Her Interactive Nancy Drew: Sea of Darkness

Unlike many other reviewers, I have not played all of the previous installments in this series; in fact, this was my very first Nancy Drew game. It was purchased for my daughter (age 9) for Christmas, over the course of a month of on-again, off-again play, we just completed it tonight. The game was much too difficult for my 9 year old, and I expect it would be pretty difficult for any child under 12 or so to complete on their own. There are so many tasks to complete that it is difficult to organize them all, even for an adult, and a click-happy child can get themselves pretty far along before finding themselves hopelessly tangled up in various plot lines with no idea what to do next.The game was easy for my daughter to play, as it is entirely a point-and-click adventure. The puzzles were challenging, some of them very challenging, and I don't think my daughter ever would have completed at least half of them without assistance. My daughter is also, let's just say, not the bravest soul, and by the end she was quite nervous about some of the locations and events and I had to sit with her to complete the story as it became a little to scary for her. Perhaps it is the perpetual night of Iceland making her uneasy? Certainly didn't help.Anyway, without comparing this game to any other game of the series, my daughter and I both thought the game was very entertaining and well done. The voice acting that others have complained about seemed excellent to me (especially Dagny). The graphics were very detailed and provided a tremendous sense of place for the story that unfolded. Sometimes, the game was a little frustrating because a small missed detail blocked progress, and it's no fun combing the same locations over and over again looking for that missed detail. Some of this may be attributable to the fact that I came into the game about halfway through so there may have been some clues that would have led me on that I never got a chance to see. The great thing about this game is that there is a hints feature that can unblock you any time you need it, and it can help to keep the game flowing.The duration of the game was good; it could have gone on even longer and that would have been great, but I feel that for the cost and my expectations, the pacing and duration seemed just fine.Others have stated that some of the puzzles or puzzle ideas were re-used from previous games; I guess we're luck to have never played any others, because they were all new to us and I thought some of them were quite ingenious, and all were fun to solve.We liked the game enough that we're starting to play some of the older titles (there sure are alot of them!) now to continue our Nancy Drew experience. So this father and daughter team definitely rates this game two thumbs up!

I thought this was a pretty solid Nancy Drew game where you can learn tons of stuff about Iceland. The mystery was there with the idea that there was lost treasure somewhere (and everyone had a motive to get it). I thought the backstory behind each character made a lot of sense and the overall history behind the treasure was interesting.This game is VERY puzzle heavy, particularly with number-based games. I don't see how this is an issue because this is how all Nancy Drew games are. Some may have tickled your brain a little but overall, they were doable and easy enough.The graphics are excellent. It was cool to see shadows when a person moved their heads and the snowflakes seemed almost 3D. The location was beautiful and I really liked the variety of places you could go - especially on the ship. The only thing that I must say is that it seemed like the game was rather fast.Overall, compared to the other games, I felt like this one stood up to them. I can see it definitely having replay value after some time passes.

All looks like in nice condition cd ROM disc and packaging

I haven't finished this game yet but so far it's much better than the last game. Labyrinth of Lies was so godawful that I didn't even finish it. I went back to it a few times but found that it was not fun for me at all, so I eventually gave up. That was the only ND game that I did not finish. I didn't buy the Sonny Joon game before that because it looked horrible, but otherwise have played them all. I was skeptical about this one but it's so much better than I feared. There's more to explore, it's not just puzzle, puzzle, puzzle, and I like the snowy setting. It reminds me a bit of White Wolf.Update 6/18/15: I just bumped my review up to 5 stars because I think this is the best ND game that Her Interactive has put out in a while. I thought it was fun, liked the setting, enjoyed the puzzles.

I have played pretty much all of the ND games from way back, and as a 60+ year old, avid gamer since 1985, I consider myself a fairly good gamer. Alas, over the last several years I have found the ND games to be increasingly difficult to play, mainly due to the extremely difficult puzzles that I have had more and more trouble figuring out.SPOILER:The very last puzzle of the game requires Nancy to press a series of buttons on a chest to open a treasure. Supposedly the clues are in a letter written by an old ships captain way back in the late 1700s. I read the letter, and tried to figure out the correct sequence, which was hidden in a "song" comprised of 7 stanzas, which each had 4-5 lines. The images on the top of the treasure chest were not exactly clear as to what they were supposed to be. One looked like a house to me, but was actually a stone wall. An image of a ship was fairly clear, but it was unclear that an image next to it was a stormy sea. One image looked like a mountain to me, but was actually an ice berg or something like that. In the letter, there was zero indication as to which parts were important, giving a clue as to which parts went with with buttons. In earlier ND games there was always something that pointed you in the right direction, like the important words were highlighted in red or darker somehow. That doesn't happen in this game.In addition, there is are soooo many puzzles within the game that are just not clear as to what you're supposed to do, or where you're supposed to get items. I don't remember things being this difficult in the first ND games that I played. I don't mind figuring things out, but there has to be a certain amount of logic behind it.Also, don't even get me started on the cooking game! Thank GOD it isn't necessary to the progress of the game, otherwise, I would have chucked the whole thing! Unnecessarily complex!If the publishers want to know why sales have gotten so bad, it's because of things like this.

My niece loved this addition to her collection of Nancy Drew games.

Order well received