One of the only series where you can go from, “I love this puzzle!” to “I can’t stand this puzzle!”, after playing one game. Great job on your in-depth review!
I disagree with a lot of your placement choices, but I find that to be the beauty in the ND community! It’s still a fantastic video that was well thought out and put together. You both make wonderful points and I can’t wait to see your next ranking videos!
@@vote4holt Scarlet Hand being so low HURT MY HEART - and Labyrinth of Lies is one of my top 5 games (mostly due to puzzles), so that one only being middle of the road made me sad haha! I also wouldn't have put CRY at #1, mostly because as much as I enjoy that game, I find some puzzles too tedious and unclear.
@@VictoriaBudkey Scarlet Hand is just one of those games that I feel is really unclear with sooooo many objectives and the game doesn’t even pick up puzzle wise until Henrik goes to the hospital. Believe me I love Scarlet Hand to death but I’ll never forget how helpless I felt playing it as a child lol. As for labyrinth Julian would’ve blown a gasket if it was ranked any higher for puzzles than it was for suspects so I tried to placate him lol. But over all the choice for number 1 was sealed solely by having three extremely unique and entertaining puzzles - Bess’s sneezing machine, The Graveyard Riddle Hunt, and the mechanic of collecting glass eyes and receiving a checkpoint eventually that shows you how many are left before the (presumable ) ending of the game. I felt like every other puzzle just kinda fell into place too, past those three. Do you have a personal pick for number one?
I personally would have put either Trail of the Twister or Shadow at the Water’s Edge as #1 for puzzles. I personally love nonograms and never feel punished doing any of the puzzles in SAW, not even Takae’s lessons! Haha! But I definitely agree with TOT being suuuuuper solid in terms of puzzles!
@@VictoriaBudkey Another bold TOT fan! (Psssst did you know Huw Miller literally hates ToT and says it is the single worst game 👀 it’s in his channel bio) Honestly good for you, understanding nonograms and all :) couldn’t be me, but I do enjoy a lot of the cultural lessons.
As I watched this, I kept having to coach myself to stay calm if you mentioned CRY too early, so you can imagine how happy I was with 1st place. However, I would say I feel like you both short-changed Last Train. One of the reasons I absolutely LOVE Crystal Skull is because it’s puzzles are so cohesive, fitting to the plot, and emphasize that creepy, gothic theme. Last train does something similar for me where most of the puzzles seem to fit it’s theme and plot really well. I mean, collecting gemstones while going out west on an old train gives me 1848 gold-rush vibes. The puzzles may not all be fan favorites, but I think that it deserved a little higher of a ranking. So much love for this channel. I’m always so pumped to see a notif from Vote4Holt.
Yeah Last Train was definitely a hard one to place, really it wasn’t that it had bad puzzles, just that a lot of them were too easy and the endgame puzzles kinda fell off. Regardless I’m glad you enjoyed the list! (Also glad to hear that CRY puzzles are as heavily revered by others as they are by us)
Vote 4 Holt Can’t argue with that. Those endgame puzzles certainly did bring it down. By the way, if you have any advice for a RAN newbie, lay them on me. I’ve started my first play through after deciding I was a big enough fan to buy even the worst of the worst in ND fandom. Your ranking gave me some hope for the puzzles in RAN since you didn’t rank it last lol
Just found this but Ive always wanted this video to exist! I played all the games as a kid but never really heard anyone else's opinions on them :) It's so nice that you include visuals because had forgotten about sooo many puzzles. That weird lock puzzle in Silent Spy on Senior still haunts me to this day...
Glad you found your way to our vids, WishMish! You’ll be happy to know we have three other videos similar to this format covering Story, Suspects, and Music!
@@vote4holt I will definitely be checking them out! I was so happy to see the first place here, I'd be interested to see if it's the same for the others haha
I find it interesting that the highest and lowest entries on this list both have a singular main puzzle that involves scavenging everywhere to find over a dozen elements to put on a grid. Bruno’s glass eyes was WAY better than Jake’s box. Lol
Love your reviews, as usual great job and can't wait to see your next installment of your series :) Word of advice for that dining puzzle in Waverley that might save you the headache on your next playthrough cause I never see anyone mention this: the utensils shown in the picture in the book are in the same order as the descriptions of the cutlery (so the first knife in the photo is the first knife in the description and so on)
Oh no freaking way, if all those descriptions are in order then that makes it literally so much easier! Still, pretty difficult considering the game never spells that out for you lol
It’s so refreshing to see someone who doesn’t bash on puzzles for simply being puzzles and they don’t contribute to the mystery. So many people hate trail of the twister cause it’s mostly chores and not much actual tornado chasing and mystery solving but honestly who cares? Even if they’re just chores, they’re still fun puzzles. I’m currently playing it again and I’m having a blast. Also pretty sure “Jane Willoughby’s” real name is revealed to be Marion through Gloria’s letters.
I hate the Danger by Design puzzles too, but if you flush the toilet in Dieter’s darkroom 10 times in a row, you don’t have to develop the photos in the dark-they are just done for you and you can take them right out of the room. 🙂
I fell asleep listening to this the other might and my boyfriend woke me up because apparently I was so enraged about Trail of the Twister making top 5 that I was arguing with you in my sleep😂 Great video though as always!
Btw: Scopa is a legit game, I actually bought a set when I visited Italy a couple years ago, and bruh that game has seen its share of playing during quarantine.
Yeah I remember hearing about it a few times from sources that in no way could’ve been influenced by Nancy Drew games lol. Honestly one of my all time favorite mini games
CRY on the ice in White Wolf is foreshadowing the initials of next game Legend of the Crystal Skull The duct tape box puzzle in Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon requires no clues or knowledge of a backstory. It’s just a sequence of events puzzle using logic when looking at the pictures.
I guess I’m embarrassed to say after playing and replaying every ND game for the past 16 years, my all time favorite puzzle is Fox and Geese. I have installed White Wolf and played until I got to that puzzle just to get to play it repeatedly
I will add on that the animal pictures puzzle is based on a rather traditional puzzle known as the river crossing. The objective is to get all the animals across a river without them eating one another. Some variations have just wolves and chicks while others will play around with the idea. In this case, the idea is to move the animals in an order where they won't harm one another which is the 'story' being told. It's meant to be a context clue puzzle but it's easier if you know the puzzle structure it's based off.
@@lorigirard8939I think it would be better if you maybe you have to play it for the game once and then have the option play it whenever if you enjoy it.
Yes!! Love to see respect for the pomegranate seed puzzle. At some point in that puzzle, I actually sat back and just thought “I am having SO MUCH FUN right now”
holy shit I thought I was the only stoked bro to play these games my entire life im not alone hahah y'all are awesome, I share the same list so far-- I did like the music and location of the Shattered Medallion though. Whoever on the team for HerIntactive for sound and visuals for that setting nailed it.
Glad to hear you like the list so far! And yeah we’re mega Nancy Drew hype beasts, always have been lol. There’s a lot more of us on the V4H discord, too! I don’t mean to shill it but there’s a link in the description if you wanna drop in and join the discussion!
I quite literally learned about orthographic views in my college stagecraft class and had to use the Waverly Academy spoilers page to help me with my homework in that class HABSJSJSJ
Y’all really did Last Train to Bluemoon Canyon dirty on this list! Especially referring to Camille as “the old French lady who lived with him on the train” um, you mean his beautiful WIFE who he ADORED and who most of the game is about?! Love you guys and love the videos but that’s a big OOF. 😭 Now to say something nice (love that you guys did this for all the lower rated games lol), I loved hearing you guys get super excited about some of your favorite/most nostalgic puzzles. The excited gasp is such a delight and I’m glad I’m not the only one who does that when talking about Nancy Drew! Wanted to cheer for every entry that wasn’t CUR because I love that game and the puzzles shine, so glad it was high up on the list! ✨ I also freaking love CRY but my one issue is I have never been able to solve the vulture feathers on my own. 😅
I have been enjoying the heck out of your guys’ channel and would love to see more videos and even more games from you guys. Have you tried playing the Sherlock Holmes games? I started off playing Nancy Drew when I was 8 when my friend showed me some of the Haunted Mansion then Ghost Dogs was my first game that I played myself. After beating all of the games, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the Sherlock Holmes games: Sherlock vs Jack the Ripper, crimes and punishment and the devil’s daughter. I highly recommend you check them out as well :) keep up the great work you guys!
No actually I’ve never played any of the Sherlock Holmes games but if fans swear by them I’d love to give them a try! Julian and I started LA Noire a while ago but then kinda suspended the let’s play because we decided we’d rather be playing Nancy Drew and editing the ranking series and whatnot - it may come back soon, but I like the idea of more mystery games :)
@@vote4holt I remember seeing your video starting LA Noir and loving it. I also enjoyed that game. I struggled with some of the interrogations, but I am just a sucker for mysteries. You guys do such a great job and your excitement for these games is contagious. Thanks for taking so much time to make each video great!
I LOVE THE PORTRAIT BACKING PUZZLE I have said this before but I just adore that puzzle. Also the stained glass thing on the door is...I never solve it on my own. For some reason it’s really difficult for me lol and the timer with the creepy sounds just does not help me solve it any faster XD
I like the chemical puzzle. What makes it memorable is Arglefumph's walkthrough, where he blows himself up a couple of dozen times, getting more and more aggravated. The chemical puzzle is not GOOD, but it's not nearly as bad as it's made out to be. It's not a matter of needing razor sharp mouse-handling precision. The most important thing about is figuring out which ORDER to remove the chemicals in. If you do it in the wrong order, you're going to blow up. If you do it in the right order, it's not too bad.
With Scarlet Hand puzzles, you just need a knack for organization... I remember as a child I actually wrote ssooo much on a notebook to actually solve those and nancy drew games like those taught me how to be more organised in studies too.
@Schuylerville that independence is what made me like the nancy drew series above most point and clicks...even on easy difficulty they don’t hold your hand...a bit of work realism so to speak...
Castle Malloy is just a super widely mixed bag if you ask me, it’s got a bunch of really good puzzles like the Otter Box and seating arrangements and then some reeeeeallly poorly structured ones imo, like the bog maze, the gear puzzle you can start without having enough to finish it, the chemicals, the wire jumble, etc
Okay. Just have to say, you realize that in Shadow Ranch you are not meant to do the magnet puzzle with the pieces of wood blocking! If you lift and out down the rock like five times the wood will go away! Or you can choose to leave and come back a few times. Also, in Phantom of Venice, the game allows you to put the paper next to the fax machine numbers. You do not have to memorize which note goes with which number.
My all time favorite puzzle is definitely the doll puzzle from last train but I enjoy so many puzzles in so many other games. As for Ghost Dogs.. I am traumatized deeply by the woods maze in that game that I have never went back to replay it. I remember rage quitting multiple times just because I couldn’t figure out how to navigate the forest even with the map. No game has ever pissed me off that much. I’m not sure if I’ll ever go back to replay it lmao. It’s a shame cause the rest of the game is wonderful.
The woods maze was so freaky as a kid because Nancy begins by saying “I’d better be careful” which made 7 year old me think there were still dangerous ghost dogs running around the woods 🫨
When you said how "Egyptians and puzzles go hand in hand," it brought to mind a really neat game you might enjoy - Riddle of the Sphinx. It was released back in 2000, but has been recently remastered and released on Steam. First person point and click exploration like ND, tons of passageways, amazing graphic work... You may want to check it out!
Weird fact: when I first saw the fireplace in Silent Spy, I started randomly clicking the bricks just to get a sense, when it magically opened. I later learned that I accidentally clicked the actual code by pure coincidence.
That key puzzle for RAN? My game glitched, and no matter what happened we could never get it. Ever. Got to the point of it being an actual bug. Went unfinished for years, until I came across a message board post with a simple thing that gave it correct every time.
As someone obsessed with all things Greek, running through Labyrinth of Lies is incredibly amusing. Several of these puzzles, I just looked at them, laughed, and solved them in a couple minutes or less. It’s one I play more for atmosphere because the puzzles are too easy for a long play.
1:02:24 I thought this was HeR’s hint at the next game in the series, Legend of the Crystal Skull (abbreviated CRY). But I find it amusing that it could be them trolling us as well 😂
i really like this series! are you guys going to do a ranking video for all of the categories combined as an overall worst to best ranking? from personal preferences of course lol
For the thorton hall nanogram at 41:44 (I could have bad memory so I might be wrong), im pretty sure they don’t accept the “multiple solutions” because the game states that the same colors can’t touch?? So the reason the solutions showed in the example do not work are because reds are touching reds and blues touching blues… so the solution is when you solve the nanograms with alternating colors.
You’re very right. Nonograms require all the colors to not touch each other and we got that wrong in the video. I think they explained them quite well in game 23, and then kind of assumed players playing Thornton hall would have remembered the rules from them. So basically we have a skill issue 😫
In Castle Malloy, I also spent so long doing the gear puzzle when I was younger without the pieces but it does say right on the puzzle how many gears there should be, our bad. The weights you can just do by simple math rather than moving them around guessing and checking. The bog puzzle is so easy. But that damn pillar puzzle is the worst.
There is just something beyond me about that map to the bog, I can never understand when it wants me to go forward and how many times and I always go one extra. It’s not as bad as the sewer maze from Venice or the ending maze of Alibi but it still trips me up every time
If you just take the first Three videos here are the cumulative rankings: 1. The Deadly Device = 4.3 points 2. Shadow at the Waters Edge = 6 3. Legend of the Crystal Skull = 6.3 4. Sea of Darkness = 7.3 5. Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon = 9 6 - 7. Warnings at Waverly Academy and Ghost of Thornton Hall = 10 8. Danger on Deception Island = 10.3 9. The Captive Curse = 10.6 10. The Final Scene = 11 11. Treasure in the Royal Tower = 11.3 12. Curse of Blackmoor Manor = 11.6 13. The Secret of Shadow Ranch = 12 14. Labyrinth of Lies = 14.3 15. Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake = 15 16 - 17. Alibi in Ashes and Trail of the Twister = 15.3 18. Tomb of the Lost Queen = 16.3 19. The Silent Spy = 16.6 20. The White Wolf of Icicle Creek = 17.6 21. The Phantom of Venice = 19.3 22. Stay Tuned for Danger = 20.3 23. Midnight in Salem = 21.3 24. The Haunted Carousel = 22 25 - 26. Danger by Design and Ransom of the Seven Ships = 25 27. The Creature of Kapu Cave = 25.6 28. Secret of the Old Clock = 26.3 29. Message in the Haunted Mansion = 27 30. The Haunting of Castle Malloy = 28.3 31. Secrets can Kill = 29 32. Secret of The Scarlet Hand = 29.3 33. The Shattered Medalion = 31.6
I will say that some HER puzzles have what we might call 'assumption logic.' Assumption logic is assuming that the player will recognize a specific idea or concept as true without being told to do so. Stayed Tuned For Danger and Warnings at Waverly Academy had puzzles mentioned that fall in this category. It's a situation where I don't blame you for making the errors because the logic meant to solve them isn't inherently clear. For Stay Tuned for Danger, the hidden assumption is that players will explore every screen for clues. Players will also take extensive notes on anything odd or unusual. In Mattie's Dressing room, she has a marked script that has four colors: yellow, red, orange, and blue. I'm not sure why an orange tea stain counts, but it does. Anyway, this marked script outlines the disarming code for the bomb. Why it's there is not clear nor does it make sense at all. However, it does contain a solution just not one players are able to locate well. The Clock puzzle similarly has that issue where the camera gives you a clue to what time the clock should be set to (somehow) that most players will miss. Waverly's assumption is a reading one. Most Americans read left to right top to bottom. Why does that matter? The photographs are ordered so that the first spoon, knife, or fork labeled is the leftmost silverware in the photo and the last is the 8th one listed. It's not well telegraphed so I only recently discovered it myself. However, you can use the photograph to clearly identify the silverware without a walkthrough. HER just didn't realize that most people might not apply typical reading strategies to a photograph to identify silverware. The trick they were trying to go with was how Rita randomly sorted all her silverware so you have to use the photo to identify the actual item rather than going by its numerical sequence in the book. Still could have been a little clearer on that aspect though.
I think you were wrong on a few of them. Were I rating them based on puzzles, Secret of the Old Clock would have been waaay higher on the list, along with quite a few others.
Definitely Curse Of Blackmoor Manor! It would have to be the best, it's so well thought out, the puzzles are the very best, it's the very first Nancy Drew game I remember playing and the one that is the most nostalgic along with the other games in 10-13.
Why can't Nancy just say to Bill, "Hey. I'm trying to unlock a secret passage here. Just let me win?" Ughh. Fox and Geese is one of my least favorite puzzles in the franchise because you have to do it FOUR. TIMES. Also, this is a controversial take, but I actually like the cooking in White Wolf. I used to be a person who hated the portrait backing in Water's Edge, but I've come to appreciate it a lot. Another controversial take: I LOVE nonograms- I've come to be very good at it and I even have a nonograms app on my phone.
Honestly there are so many times when it would be less suspicious if Nancy just said “PLEASE MOVE YOU ARE IMPEDING MY INVESTIGATION” but puzzles gotta puzzle smh
The chess puzzle in Phantom of Venice is nonsense. Good idea for a puzzle, but the moves are blatantly faux chess. However, it may be loosely inspired by a real life incident in 1890, when World Champion William Steinitz was playing a two game telegraph match with Mikhail Tchigorin, and got a visit from Federal authorities who wanted to know why he was sending coded messages to someone in Russia. Unlike the game, the moves were totally legit, but the FBI didn't know it.
Omg Danger by Design again near the bottom ? This is one of my favorites because of the puzzles. Cmon you get to make tea which is a logic puzzle if you read everything, make cookies, parfaits, swim in a watery maze via the catacombs just to name a few. This should be a top 10 for a fun puzzle adventure game 😞 And the dark room you just need a piece of tape/post it on your screen. Also I love the end fight 🕵🏼♀️ My least favorite puzzles are actually Shadow at the Waters Edge. I’m surprised if you don’t care for math or like repetitive puzzles it ranked that high. Especially the giant end puzzle. And sorry Ghost Dogs is still in my bottom five I find it so boring due in part to the puzzles. For some reason I am in the minority with Fox and Geese it’s a strategy game that I can solve without much difficulty. But White Wolf restricts the flow and freedom of the game by having to make meals by a certain time that was the most frustrating for me. Deception Island no matter how many times I play which is a lot I can’t get the wood description puzzle. Trail of the Twister I’m with you I love that game and puzzles. And thank you Jamie for making Phamton Venice top 10!🕵🏼♀️
Sad to see Message in a Haunted Mansion so low. I think the puzzles in that game are great. Maybe it is because it is my first ND game. Also, I think mini golf is the absolute worst puzzle in the series.
My main grievance with the portrait puzzle is that there is no undo or anything, the puzzes in shadow are so infuriating, it sucks because it is a great game in most every other way
This is definitely something you can't definitively rank. Well, I guess none of the categories can be ranked this way necessarily. But this one has everything to do with the types of puzzles people prefer, which means unless a game has really terrible puzzle design, people's favorites are going to be different. I'm currently playing your number one pick now (first time in about a decade) and I couldn't disagree more. I have found it tedious, frustrating, and unintuitive, but I also completely understand why it wasn't this way for you because these are obviously the ones you seem to enjoy. I can see your bias for this game throughout these countdowns, as it obviously has a lot of nostalgic value for you, but it's just not one of my favorites. And that's okay. Your opinions are your opinions, and I do agree with a lot of your lower picks. Okay now we're under the see more cut so I can go into actual references. The Rube Goldberg puzzle and the graveyard puzzles in particular annoyed me to no end! I didn't think the whole sequence of events was very intuitive, as a lot of possible solutions on my part didn't work even though they logically would have made sense. The graveyard puzzle involved going back and forth a lot, and I think it would have been more fun to have the information on your person because of that (though I haven't gotten to that part yet and could be misremembering). A lot of CRY involves far flung hints at things that, if you don't piece it together or it doesn't make sense to you, just make you feel stuck. If that's how you naturally think, great. But it went way against how I was thinking so when I looked up the solutions, I was actually glad I did since there's absolutely no way I would have thought of them on my own. That being said, this category also depends on why people are playing in the first place. I know for me, my meteorology class in college makes Trail of the Twister a game I never even want to look at again because of how much I hated that class and how many puzzles there were one after another when I really wanted a better story to justify doing them. But you addressed this a bit when you ranked Danger by Design so low (and I agree with you wholeheartedly on that one, I just didn't like the puzzles in it). If you want to follow a story and do puzzles on the side (so nothing time consuming or overly complicated or tedious), this list is going to look a LOT different. And if you're here for the puzzles and the story comes second, then I'm glad you found enjoyment out of the games that did it. It means someone found a way to enjoy something I didn't, and that's a good thing!
that`s the whole point of the original secrets can kill because it was supposed to be a scavenger hunt because that`s how a real mystery works because in a real mystery they would actually have to find and seek out real clues and that`s one of the things that fictional detectives do in the mystery genre and as for the puzzles of the original secrets can kill was supposed to be relevant because that`s part of the game play of the Nancy drew games and that is part of any Nancy drew game they are supposed to be relevant to the mystery and as for actually solving the puzzles that involves gathering clues is by using the clues to actually find out of who is the culprit
I think I'll clarify the issues with Secrets Can Kill. Yes, it's supposed to be a scavenger hunt. However, the issues are the main puzzles are random brainteasers on bulletin boards. They only give the readers vague clues or hints to information we discover naturally in the game. They don't serve any purpose outside of one specific brainteaser in the original. They're not helping us find clues or solve the mystery. Beyond that, the brainteasers require players to use outside knowledge to solve them rather than having any in-game hints or clues minus a few very specific brainteasers. Even then, there's no acknowledgement or way to solve them in-game for Nancy to use the message as evidence or clues to help drive the mystery. In fact, the question of where they came from is never satisfactorily solved and left as an ambiguous "Jake had premonitions." The actual mystery work is done inside the library where we find real, definitive clues and hints, not the brainteasers which makes them superfluous and pointless. You'll notice that any game past Stay Tuned for Danger got rid of them signifying that they really weren't relevant or actually important to solving the mystery. The Remaster tries to rectify this by building a puzzle that forces the player to locate and read the 16 posts with the clues to solve the box. However, even then, it's a boring scavenger hunt if you miss a single clue and have to backtrack to find it. It's not fun or engaging because the issue is you know the solution but can't solve it because you weren't interested in examining a ton of pointless brainteasers. Like I said, only one or two of them are actually required to beat the game and that's very apparent in any play through where the person playing skips reading them over. Very few people bother with them because they're not integral to the mystery. That changed in later games when HER made relevant clues to find that pertain unambiguously to solving a puzzle whereas game 1 it's clear the brainteasers were a major afterthought rather than an important or necessary part of the game. I don't even bother solving them anymore because I know they're just a waste of time and energy and distracting rather than enhancing the real mystery at hand.
@@fridaylambda3494 Um actually from what i remembered saying is that there is something called sequencing is that you got to sequence every little puzzle in that idea of the scavenger hunt you know like in that one Halloween episode from season of Wishbone the one called the Halloween hound legend of creepy collars
Right but the issue with sequencing is that you HAVE to complete each puzzle to solve the solution. Sequence breaking is when you can do things out of order and arrive at the same results despite cracking the code necessary for success. That's not possible in Secrets Can Kill because 90% of the brainteasers are OPTIONAL. Let's use the most basic ones. There's 3 little sticky notes that require you to use a mirror to solve them. When you do, it reveals all the motives of the three main suspects. The problem is those are found already through the investigations in the library into the Judo medallion, drugs, and later the blatant plagiarism in the Teacher's Lounge. In this regard, there's no sequence breaking if you fail to solve the brainteasers. Nor do the brainteasers allow Nancy to perform any follow up investigations or ideas. That's the problem. For another example, the crumpled Note in the teacher's lounge requires sign language to solve. Doing so proves one suspect innocent, but it doesn't stop Nancy from accusing them nor does it do anything to solve the mystery. Nancy stumbles across the evidence to solve it when she gets trapped in the Boiler Room in the original or doing the terrible scavenger hunt puzzle in the remake. However, you can solve the mystery WITHOUT solving the brainteasers. You don't need them which is why Secrets Can Kill is so terrible in the puzzle category. A bad puzzle is fine, but a pointless puzzle isn't excusable and the Brainteasers are pointless except a select few and there was 20 BETTER ways to convey this information to the player. There's no real sequencing or purpose to them as they're not used as evidence, used to solve the mystery, or relevant. You can cut them out and the game doesn't change that drastically. You'd just sub in a note from Jake saying "Hey we should probably replace the bolt cutters for something safer in the Kitchen" or a note in the teacher lounge about the code for the padlock. Done. Brainteasers don't serve the plot or the game in any meaningful way to keep them hence why every ND game post Stay Tuned got rid of them.
@@fridaylambda3494 Well technically that`s basically called sequence breaking and also those puzzles ARE NOT OPTIONAL you are supposed to solve every puzzle in those early Nancy drew games circa 1998 and 2002 because to actually progress through any one of those early ND games you would have to solve every puzzle i mean we`ere talking like that era of when solving all of those puzzles were important to the game play of a classic Nancy drew game and when i mean CLASSIC i would say both stay tuned for danger and message in a haunted mansion
And how exactly do you solve them? You don't. Because Nancy doesn't say anything for solving them nor is it used as evidence, acknowledged by the game, etc. "In computer and video games, sequence breaking is the act of performing actions or obtaining items out of the intended linear order or of skipping "required" actions or items entirely." That's the textbook definition. You don't need to solve a single brainteaser to go into the diner, steal the bolt cutters and swap them for the ladle. Sure, there's a clue to tell you they're there, but that clue is optional because the player can figure them out theirselves. And that's the most relevant ONE. Why do you have to solve the brainteaser in the teacher's lounge to figure out Connie's innocent? Or why do you need to solve the mirror puzzles to learn the motives of any of the characters? YOU DON'T. IT'S LITERALLY IN THE GAME and TOLD TO YOU WORD FOR WORD IN THE DIALOGUE. The only two you need to solve is the one for the bolt cutters and a code. The game doesn't check to see if you checked those notes. It doesn't check that you did anything involving them. The game doesn't acknowledge their existence so there's no sequence break. If it was, it would be required FOR THE PLOT TO PROGRESS. You know like in the hundreds of hidden object games I play where you need to solve puzzles or find objects in a specific order. Sequence breaking would be like what most people do in Blackmoor where they get the keys in any order they want before finding the forge. Or getting the Jade Keys in any order in Secret of the Scarlet Hand. Or skipping the puzzles in Shadow Ranch that are boring and tedious since you don't need to solve all the flower puzzles to open the box. You don't need to solve the brainteasers and doing so is a time waster because they DON'T DO ANYTHING. If they are sequence breaks, then explain HOW each individual puzzle must be solved for Nancy to prove who killed Jake Rogers. They don't do ANYTHING because they are covered in the plot already. Most of them are redundant and the few that aren't are a waste of time when you know the solution or can figure it out on your own. Heck the boiler room code is on a plague in the library. The Brainteasers serve no purpose except distractions Period.
Hahaha loved the text message from Mason at 1:37:45!
Lmao glad someone caught it
Someone moved Mason’s things… *someone will PAY*
@@healgoth 😂
my favorite recurring event throughout your rankings is the onesided elation every single time that the final scene comes up in the conversation
Oh my god Julian is SUCH a final scene stan. Like I get it, it’s spooky and creepy, but he loves that game a little too much lol
I'm with Julian, Final Scene is amazing!
I mean it’s probably one of the best stories and endings in the series with the best Nancy performance, and I agree 🕵🏼♀️
One of the only series where you can go from, “I love this puzzle!” to “I can’t stand this puzzle!”, after playing one game.
Great job on your in-depth review!
Thanks Susan!
I disagree with a lot of your placement choices, but I find that to be the beauty in the ND community! It’s still a fantastic video that was well thought out and put together. You both make wonderful points and I can’t wait to see your next ranking videos!
Glad we can have some enthusiastic and upfront disagreements! For the sake of discourse I’m curious, which picks do you disagree with the most?
@@vote4holt Scarlet Hand being so low HURT MY HEART - and Labyrinth of Lies is one of my top 5 games (mostly due to puzzles), so that one only being middle of the road made me sad haha! I also wouldn't have put CRY at #1, mostly because as much as I enjoy that game, I find some puzzles too tedious and unclear.
@@VictoriaBudkey Scarlet Hand is just one of those games that I feel is really unclear with sooooo many objectives and the game doesn’t even pick up puzzle wise until Henrik goes to the hospital. Believe me I love Scarlet Hand to death but I’ll never forget how helpless I felt playing it as a child lol.
As for labyrinth Julian would’ve blown a gasket if it was ranked any higher for puzzles than it was for suspects so I tried to placate him lol.
But over all the choice for number 1 was sealed solely by having three extremely unique and entertaining puzzles - Bess’s sneezing machine, The Graveyard Riddle Hunt, and the mechanic of collecting glass eyes and receiving a checkpoint eventually that shows you how many are left before the (presumable ) ending of the game.
I felt like every other puzzle just kinda fell into place too, past those three.
Do you have a personal pick for number one?
I personally would have put either Trail of the Twister or Shadow at the Water’s Edge as #1 for puzzles. I personally love nonograms and never feel punished doing any of the puzzles in SAW, not even Takae’s lessons! Haha! But I definitely agree with TOT being suuuuuper solid in terms of puzzles!
@@VictoriaBudkey Another bold TOT fan! (Psssst did you know Huw Miller literally hates ToT and says it is the single worst game 👀 it’s in his channel bio)
Honestly good for you, understanding nonograms and all :) couldn’t be me, but I do enjoy a lot of the cultural lessons.
As I watched this, I kept having to coach myself to stay calm if you mentioned CRY too early, so you can imagine how happy I was with 1st place. However, I would say I feel like you both short-changed Last Train. One of the reasons I absolutely LOVE Crystal Skull is because it’s puzzles are so cohesive, fitting to the plot, and emphasize that creepy, gothic theme. Last train does something similar for me where most of the puzzles seem to fit it’s theme and plot really well. I mean, collecting gemstones while going out west on an old train gives me 1848 gold-rush vibes. The puzzles may not all be fan favorites, but I think that it deserved a little higher of a ranking.
So much love for this channel. I’m always so pumped to see a notif from Vote4Holt.
Yeah Last Train was definitely a hard one to place, really it wasn’t that it had bad puzzles, just that a lot of them were too easy and the endgame puzzles kinda fell off. Regardless I’m glad you enjoyed the list! (Also glad to hear that CRY puzzles are as heavily revered by others as they are by us)
Vote 4 Holt Can’t argue with that. Those endgame puzzles certainly did bring it down. By the way, if you have any advice for a RAN newbie, lay them on me. I’ve started my first play through after deciding I was a big enough fan to buy even the worst of the worst in ND fandom. Your ranking gave me some hope for the puzzles in RAN since you didn’t rank it last lol
Just found this but Ive always wanted this video to exist! I played all the games as a kid but never really heard anyone else's opinions on them :) It's so nice that you include visuals because had forgotten about sooo many puzzles. That weird lock puzzle in Silent Spy on Senior still haunts me to this day...
Glad you found your way to our vids, WishMish! You’ll be happy to know we have three other videos similar to this format covering Story, Suspects, and Music!
@@vote4holt I will definitely be checking them out! I was so happy to see the first place here, I'd be interested to see if it's the same for the others haha
I find it interesting that the highest and lowest entries on this list both have a singular main puzzle that involves scavenging everywhere to find over a dozen elements to put on a grid. Bruno’s glass eyes was WAY better than Jake’s box. Lol
Love your reviews, as usual great job and can't wait to see your next installment of your series :)
Word of advice for that dining puzzle in Waverley that might save you the headache on your next playthrough cause I never see anyone mention this: the utensils shown in the picture in the book are in the same order as the descriptions of the cutlery (so the first knife in the photo is the first knife in the description and so on)
Oh no freaking way, if all those descriptions are in order then that makes it literally so much easier! Still, pretty difficult considering the game never spells that out for you lol
No freaking way XD
It’s so refreshing to see someone who doesn’t bash on puzzles for simply being puzzles and they don’t contribute to the mystery. So many people hate trail of the twister cause it’s mostly chores and not much actual tornado chasing and mystery solving but honestly who cares? Even if they’re just chores, they’re still fun puzzles. I’m currently playing it again and I’m having a blast.
Also pretty sure “Jane Willoughby’s” real name is revealed to be Marion through Gloria’s letters.
I hate the Danger by Design puzzles too, but if you flush the toilet in Dieter’s darkroom 10 times in a row, you don’t have to develop the photos in the dark-they are just done for you and you can take them right out of the room. 🙂
the first time i played danger by design i did that by accident-- pleasantly surprised though!
I fell asleep listening to this the other might and my boyfriend woke me up because apparently I was so enraged about Trail of the Twister making top 5 that I was arguing with you in my sleep😂 Great video though as always!
💤 trail of the twister puzzles are so goood 💤 💤 💤
You done did Waverly and Malloy bad. I adore them, shush
Yes, especially Malloy.
I agree totally. Loved the puzzles in both those games.
Btw: Scopa is a legit game, I actually bought a set when I visited Italy a couple years ago, and bruh that game has seen its share of playing during quarantine.
Yeah I remember hearing about it a few times from sources that in no way could’ve been influenced by Nancy Drew games lol. Honestly one of my all time favorite mini games
@@vote4holt Yeah, but the version in the game is tougher than the version HER had on their website, that was almost impossible to lose to.
@@vote4holt Ever thought of doing a vid on best mini games?
My brother and I are hopelessly addicted to Scopa... We even have a green Enrico-style carnivale mask we sometimes drag out😄
Ghost Horse of Castle Venice is the best puzzle game
Reading this gave me a stroke thanks
CRY on the ice in White Wolf is foreshadowing the initials of next game Legend of the Crystal Skull
The duct tape box puzzle in Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon requires no clues or knowledge of a backstory. It’s just a sequence of events puzzle using logic when looking at the pictures.
That’s literally what I always tell Julian and he’s like HURRRRRRNGI CANT FIGURE OUT ANIMAL PICTURES DURRR
I guess I’m embarrassed to say after playing and replaying every ND game for the past 16 years, my all time favorite puzzle is Fox and Geese. I have installed White Wolf and played until I got to that puzzle just to get to play it repeatedly
I will add on that the animal pictures puzzle is based on a rather traditional puzzle known as the river crossing. The objective is to get all the animals across a river without them eating one another. Some variations have just wolves and chicks while others will play around with the idea. In this case, the idea is to move the animals in an order where they won't harm one another which is the 'story' being told. It's meant to be a context clue puzzle but it's easier if you know the puzzle structure it's based off.
@@lorigirard8939I think it would be better if you maybe you have to play it for the game once and then have the option play it whenever if you enjoy it.
Yes!! Love to see respect for the pomegranate seed puzzle. At some point in that puzzle, I actually sat back and just thought “I am having SO MUCH FUN right now”
holy shit I thought I was the only stoked bro to play these games my entire life im not alone hahah y'all are awesome, I share the same list so far-- I did like the music and location of the Shattered Medallion though. Whoever on the team for HerIntactive for sound and visuals for that setting nailed it.
Glad to hear you like the list so far! And yeah we’re mega Nancy Drew hype beasts, always have been lol. There’s a lot more of us on the V4H discord, too! I don’t mean to shill it but there’s a link in the description if you wanna drop in and join the discussion!
@@vote4holt I'll check it out for sure !!
I quite literally learned about orthographic views in my college stagecraft class and had to use the Waverly Academy spoilers page to help me with my homework in that class HABSJSJSJ
Man the only time ND ever helped with my homework was sixth grade when they taught us about the Mayans lmao
Y’all really did Last Train to Bluemoon Canyon dirty on this list! Especially referring to Camille as “the old French lady who lived with him on the train” um, you mean his beautiful WIFE who he ADORED and who most of the game is about?! Love you guys and love the videos but that’s a big OOF. 😭
Now to say something nice (love that you guys did this for all the lower rated games lol), I loved hearing you guys get super excited about some of your favorite/most nostalgic puzzles. The excited gasp is such a delight and I’m glad I’m not the only one who does that when talking about Nancy Drew!
Wanted to cheer for every entry that wasn’t CUR because I love that game and the puzzles shine, so glad it was high up on the list! ✨ I also freaking love CRY but my one issue is I have never been able to solve the vulture feathers on my own. 😅
Great video guys! I really enjoy listening to you two analyze and share your opinions about these games :D
I have been enjoying the heck out of your guys’ channel and would love to see more videos and even more games from you guys. Have you tried playing the Sherlock Holmes games? I started off playing Nancy Drew when I was 8 when my friend showed me some of the Haunted Mansion then Ghost Dogs was my first game that I played myself. After beating all of the games, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the Sherlock Holmes games: Sherlock vs Jack the Ripper, crimes and punishment and the devil’s daughter. I highly recommend you check them out as well :) keep up the great work you guys!
No actually I’ve never played any of the Sherlock Holmes games but if fans swear by them I’d love to give them a try! Julian and I started LA Noire a while ago but then kinda suspended the let’s play because we decided we’d rather be playing Nancy Drew and editing the ranking series and whatnot - it may come back soon, but I like the idea of more mystery games :)
@@vote4holt I remember seeing your video starting LA Noir and loving it. I also enjoyed that game. I struggled with some of the interrogations, but I am just a sucker for mysteries. You guys do such a great job and your excitement for these games is contagious. Thanks for taking so much time to make each video great!
@@vote4holt sherlock holmes crime and punishment is worth playing more than any other.
I LOVE THE PORTRAIT BACKING PUZZLE I have said this before but I just adore that puzzle. Also the stained glass thing on the door is...I never solve it on my own. For some reason it’s really difficult for me lol and the timer with the creepy sounds just does not help me solve it any faster XD
I like the chemical puzzle. What makes it memorable is Arglefumph's walkthrough, where he blows himself up a couple of dozen times, getting more and more aggravated.
The chemical puzzle is not GOOD, but it's not nearly as bad as it's made out to be. It's not a matter of needing razor sharp mouse-handling precision. The most important thing about is figuring out which ORDER to remove the chemicals in. If you do it in the wrong order, you're going to blow up. If you do it in the right order, it's not too bad.
With Scarlet Hand puzzles, you just need a knack for organization... I remember as a child I actually wrote ssooo much on a notebook to actually solve those and nancy drew games like those taught me how to be more organised in studies too.
@Schuylerville that independence is what made me like the nancy drew series above most point and clicks...even on easy difficulty they don’t hold your hand...a bit of work realism so to speak...
No way Kapu Cave and Haunted Mansion have better puzzles than Castle Malloy. Y’all are on something.
Castle Malloy is just a super widely mixed bag if you ask me, it’s got a bunch of really good puzzles like the Otter Box and seating arrangements and then some reeeeeallly poorly structured ones imo, like the bog maze, the gear puzzle you can start without having enough to finish it, the chemicals, the wire jumble, etc
Okay. Just have to say, you realize that in Shadow Ranch you are not meant to do the magnet puzzle with the pieces of wood blocking! If you lift and out down the rock like five times the wood will go away! Or you can choose to leave and come back a few times. Also, in Phantom of Venice, the game allows you to put the paper next to the fax machine numbers. You do not have to memorize which note goes with which number.
My all time favorite puzzle is definitely the doll puzzle from last train but I enjoy so many puzzles in so many other games. As for Ghost Dogs.. I am traumatized deeply by the woods maze in that game that I have never went back to replay it. I remember rage quitting multiple times just because I couldn’t figure out how to navigate the forest even with the map. No game has ever pissed me off that much. I’m not sure if I’ll ever go back to replay it lmao. It’s a shame cause the rest of the game is wonderful.
The woods maze was so freaky as a kid because Nancy begins by saying “I’d better be careful” which made 7 year old me think there were still dangerous ghost dogs running around the woods 🫨
When you said how "Egyptians and puzzles go hand in hand," it brought to mind a really neat game you might enjoy - Riddle of the Sphinx. It was released back in 2000, but has been recently remastered and released on Steam. First person point and click exploration like ND, tons of passageways, amazing graphic work... You may want to check it out!
Weird fact: when I first saw the fireplace in Silent Spy, I started randomly clicking the bricks just to get a sense, when it magically opened. I later learned that I accidentally clicked the actual code by pure coincidence.
That key puzzle for RAN? My game glitched, and no matter what happened we could never get it. Ever. Got to the point of it being an actual bug. Went unfinished for years, until I came across a message board post with a simple thing that gave it correct every time.
Key puzzle bug sounds awful lol, glad I never got that
As someone obsessed with all things Greek, running through Labyrinth of Lies is incredibly amusing. Several of these puzzles, I just looked at them, laughed, and solved them in a couple minutes or less. It’s one I play more for atmosphere because the puzzles are too easy for a long play.
1:12:45 I can’t believe how randomly emotional that background music just made me… I never realized how nostalgic I was for it. Why am I- crying
Track’s titled melody if you wanna find a better rendition! Game is last train to blue moon canyon
1:02:24 I thought this was HeR’s hint at the next game in the series, Legend of the Crystal Skull (abbreviated CRY). But I find it amusing that it could be them trolling us as well 😂
i really like this series! are you guys going to do a ranking video for all of the categories combined as an overall worst to best ranking? from personal preferences of course lol
The the plan! It’s gonna be super, super difficult to make some of those calls, I can tell you it already is in terms of ranking the soundtracks
For the thorton hall nanogram at 41:44 (I could have bad memory so I might be wrong), im pretty sure they don’t accept the “multiple solutions” because the game states that the same colors can’t touch?? So the reason the solutions showed in the example do not work are because reds are touching reds and blues touching blues… so the solution is when you solve the nanograms with alternating colors.
You’re very right. Nonograms require all the colors to not touch each other and we got that wrong in the video. I think they explained them quite well in game 23, and then kind of assumed players playing Thornton hall would have remembered the rules from them. So basically we have a skill issue 😫
POV: Shadow Ranch is ranked as #12. You realize that Trail of the Twister still hasn't appeared yet🙃🤮
In Castle Malloy, I also spent so long doing the gear puzzle when I was younger without the pieces but it does say right on the puzzle how many gears there should be, our bad. The weights you can just do by simple math rather than moving them around guessing and checking. The bog puzzle is so easy. But that damn pillar puzzle is the worst.
There is just something beyond me about that map to the bog, I can never understand when it wants me to go forward and how many times and I always go one extra. It’s not as bad as the sewer maze from Venice or the ending maze of Alibi but it still trips me up every time
If you just take the first Three videos here are the cumulative rankings:
1. The Deadly Device = 4.3 points
2. Shadow at the Waters Edge = 6
3. Legend of the Crystal Skull = 6.3
4. Sea of Darkness = 7.3
5. Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon = 9
6 - 7. Warnings at Waverly Academy and Ghost of Thornton Hall = 10
8. Danger on Deception Island = 10.3
9. The Captive Curse = 10.6
10. The Final Scene = 11
11. Treasure in the Royal Tower = 11.3
12. Curse of Blackmoor Manor = 11.6
13. The Secret of Shadow Ranch = 12
14. Labyrinth of Lies = 14.3
15. Ghost Dogs of Moon Lake = 15
16 - 17. Alibi in Ashes and Trail of the Twister = 15.3
18. Tomb of the Lost Queen = 16.3
19. The Silent Spy = 16.6
20. The White Wolf of Icicle Creek = 17.6
21. The Phantom of Venice = 19.3
22. Stay Tuned for Danger = 20.3
23. Midnight in Salem = 21.3
24. The Haunted Carousel = 22
25 - 26. Danger by Design and Ransom of the Seven Ships = 25
27. The Creature of Kapu Cave = 25.6
28. Secret of the Old Clock = 26.3
29. Message in the Haunted Mansion = 27
30. The Haunting of Castle Malloy = 28.3
31. Secrets can Kill = 29
32. Secret of The Scarlet Hand = 29.3
33. The Shattered Medalion = 31.6
I'm loving this series. Im glad I'm not the only one who really struggled with fox and geese, but I hated the photo puzzle in Waverly
I will say that some HER puzzles have what we might call 'assumption logic.' Assumption logic is assuming that the player will recognize a specific idea or concept as true without being told to do so. Stayed Tuned For Danger and Warnings at Waverly Academy had puzzles mentioned that fall in this category. It's a situation where I don't blame you for making the errors because the logic meant to solve them isn't inherently clear.
For Stay Tuned for Danger, the hidden assumption is that players will explore every screen for clues. Players will also take extensive notes on anything odd or unusual. In Mattie's Dressing room, she has a marked script that has four colors: yellow, red, orange, and blue. I'm not sure why an orange tea stain counts, but it does. Anyway, this marked script outlines the disarming code for the bomb. Why it's there is not clear nor does it make sense at all. However, it does contain a solution just not one players are able to locate well. The Clock puzzle similarly has that issue where the camera gives you a clue to what time the clock should be set to (somehow) that most players will miss.
Waverly's assumption is a reading one. Most Americans read left to right top to bottom. Why does that matter? The photographs are ordered so that the first spoon, knife, or fork labeled is the leftmost silverware in the photo and the last is the 8th one listed. It's not well telegraphed so I only recently discovered it myself. However, you can use the photograph to clearly identify the silverware without a walkthrough. HER just didn't realize that most people might not apply typical reading strategies to a photograph to identify silverware. The trick they were trying to go with was how Rita randomly sorted all her silverware so you have to use the photo to identify the actual item rather than going by its numerical sequence in the book. Still could have been a little clearer on that aspect though.
I wish there were so many more aspects you guys could make videos like this on 😂
I think you were wrong on a few of them. Were I rating them based on puzzles, Secret of the Old Clock would have been waaay higher on the list, along with quite a few others.
Old Clock mini golf is honestly priceless but I just get soooooo tired of driving everywhere tbh. Out of curiosity what would your number one pick be?
And alibi in ashes should have been waaaaaaay lower on the list, it is as bad as midnight in salem.
Definitely Curse Of Blackmoor Manor! It would have to be the best, it's so well thought out, the puzzles are the very best, it's the very first Nancy Drew game I remember playing and the one that is the most nostalgic along with the other games in 10-13.
Why can't Nancy just say to Bill, "Hey. I'm trying to unlock a secret passage here. Just let me win?" Ughh. Fox and Geese is one of my least favorite puzzles in the franchise because you have to do it FOUR. TIMES. Also, this is a controversial take, but I actually like the cooking in White Wolf.
I used to be a person who hated the portrait backing in Water's Edge, but I've come to appreciate it a lot. Another controversial take: I LOVE nonograms- I've come to be very good at it and I even have a nonograms app on my phone.
Honestly there are so many times when it would be less suspicious if Nancy just said “PLEASE MOVE YOU ARE IMPEDING MY INVESTIGATION” but puzzles gotta puzzle smh
The chess puzzle in Phantom of Venice is nonsense. Good idea for a puzzle, but the moves are blatantly faux chess. However, it may be loosely inspired by a real life incident in 1890, when World Champion William Steinitz was playing a two game telegraph match with Mikhail Tchigorin, and got a visit from Federal authorities who wanted to know why he was sending coded messages to someone in Russia. Unlike the game, the moves were totally legit, but the FBI didn't know it.
I actually just finished a alibi replay and I had no problem being bed and getting into tonis cabinet!
What is Julian's accent in this? Has he always had it and I never noticed? Why do the brothers have different accents? I'm so confused lol.
Lmfao if Julian is speaking with an accent I have no idea what it is, maybe he’s been watching too much anime 💀
Omg Danger by Design again near the bottom ? This is one of my favorites because of the puzzles. Cmon you get to make tea which is a logic puzzle if you read everything, make cookies, parfaits, swim in a watery maze via the catacombs just to name a few. This should be a top 10 for a fun puzzle adventure game 😞 And the dark room you just need a piece of tape/post it on your screen. Also I love the end fight 🕵🏼♀️
My least favorite puzzles are actually Shadow at the Waters Edge. I’m surprised if you don’t care for math or like repetitive puzzles it ranked that high. Especially the giant end puzzle. And sorry Ghost Dogs is still in my bottom five I find it so boring due in part to the puzzles.
For some reason I am in the minority with Fox and Geese it’s a strategy game that I can solve without much difficulty. But White Wolf restricts the flow and freedom of the game by having to make meals by a certain time that was the most frustrating for me.
Deception Island no matter how many times I play which is a lot I can’t get the wood description puzzle.
Trail of the Twister I’m with you I love that game and puzzles. And thank you Jamie for making Phamton Venice top 10!🕵🏼♀️
It hurts me that Haunted Carousel is higher than Thornton Hall
@Schuylerville I agree, especially when Haunted Carousel basically has no puzzles
Sad to see Message in a Haunted Mansion so low. I think the puzzles in that game are great. Maybe it is because it is my first ND game.
Also, I think mini golf is the absolute worst puzzle in the series.
I'm glad someone else hated the ghost puzzles in Midnight in Salem. I was kind of disappointed in that game honestly
1:39:40 THE WALLPAPER IS A HINT????
Uhhhh we honestly might have been tripping I really can’t remember 💀
My main grievance with the portrait puzzle is that there is no undo or anything, the puzzes in shadow are so infuriating, it sucks because it is a great game in most every other way
This is definitely something you can't definitively rank. Well, I guess none of the categories can be ranked this way necessarily. But this one has everything to do with the types of puzzles people prefer, which means unless a game has really terrible puzzle design, people's favorites are going to be different. I'm currently playing your number one pick now (first time in about a decade) and I couldn't disagree more. I have found it tedious, frustrating, and unintuitive, but I also completely understand why it wasn't this way for you because these are obviously the ones you seem to enjoy. I can see your bias for this game throughout these countdowns, as it obviously has a lot of nostalgic value for you, but it's just not one of my favorites. And that's okay. Your opinions are your opinions, and I do agree with a lot of your lower picks.
Okay now we're under the see more cut so I can go into actual references. The Rube Goldberg puzzle and the graveyard puzzles in particular annoyed me to no end! I didn't think the whole sequence of events was very intuitive, as a lot of possible solutions on my part didn't work even though they logically would have made sense. The graveyard puzzle involved going back and forth a lot, and I think it would have been more fun to have the information on your person because of that (though I haven't gotten to that part yet and could be misremembering). A lot of CRY involves far flung hints at things that, if you don't piece it together or it doesn't make sense to you, just make you feel stuck. If that's how you naturally think, great. But it went way against how I was thinking so when I looked up the solutions, I was actually glad I did since there's absolutely no way I would have thought of them on my own.
That being said, this category also depends on why people are playing in the first place. I know for me, my meteorology class in college makes Trail of the Twister a game I never even want to look at again because of how much I hated that class and how many puzzles there were one after another when I really wanted a better story to justify doing them. But you addressed this a bit when you ranked Danger by Design so low (and I agree with you wholeheartedly on that one, I just didn't like the puzzles in it). If you want to follow a story and do puzzles on the side (so nothing time consuming or overly complicated or tedious), this list is going to look a LOT different. And if you're here for the puzzles and the story comes second, then I'm glad you found enjoyment out of the games that did it. It means someone found a way to enjoy something I didn't, and that's a good thing!
that`s the whole point of the original secrets can kill because it was supposed to be a scavenger hunt because that`s how a real mystery works because in a real mystery they would actually have to find and seek out real clues and that`s one of the things that fictional detectives do in the mystery genre and as for the puzzles of the original secrets can kill was supposed to be relevant because that`s part of the game play of the Nancy drew games and that is part of any Nancy drew game they are supposed to be relevant to the mystery and as for actually solving the puzzles that involves gathering clues is by using the clues to actually find out of who is the culprit
I think I'll clarify the issues with Secrets Can Kill. Yes, it's supposed to be a scavenger hunt. However, the issues are the main puzzles are random brainteasers on bulletin boards. They only give the readers vague clues or hints to information we discover naturally in the game. They don't serve any purpose outside of one specific brainteaser in the original. They're not helping us find clues or solve the mystery. Beyond that, the brainteasers require players to use outside knowledge to solve them rather than having any in-game hints or clues minus a few very specific brainteasers. Even then, there's no acknowledgement or way to solve them in-game for Nancy to use the message as evidence or clues to help drive the mystery. In fact, the question of where they came from is never satisfactorily solved and left as an ambiguous "Jake had premonitions." The actual mystery work is done inside the library where we find real, definitive clues and hints, not the brainteasers which makes them superfluous and pointless. You'll notice that any game past Stay Tuned for Danger got rid of them signifying that they really weren't relevant or actually important to solving the mystery. The Remaster tries to rectify this by building a puzzle that forces the player to locate and read the 16 posts with the clues to solve the box. However, even then, it's a boring scavenger hunt if you miss a single clue and have to backtrack to find it. It's not fun or engaging because the issue is you know the solution but can't solve it because you weren't interested in examining a ton of pointless brainteasers. Like I said, only one or two of them are actually required to beat the game and that's very apparent in any play through where the person playing skips reading them over. Very few people bother with them because they're not integral to the mystery. That changed in later games when HER made relevant clues to find that pertain unambiguously to solving a puzzle whereas game 1 it's clear the brainteasers were a major afterthought rather than an important or necessary part of the game. I don't even bother solving them anymore because I know they're just a waste of time and energy and distracting rather than enhancing the real mystery at hand.
@@fridaylambda3494 Um actually from what i remembered saying is that there is something called sequencing is that you got to sequence every little puzzle in that idea of the scavenger hunt you know like in that one Halloween episode from season of Wishbone the one called the Halloween hound legend of creepy collars
Right but the issue with sequencing is that you HAVE to complete each puzzle to solve the solution. Sequence breaking is when you can do things out of order and arrive at the same results despite cracking the code necessary for success. That's not possible in Secrets Can Kill because 90% of the brainteasers are OPTIONAL. Let's use the most basic ones. There's 3 little sticky notes that require you to use a mirror to solve them. When you do, it reveals all the motives of the three main suspects. The problem is those are found already through the investigations in the library into the Judo medallion, drugs, and later the blatant plagiarism in the Teacher's Lounge. In this regard, there's no sequence breaking if you fail to solve the brainteasers. Nor do the brainteasers allow Nancy to perform any follow up investigations or ideas. That's the problem. For another example, the crumpled Note in the teacher's lounge requires sign language to solve. Doing so proves one suspect innocent, but it doesn't stop Nancy from accusing them nor does it do anything to solve the mystery. Nancy stumbles across the evidence to solve it when she gets trapped in the Boiler Room in the original or doing the terrible scavenger hunt puzzle in the remake. However, you can solve the mystery WITHOUT solving the brainteasers. You don't need them which is why Secrets Can Kill is so terrible in the puzzle category. A bad puzzle is fine, but a pointless puzzle isn't excusable and the Brainteasers are pointless except a select few and there was 20 BETTER ways to convey this information to the player. There's no real sequencing or purpose to them as they're not used as evidence, used to solve the mystery, or relevant. You can cut them out and the game doesn't change that drastically. You'd just sub in a note from Jake saying "Hey we should probably replace the bolt cutters for something safer in the Kitchen" or a note in the teacher lounge about the code for the padlock. Done. Brainteasers don't serve the plot or the game in any meaningful way to keep them hence why every ND game post Stay Tuned got rid of them.
@@fridaylambda3494 Well technically that`s basically called sequence breaking and also those puzzles ARE NOT OPTIONAL you are supposed to solve every puzzle in those early Nancy drew games circa 1998 and 2002 because to actually progress through any one of those early ND games you would have to solve every puzzle i mean we`ere talking like that era of when solving all of those puzzles were important to the game play of a classic Nancy drew game and when i mean CLASSIC i would say both stay tuned for danger and message in a haunted mansion
And how exactly do you solve them? You don't. Because Nancy doesn't say anything for solving them nor is it used as evidence, acknowledged by the game, etc. "In computer and video games, sequence breaking is the act of performing actions or obtaining items out of the intended linear order or of skipping "required" actions or items entirely." That's the textbook definition. You don't need to solve a single brainteaser to go into the diner, steal the bolt cutters and swap them for the ladle. Sure, there's a clue to tell you they're there, but that clue is optional because the player can figure them out theirselves. And that's the most relevant ONE. Why do you have to solve the brainteaser in the teacher's lounge to figure out Connie's innocent? Or why do you need to solve the mirror puzzles to learn the motives of any of the characters? YOU DON'T. IT'S LITERALLY IN THE GAME and TOLD TO YOU WORD FOR WORD IN THE DIALOGUE. The only two you need to solve is the one for the bolt cutters and a code. The game doesn't check to see if you checked those notes. It doesn't check that you did anything involving them. The game doesn't acknowledge their existence so there's no sequence break. If it was, it would be required FOR THE PLOT TO PROGRESS. You know like in the hundreds of hidden object games I play where you need to solve puzzles or find objects in a specific order. Sequence breaking would be like what most people do in Blackmoor where they get the keys in any order they want before finding the forge. Or getting the Jade Keys in any order in Secret of the Scarlet Hand. Or skipping the puzzles in Shadow Ranch that are boring and tedious since you don't need to solve all the flower puzzles to open the box. You don't need to solve the brainteasers and doing so is a time waster because they DON'T DO ANYTHING. If they are sequence breaks, then explain HOW each individual puzzle must be solved for Nancy to prove who killed Jake Rogers. They don't do ANYTHING because they are covered in the plot already. Most of them are redundant and the few that aren't are a waste of time when you know the solution or can figure it out on your own. Heck the boiler room code is on a plague in the library. The Brainteasers serve no purpose except distractions Period.