Recent reviews by Crossfox

OOOOOOOOO I'm so Mad I will never get to play this game for the first time again!

The voice-overs were super well done and well acted. Contrary to what I'm seeing on other steam reviews, I thought they added to the story.
They didstress me out thinking there was a time limit on the game and how fast I had to solve everything, but there wasn't.
It was like putting together a wiki with broken links. I enjoyed it! I did have to refer to a guide at one point - I'm not exactly sure how some of the conclusions were supposed to be reached, like searching for classical books and their author/publications in order to get clues about the in-game books.
But I had fun sleuthing through it - I did it in one day!
There was only one puzzle I don't think I was able to solve, although it didn't affect me getting all the achievements. I'll be forever curious.

I've never actually played a Nancy Drew point and click mystery before, so I went in without knowing what I'd be working with.

I had an overall good time and was happy that it was a quick, short mystery to play through and feel satisfied with each puzzle I solved.

Difficulty:
- Variable, some of the puzzles being really easy and others frustrating enough that I needed a guide. (Maybe I'm just not mechanically inclined when it comes to pulling levers.)
- Maybe due to the inherent clunkiness of your view changing by maneuvering around screen by screen with a mouse, I did get really angry at one of the puzzles because I didn't realize for the longest time that I needed Penelope to "stand up", and I failed 5+ times and had to hear her inform me "THAT didn't work!!!!" and get frozen into a cutscene and then repeat the whole thing again.

Voice acting:
- Pretty good! Penelope's delivery did get old whenever I fumbled a puzzle and had to wait for her to inform me "THAT doesn't work!" ad infinitum.

Other:
- I felt like sometimes it was not quite clear to me what I needed to do in order to progress, and I know from the guide that I flipped through that I just like, missed an entire item to grab. The place to grab it never became interactable to me, and I missed a conversation regarding it.
- There's a couple of times Penelope does tell you to go to bed in order to progress, but the order of progression did confuse me and I just ran back and forth clicking on people to see if they had anything new to say.
- A couple of times, I tried to call the police and Penelope informed me "I have nothing to tell him!" OH YES YOU DO????? GIRL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Lol.

Highly recommend! Don't be afraid of the timer, I solved every mystery on my first run and had several in-game hours to spare near the end.
Despite being a spooky game, a lot of the storylines are genuinely heartwarming. Making connections feels intuitive and satisfying. I felt like I was solving mysteries without being led by the hand, but also never felt too at a loss.
I liked that if I got too sidetracked solving the additional mysteries, Declan would chime in reminding me of my key objectives.
I'm horrible at the sigil puzzles, but still managed to get through them in a reasonable amount of tries.
There are a few bugs and typos, but the game's Discord is very active in responding to player feedback.

This reads like a hardened classic tropey noir. Unfortunately, I was disappointed with the lack of actual choice involved in this story. I had no urge to play through it again - despite seeing the multiple achievements I missed - because I'm not sure how to manipulate the maze of 'options' to get there. In reality, so many of the choices played out as being nearly identical to one another, just worded differently.

Nazi head go blam

PROS.
I can literally shout my enemies to death.
People are friendly. Within my first 5 hours a team of Russians recruited me for their kinship and have showered me with help. I can't understand a single thing they say without Google Translate but they don't seem to care.
Completing quests is addictive for someone with a completionist, list-loving personality like me.

CONS.
If you don't want to shell out real money for this free-to-play game, you will have to run everywhere at the speed of Slow until you have saved enough Turbine Points to buy a damn horse.
I haven't seen a whole lot of actual RP taking place so far.
Tested my theory by dramatically fainting in front of a large group of people. Everyone promptly ran away. Can't say I blame them.