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Nancy helpfully tells us that a ryokan is a traditional-style Japanese inn, although the educational aspect is ruined somewhat by the fact that she and everyone else mispronounces “ryokan” for the entire game. We’re staying at the Ryokan Hiei, in Kyoto. Nancy is meant to be the player proxy, so maybe HER was trying to capitalize on all the weaboo dreams of teaching English in Japan. It’s a completely unnecessary side plot, but okay, whatever.
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No, Nancy is also working as an English teacher, for no reason I can see. Except it’s not really a vacation, and not just because we’re going to trip over a mystery while we’re there. Krolmeister’s storm team was, he’s decided to reward us with a vacation to Japan. WE COULD’VE HAD IT ALL.Īfter we solved the mystery of who the shadiest person on P.G. This 2010-15 run was a good one, and then HER suddenly turned into a dumpster fire at the end of 2015. There were more meta jokes and a sense of internal continuity Nancy’s relationships with her friends got more attention, and they were also developed into decent secondary characters, instead of being semi-robotic hint hotlines with a few stock character traits. With 10+ years of history to lean on, Nancy developed a personality, and that improved the dialogue and story end of the games. Before anyone is like, “Shattered Medallion tho”, I will add that they totally had some clunkers, but overall - it seemed like they were conscious that the players were getting older with the games the storylines got a little darker and the characters more fleshed out, with more emphasis on sleuthing and figuring out what was going on with and between the suspects, instead of just poking around for hidden treasure. Starting with Shadow at the Water’s Edge, though, the games started getting really good. I mean, admittedly that’s the classic Nancy Drew plot, but I overall prefer sleuthing, dialogue, and drama between the suspects, and that’s not really common in those earlier games. I also like but don’t love most of the classic games, either - my big beef with them is that so many of their plots hinge on Nancy randomly deciding to solve a 200-year-old mystery which always just happens to coincide with random acts of vandalism occurring in the present day. They shuffled through a couple of different designers, which had some…not great results (like, not only are the Hardy Boys the Hardy Boys, they also had to look like that in Creature of Kapu Cave?) The games also got increasingly chore-heavy and puzzle-heavy - while I like Legend of the Crystal Skull, you have to admit that the game is basically one long scavenger hunt for glass eyeballs.
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Even though it had plenty of entries that I enjoyed, Danger by Design through Trail of the Twister were something of a Dork Age for the series. I absolutely love this stretch of games, from Shadow at the Water’s Edge to Sea of Darkness. Whoa, are we in Nik Blahunka territory already? I mean, I guess this game is kind of old - it came out in 2010! - but the whole era still feels relatively recent, probably because it was the last one before HER’s indefinite hiatus, so I feel this sense of surprise that I’ve made it to the “newer” games.