JUST SO HAPPENED to be in freaking AUSTRIA at the same exact CASTLE the Book of Apologies is in at the same exact MOMENT Nancy is there and finds it? How did Alicia know how and when precisely to send him? - There’s no way all of the stuff in that castle room wouldn’t be in a museum irl and they DEF wouldn’t let a random person inside to snoop and TAKE IT - When did Deirdre become a detective? There are a couple of ND games I haven’t played yet, so many be this happens somewhere and I just don’t know yet - I had more but can’t remember them atm LOL whoops

Also this is SO nit-picky, but so much just didn’t make sense practically—like the Hardys just broke into Olivia’s shop without any incident/mention of BREAKING IN? The pumpkin that was lit in the middle of the forest (maybe the game developers were the actual arsonists in this game, geeze)? The model house just... Appeared from that circular puzzle? It wouldn’t even have fit in the inner circle that I assume it popped out from). There were lots of little things like that.

I’ve spent a ton of time in real-life Salem and I feel like a lot of the town’s real-life culture wasn’t properly represented. I know this is just a GAME but I felt other ND games better represented their locations (in terms of locations I’ve spent a lot of time or lived in).

Wow I’m sorry I feel like such a Karen. And I really want to honor and respect HeR because they’ve produced such top-notch games for us for like 20 years. But... ~sighs miserably and bangs head against wall~ I’M SO SORRY BUT I WAS VERY DISAPPOINTED meep

Again, I understand I may have had a different experience playing firsthand, and maybe I’m being too harsh on judging the game this way because they totally revamped basically all of the mechanics. And yes, there were some things I liked (maybe I’ll do a different post about that). But again, all of the bad really distracted me from the good. I’m so sorry, HeR 😭😩😭😩😭😩