Still, if you can’t see as much as you’d like, there’s always something to do, at least. The Phantom of Venice has a mystery to solve, with lots of puzzles to help you piece together who the burglar is, though none are extremely difficult. That is, with the exception of Scopa. This is a card game Nancy has to play at least twice in the game. That was two times too many for me, since it takes a long time to play to a score of 11, which simply bogs down the pace and feels like nothing more than filler. It is also governed by a complex set of rules that those who hate card games, like me, will wrestle with. I particularly didn’t like that I had to play it a second time in order to get paid, only to never get my hands on the promised cash.

That’s money I could have really used, too, as I had planned to spend it on clothing at the costume store. I just loved the ability to buy new clothes and to dress Nancy up. I actually got a little carried away. But Nancy’s wardrobe is pretty limited when you start, so you need to buy new pieces to flesh it out. This requires money that you’ll need to earn. I spent a lot of extra time doing little make-work projects like picking up garbage for cash, picking and selling flowers, and dancing like a freak at a club for tips to do so. However, though I loved this part of the game, I have a feeling not everyone will be as dedicated to making Nancy as stylish as possible. Nor is it required; I just enjoyed it. If you’d rather just get on with the mystery at hand, the good news is that aside from Scopa, all the busywork that was necessary in previous games is mostly voluntary here. If you are a skinflint from the beginning, you will have enough money to purchase all the objects you need without resorting to chores, so keep this in mind.

Besides the card game, there are a couple of timed puzzles that might get your heart rate up, though as is usual with Nancy Drew games, you’re allowed to simply retry them if unsuccessful. The dancing is necessary at one point, and I struggled with it at first, unable to line up my dance moves with the correct colours and appropriate sounds. It took me several tries to get it right. Of course, I did choose to add to my misery by going back to try again in the name of earning extra money for clothes, so I guess practice makes perfect. You’ll also have a couple of mazes to best, conduct some “B&E” (breaking and entering), do a little reconnaissance, and of course pull a lot of levers. I didn’t care for the mazes, but this type of challenge is often a boring and repetitive way to add length to a game, and this is exactly the case here.

A few other artificial time-wasters are evident as well, such as a door lock you need to pick multiple times and the inefficient navigation map. Usually a way to speed things up, here the map almost slows you down, as you can’t go directly from one spot on the map to your destination, but instead are forced to jump from one site to the next on the map until you finally reach your goal. Yet despite some of this obvious time padding, the light puzzling still makes The Phantom of Venice one of the shorter Nancy Drew games I have played, which surprised me when compared to the previous game in the series. Even with all the extra chores I did to buy clothes for Nancy, I still zoomed through in what felt like record time.

All in all, while still providing a dependable Nancy Drew adventure that fans have come to expect, I just couldn’t help but feel that The Phantom of Venice seems tired, or more specifically, that it’s the latest entry in a series that itself is getting tired. While certainly not something that will impact newcomers, this game has the feel of a house that has had some rooms renovated to good effect, but others that are clearly showing their age. In this case, such improvements as the shopping option and newer character models only tend to highlight the longstanding limitations of the navigation system. It’s high time that players were allowed to explore some of these great places Nancy visits a little more thoroughly. And while the overall house construction is solid, with a storyline as interesting as always and a generally good mix of puzzles, some details managed to slip through the cracks this time around. Specifically, the usually reliable voice work that’s a little shaky in some areas here, as well as a repetitive mini-game and additional fillers that try to conceal its very brief play time. Overall, then, the 18th Nancy Drew adventure is yet another solid addition to the series, but not one of the longer or stronger games.