One of the better Nancy Drew games, it kept me interested in all the puzzles right to the end. I would have played all in one sitting if I had enough time!

Solid mystery game got to spend time with my girlfriend who played this game as a kid pog

Huge Nancy Drew nerd here and I have to say that this is one of my favorite Nancy Drew games. Not just because Frank and Joe Hardy are along for the ride, but for the entire plot of the mystery and finding Jake Hurley's "treasure." My favorite part is putting all the gems in the machine and watching the entire room light up once everything is working. Also, the fact that they included someone from Shadow Ranch in this game was pretty rad to finally put a voice to a face. The only thing that I wasn't really amused about with this game was with the dancing shoes. I found it frustrating that every time you went to look at the paper to move the shoes, the shoes were back in their original spot. If you didn't write it down, you were sure to become very frustrated with it. Other than that minor thing, this was a great sleuthing game to come back to and I really enjoyed playing it.

Definitely one of my favorite Nancy Drew games. The Hardy Brothers were a fun addition and I especially liked how I didn't have to spend large amounts of time wandering aimlessly around to find things as the train is much easier to get used to, in my personal opinion. If you're a fan of Nancy Drew games, or just want a fun mystery point-and-click to pass the time, get it!

This is one of the better Nancy Drew games that I've played. It's at that perfect balance between the simplicity of the older games, and the new types of features that seem to bog down the newer games too much. The puzzles were all fun, which I admit isn't something I'd usually say about a Nancy Drew game.

I love ALL the Nancy Drew games I've played over the years. #ANancyDrewGirlAtHeartEvenAt25YearsOld!

Nancy Drew: Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon is the 13th game in the Nancy Drew series. The overarching story isn't really anything special for the series, and while the UI is better it still lacks some of the QOL updates the later games in the series received. Despite this however, I still think this would be a great title as a start for someone thinking of getting into the series.

The overarching story has Nancy invited upon a train ride with a couple of detective friends, an author, a paranormal ghost hunter, a narcissistic police detective, and a young woman vying for fame using daddy's money. Those invited upon the trip are tasked with helping to identify the location of the train's previous owners gold mine. At least it was until the hostess ends up missing. With you as Nancy, you must find out what happened to the hostess and solve the mystery behind the train's previous owner.

Unlike previous games the game map is smaller than usual. The majority of the game will have players traveling from train car to train car, and eventually open up to two other locations in the late game. While this may not be the most exciting thing for older players of the series, it does make for a great introduction to the series for new players. The puzzles themselves are still more thought invoking than similar games in this vein, but the clues are easier to find here due to the limited space. I personally only ever had to re-check 3 puzzles online to make sure I was doing them right after quite a few failed attempts.

The puzzles of the game are comprised generally with pattern recognition at the root, and something more akin to a logic puzzle. The majority of the puzzles are pretty straight-forward with the game also telling you exactly what you need to do.

My only real complaint would simply be how short the game is personally, but I imagine that there simply just isn't that much to do on a train without the movement between cars getting too stale for players. So while I don't really recommend this to causal fans of the series, I do think that this would be a great title for new players to dip their feet into the water that is one of Nancy's many cases. The great thing about the games is that while they may mention previous cases in passing, all the games are episodic and don't need to be played in order.

One of the best ND games! Worth. It's got my favorite iteration of the Hardy Boys. Everyone besides them on that train is kind of a btch, it's so funny. Except you, John Gray, you're decently cool. You shouldn't look down on romance novels so much, tho

This turned out alot longer than what I thought.

All things considered, this particular game in the franchise was a bit of a disappointment, The Curse of Blackmoor Manor and The Secret of Shadow Ranch were far better games than this one in my opinion. For starters the game is too short with too few locations to explore. There isn’t even a direct Blue Moon Canyon area of the game either. It took me only about 4 hours to beat it, (with minor help with a guide on occasional puzzles I admit). For most of the game you are just stuck on a train moving through narrow corridors without really being able to enjoy the highlights of riding a train, such as looking out the windows at the surroundings, being in the main engine room, maybe even driving the train, blowing the whistle, etc. Not to mention there is always an annoying cut scene when changing cars that can’t be skipped, which for stepping out on the outside of the train and viewing the surroundings you see remarkably nothing! You never even see the train from the outside! Unless you count a bad drawing of the town map. Does the train look the way it does in game as it does on the cover, I don’t know, do you? Besides the train, there are only two other small locations on a map that you visit, with neither being very big or interesting.

The story is also rather stale with yet another mysterious buried treasure with a random ghost thrown in that you never see or hear about again after seeing ONCE. You spend most of the game repairing a weird device that just shines a beam at the point of the treasure, and in doing so you use priceless gemstones that end up probably being worth more than the “treasure” at the end (spoiler: huge letdown). Another let down in game is that there are too many pointless dates and irrelevant names of deceased people thrown at you, providing you with all kinds of confusing information that for the most part you don’t even need. Also, things in this game just don’t feel at all consistent and are often random regarding events or objective. Even at the end you still don’t entirely know what happened to the original owner prior to death, his wife, or his engineer as it isn’t really explained.

As for the gameplay, most of the puzzles are challenging, but possible and often rewarding so long as you take time and think things through, (and consult a guide when you can’t). Most of the art is impressive enough, and the character animations are remarkably better than in the earlier games. The music is original and has a theme I can only describe as adventurous. Sounds are good and I didn’t encounter any technical issues throughout the game. So for the base of the game itself, it was pretty solid. That is before encountering the biggest problem with the game in my opinion, which is that most of the characters are unintentionally incredibly annoying, with most of them offering little to nothing in the story. In all of the Nancy Drew games you always do essentially all the work with some help or guidance being offered from the other characters, however, in this game they just drone on and on about pointless, irrelevant information which you are forced to listen to in order to progress through the game.

The only real enjoyable characters were the Hardy Boys, with everyone else being too annoying, rude, pretentious, or just plain out of place. Frank and Joe Hardy being included in this game was a neat and reasonable cross-over situation, which was certainly nostalgic for those of us that have grown up reading the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and even the Boxcar Children mystery books. However, I feel that the Hardy Boys were not used nearly as much as they should have been or were used in the right way. For example, one of the brothers (your choice) gets stuck as a burger cook job for the sole purpose of ease dropping on a conversation about the treasure. At this part, your just making sandwiches while yet again listening to pointless characters rattle on about useless information. The Hardy Boys do offer some information and real help unlike the other characters, but that’s about it. You don’t travel together in a trio or really do anything together except for talking at a table.

In conclusion, I honestly understand what the developers were going for here, and it hurts me so much because this had the makings to be such a good game. Picture a mystery adventure to find out what caused the mysterious deaths of the company on a train over a century ago as you venture through the Midwest on an exciting 18th century adventure on that same train! Hop on board a real 18th century locomotive and explore a part of the country foreign to so many on the ride of a life time to search for a lost diamond mine! Uncover ancient areas of great conflict between Westerners and Native Americans. Explore ancient settlements and once great gold boom towns gone to ruin. Gather Clues from non-annoying characters while journeying through hidden mines for the ultimate treasure!

This…is not what you get in this game at all.

So unless you’re a diehard Nancy Drew fan, or mystery fanatic, I wouldn’t recommend this particular game.

Thanks for reading

Updated Review:
I'm not sure if I can recommend getting this game again with newer Operating Systems(for example, WIN 10). Although the game is playable, it also lags very badly in areas of heavy animation scenes. The lag doesn't really make any sense seeing as there is no CD drive it's reading from. It should run smoothly-- especially when nothing else is running in the background. There are also moments when you try to go in and out of the game window and it crashes the game with error messages. This game also cannot understand how to transfer sounds through an HDMI cable should you try to connect your computer to a TV. Although the game is playable, and I've loved this game since I was a child, it's hard for me to recommend it until HER decides to clean it up and fix the lingering issues with it.


Original Review: Very nostalgic playing this game again after so many years. It runs as expected on PC for being an older game. Despite being an older game, it can run on current Win versions just fine. No error messages or bugs. Going in and out of full screen does cause a different ratio so I wish that HER decided to make this game windowed or allow the option for it to be windowed. But overall, a fun game.