The Phantom of Venice
Written: Jun 15, 2012
Rated a Helpful Review by the Epinions community
Pros:game quality, sound/music, generally not too easy, very fun
Cons:a few puzzles were too hard
The Bottom Line: Great PC game, really really fun... I loved it. The benefit to playing on a PC is it's easiest to play with a mouse, I find.
Nancy Drew - The Phantom of Venice is a great computer game, appropriate for girls and boys of most any age, and perfect for someone who is looking to just relax and have fun. By that, I mean The Phantom of Venice is a great game to play when you have some time, as it is a fairly long game, though there are no time limits and you always have the “Second chance” option if you make a fatal error. Plus, you can always save your game and come back to it later. So it’s not a win/lose kind of game – it’s more of a challenging, interactive game for mystery lovers.
The story is generally this: Nancy is hired by the Italian Police to help them catch a thief who has been stealing famous art/other riches throughout Venice. You play as Nancy, and must help them crack the case by interrogating characters, going undercover, and doing some old-fashioned sleuthing. If you’re not familiar with this series of games, they are point and click mysteries, which means that you can walk around different locations by clicking where you want to go, collect items in an inventory, and talk to the people you meet by choosing which lines (provided) you want Nancy to say. There are also fun little mini games to play while you’re on the case.
As for the game quality, I rate this five out of five stars. It is truly one of the highest quality games I’ve played in a long time – there were no glitches, it never froze, and the picturesque scenes that you walk through were clear and well-made. There are so many little details in the scenery that sometimes, I honestly play it to “travel to Venice”… That’s how authentic it feels. The characters look extremely realistic.
The music/sound just adds to the experience. Background music is more minimal in this particular Drew game, but it always suits the activity being done at the time – laid back when you are strolling around, or more exciting when you are in a pinch and need to move quickly. The sound of birds in the streets, market vendors and passerby speaking in Italian, and of course the voices of the game’s characters are all fun to listen to – the accents of the characters can be pretty amusing.
Gameplay can sometimes be tedious because, as I said before, it is a time-consuming game. You may find it best to play in a few sittings. I would also add that the mini-games in this plot are particularly hard (though you can choose whether you want to play in Senior or Junior mode, the senior mode being the harder of the two). A few of them were too hard for me to figure out, and I had to look up how to do them online, which was a bit annoying. But for the most part, if you get stuck or need a hint, you can use the telephone within the game to call Nancy’s cousins, Bess and George, or her beau, Ned. Hints aside, I would say this game is one of the hardest in the series, though still fun for all ages.
Recommended:
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