Nancy Drew #3 - Message in a Haunted Mansion

Its the third Nancy Drew game and this time its spooky goings on in a mansion. As usual I will be doing the same sort of format I did in the previous post. I guess there isn't much more left to say other than 'Lets go!'

Before you ask though, yes the character modelling is still awful and is this way for a few games yet. With that in mind, lets hit the topics.

Plot
Here in this game Nancy is sent to a friend of her Aunt 'Rose Green' to both help out with the renovation of a large mansion in San Francisco and to try and work out why mysterious accidents have been occurring all over the house.

Yes its not really all that interesting, there's a fair amount of backstory involved in culture and history but none of this really makes itself apparent enough. Theres never any real sense of danger and never any real sense of mystery into what is going on. Several 'Spooky' going-on events do happen but every time these are picked at and revealed quickly leaving very little to push everything forwards.

Thankfully this time the characters are much better, each with motive of causing chaos, each with their own quirks and style. It feels the devs really pushed to make more memorable characters this time around to try and fix the issues from the previous game, but in the process, lost a lot of the story.

Location
The house itself isn't too interesting, the rooms themselves are pretty basic and while pretty, there isn't really much that hasn't been seen loads already. That said another large issue from the previous game has been addressed and that's movement. Its much nicer to walk around the place and places at least feel different from Nancy's own Oriental themed room to the dark library. There's less dead ends too and several 'alternate' routes to get upstairs and downstairs.

Puzzles
Puzzles once again range wildly in likability. Theres some rather basic tangram stuff, a word puzzle, some item-combining stuff and a 3D maze. There's nothing memorable puzzle-wise though and some of the puzzles just feel out of place given the location.

Actually wait, I take that back, there is one memorable puzzle but it's memorable for the wrong reason and that is the 'Chinese Symbol' puzzle. Its annoying simply because there's no real indication that its coming and when it does arrive, it leads you hunting around the house for Chinese writing and noting down what each one looks like, plus what it means. Its very frustrating for first-time players however long-time ones would have written these down already.

Mechanics
Once again there is a set day/night system in place, unlike the previous game however it runs on a 24-hour clock where, at different times of the day, different characters will be out the house, letting you snoop through their belongings. Changing time is easy enough too as all you have to do is head to bed, setting the alarm to what time you want to skip to. Its simple and works well. Time is also kept by a clock in the side of the screen meaning its easy to keep track of things... Because if you don't...

Second Chance
... You will be caught. This leads to a quick game-over and its pretty fair. Other game-overs include smashing valuables, not putting out a fire in time and accidentally revealing to a suspect that you snooped through their belongings. As usual the game is merciful enough to let you just continue before you made a mistake. In addition the 'fire' game over is also fair, with the tools you need to contain the fire in the same room as where the fire is taking place.

Overall
Overall its a step in the right direction but there are still many problems. Puzzles still need to be cleaned up and the location the game is set in still needs to be more memorable. Would I recommend it to newcomers? A rather tentative no, while its fine playing this after one or two adventures, a first run player will just ragequit come the Chinese symbol puzzle.

GBA Port
This is also one of the few Nancy Drew titles to get a port away from the PC and... Its awful. The GBA just isn't suited for adventure gaming in any way, the screen itself is too small and everything is squished together horribly, making even the most normal item turn into a pixel-hunt.

The other big issue is how the makers obviously went cheap with this, there is no saving at all and instead the game tries to have a password feature. This doesn't work at all because the way these game work is that you can take on puzzles, conversations and many other bits in any order you like. With a password function that works chapter-by-chapter, you can often load up your game only to find puzzles you didn't do before, suddenly completed and puzzles you did do, back to square one.

Avoid it basically and stick with the PC version.