Nancy Drew: The Final Scene

The Good
I have two other Nancy Drew games, "Message in the Haunted Mansion" and "Treasure in the Royal Tower," and I enjoyed both of them highly, so I was excited to purchase the sequel. I wasn't disappointed. This time, Nancy's friend, school newspaper reporter Maya Nyugen, is kidnapped at the Royal Palladium Theater, set to be demolished in three days. The kidnapper says that Maya will go down with the building if they don't stop the demolition.

The graphics, as usual, are absolutely beautiful. The theater is large and architectually interesting with lots of hidden rooms and places to explore. The characters are animated very well, and the vocals are especially well-done, good inflection on the words and the like. The characters all have motives and full backgrounds, and I found them to be more fleshed out than in previous games. One thing that was great about this specific title was that you could call lots of people on the phone, not just Ned, Bess and George. (loved 90-something Russian Eustacia with her cat food coupons) That way it felt like you were interacting with more people that just the four in the house.

The music was very appropriate to the setting with a bit of a jazzy flair to it, even though I missed the breathy cellos of "Treasure in the Royal Tower." The puzzles, which were almost nonexistant in "Royal Tower" are back, appropriate due to the magic-influenced background of the theatre, and I like all the little puzzles scattered throughout the building (jazz puzzle, card puzzle). They weren't very hard, but I've never been one for hard puzzles in adventure games, I'm more into the figuring things out aspect.

The theatre was easy to navigate with lots of different levels, such as balconies and rooms under the stage.

The Bad
The 7 slot save feature...when will they learn? It's extremely irritating to have to save over games. Also, the music in the menu screen is the same as it's been for the past couple games, and it's a bit irritating.

Maybe this is just my own pet peeve, but the ending is way too short. I know it explains everything in a letter, but I always feel like there should be more to it.

The Bottom Line
If you want a simply good mystery game that's not very hard, but full of ambiance and interesting characters, you HAVE to buy this game. You won't be disappointed.