QUICK Review of KEY because I’ve been thinking about it:
(No outright spoilers)
I’ll be honest. I liked it! I liked the stuff that catered to the old fans and I liked the stuff that catered to the new fans. They’ve improved environments and character form.
But the dialogue was awful. You couldn’t call anybody (despite having The Hardy Boys, Ned, AND Carson), nobody answered until the game wanted you to. I miss chatty moments! Just humorous bits with the boys! I was so excited for that, but nothing.
The conversation with suspects wasn’t great either. It was really lacking and linear. The choices were there but the conversation could only possibly go where the game wanted it to go. I don’t always dive into the character questions, but I LOVE to ask everything during replays. Without new dialogue, the game doesn’t feel replayable to me. At all.
Alright. I finished KEY. I'm going to play it again with my sister and then probably do a more in depth review of it, but for now I've got a just-finished-it review, and we'll see how this one compares to my second review after a second playthrough.
Plot:
The plot wasn't too bad! A bit linear compared to other games but I did enjoy it. It wasn't as visual novel-y as MID but wasn't as interactive as some other games. But overall it was fun and entertaining!
Characters:
The characters were enjoyable. I liked having some characters there being only barely involved when others were SUPER involved, so we have a lot more range with suspects and suspicions. I definitely would have liked digging deeper into the characters, like in CUR and GTH and SAW and such. Although, I'll admit, in most of the other games we didn't get super deep backgrounds either. There weren't a lot of dialogue options, so maybe in the future we can get more dialogue and character deep dives! I want more substance!
The only part about the characters I actively didn't like was a certain character's hair (bro, that's some Assassin's Creed Caterina Sforza hair, Sims hair, idk but it wasn't good enough), and the random unimportant NPCs. The NPCs were a bit distracting and did take me out of the game if I paid too much attention to them, so that's my take on that. In the future, I want to random unimportant NPCs to be completely gone and I want to VEN sound design back. That was immersive without needing the actual people standing around.
Now the phone characters were almost useless, only there to push the plot forward with barely any fun shit. In the future, I NEED more interaction with them. Less texting, more actual conversations. And they don't even need to be strictly about the game, give me conversations like what we had with Savannah Woodham. Not just a phone call here or there for only the purpose of moving forward in the plot. I need weird phone calls where they're like "hello! what do you want!" and the only dialogue option is "bye!" so then you hang up. I also want to actually be able to call them, because if there isn't a plot reason for it, you can't call them. So. Yeah. Oversight from the game devs.
Controls:
This game I feel was not designed with point and click in mind. I feel like it was added as a second option while favoring the "modern" controls of free roam stuff. However, I enjoyed the free roam! Maybe this is because I play a lot of other video games that aren't point and click, but I ended up really liking it. Other than that, the controls CAN be a bit clunky to get used to, but that happens with every video game with new controls you don't know yet (when I started playing Red Dead Redemption 2 I punched my horse so many times because I couldn't get used to the controls and I felt so bad). I think they could definitely work on it more, but it is WAY better than Midnight in Salem. Way WAY better.
Music:
While not as iconic at the Kevin Manthei tracks I am in love with, I did like the music! It was pretty good, with some tracks standing above the others. I will say though that the track that plays in the tech store is my least favorite as it just sounds... meh. In every sense of the word.
Puzzles and Minigames:
Oh my god. OH MY GOD. There are actually puzzles!!!! After all, what, two puzzles in Midnight in Salem, we actually get REAL PUZZLES! They have some new puzzles, some recycled puzzles (THAT I WANT MORE OF), some pretty puzzles, some clunky but fine puzzles, and just a good variety of them. They also offer hints if you are struggling.
I think my favorite puzzle is... Well, I don't want to spoil it, but there are a few contending for the top place. (Although fuck math, all my homies hate math.)
As for the minigames, the coffee making is fun, although a bit daunting with the instructions. I recommend making your own notes aside from the in-game recipe books. The latte art can be irritating but eventually you get the hang of it. Not quite as bad as the SAW calligraphy but nowhere near the delight I got from the SPY cookies minigame.
Glitches and Issues:
I did catch a few typos and a few glitches, but they weren't the norm. Just look at the HeR site for what to look out for, and make sure your PC can handle the game. I didn't need to look out for that since I'm currently playing Red Dead Redemption 2 and my laptop is running that fine (on low graphics lol). Way less messed up than MID, worse than some of the other games, but hey, it's not like we've never had bugs in the games before (there have been a few times the games have crashed on me because of bugs). And this time we have autosaves to help out with that.
Overall Impression:
It's a solid game. I thoroughly enjoyed it. While the UI and controls are still similar to MID, the game itself is a step in the right direction where I want the Nancy Drew games to go. It isn't perfect, I don't think we'll ever get a perfect Nancy Drew game, but it's good enough for me.
I'm happy with it. I got to have the joy of a new Nancy Drew game, which is something I haven't had since Midnight in Salem, and we know how that went. I got to find new clues, see new places, meet new characters, complete puzzles that were both new and recycled, and enjoy a new mystery. It brought a smile to my face multiple times and made me squeal in delight when I solved something. I haven't had a good new Nancy Drew game experience since I played SEA when it came out.
So I'm happy. Is it my favorite? No. But do I think it's bad? Also no. I think it's somewhere in the middle for me, but that's okay. These games make me happy, and I hope we get more so they can continue my happiness in the future.
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