Previously on Nancy Drew: Shadow at the Water’s Edge: The ryokan’s final guests have left, leaving Nancy alone in the spooky, haunted inn with that creepy-ass family. But whatever, this is totally fine. We got in touch with ex-ghostbuster Savannah Woodham, who has agreed to help us, to the chagrin of her beleaguered assistant, Logan. But we’ve been distracting Logan with Bess’s feminine wiles, which is probably the most attention he’s gotten from a girl in ages, so he really shouldn’t complain.
Oh, yeah, somewhere in between all this ghostbusting and nosing around the Shimizus’ tragic past, we’re still teaching English and grading papers. This subplot is so incredibly pointless.
After all the scary shit that happened last night, we wake up the next morning and head off to teach English. When we come back, we drop off our mail for Logan and George: Logan is going to translate that mysterious article about Kasumi Shimizu for us, and George’s inventor friend will help us get past Suki and into the front desk.
In the meantime, let’s check in with Rentaro. We nudge the conversation in the direction of Miwako, and Rentaro says that she’s stressed over how all the guests are flipping out and leaving the ryokan. Still, he hopes that this will get her to “come to her senses” and move to the city with him. Uh…what city? You guys are in a city already, Rentaro. Kyoto has a population of 1.5 million! We try to nose up in his relationship business, and he tells us, “You know how in the romantic movies, the couple is only happy together for like a minute at the very end?…That’s how our relationship is. Only the movie restarts every week.” I bet somewhere back in River Heights, Ned’s like, “I feel that, bro.”
Anyway, back to the hauntings. We ask what happened to the Williams’ room; Rentaro doesn’t know, but the entire room was trashed, and the shoji had turned the color of ash. ~*~Spooky~*~ Rentaro also tells us about when the ryokan first got its haunted reputation: a few summers ago, a woman saw something in the baths and was so freaked out that she went into shock. Nobody ever figured out what she saw, but soon people were coming looking for spirits and all that junk. “A few of them…” he starts, but then refuses to finish. Oookay. Welp, see you later, Rentaro! “Peace out!” he chirps. God, I love him.
Over in the cultural room, Takae is holding lessons in the art of the tea ceremony. Nancy’s like, “Actually, I’m just here to interrogate you,” but Takae’s like, “Stop saying words.” There shall be no crime fighting until we master the art of tea ceremony!
Takae will walk us through what all the various components of the ceremony are named, and then we have to match the names to the utensils. It’s not hard at all. I don’t usually advocate for making puzzles more difficult, but it wouldn’t have hurt to put the names in hiragana — the player has to pick up some of the syllabary to navigate the rest of the game anyway.
Takae’s inflating Nancy’s ego some more by complimenting us on our mad tea ceremony skills, when all of a sudden the lights go out and we see another shadow pass over the wall. Dude! This is the first time it’s happened in the middle of the day, and Takae’s just as freaked out as we are. But then when the lights come back on, she’s like, “Ghost? What ghost?” What? I thought Takae was the one who believed in ghosts here. When we bring that up, and that she brought Savannah Woodham in to cleanse the place, she says she doesn’t know who that is. Why do our suspects gotta fuck with me like this 🙁
We get a text from Logan, translating that super mysterious article that nobody would talk to us about. The article says that Kasumi Shimizu was found unconscious in the baths, apparently drowned. Yumi was the one who found her and called the police. Well, I’m sure that wasn’t traumatic for her at all, and I bet she loved Nancy repeatedly bringing it up to her!
Somewhat weirdly, we can’t ask Takae about the article. Instead we can ask for more information about Kasumi, and Takae will just tell us that she had a strong sense of justice. “She would have been quite fond of you — she always loved people who think for themselves, and she loved stubbornness.” Hee! I mean, interesting stuff, but are you gonna tell us about her gory death or not, Takae?
So hey, let’s roll up to Miwako and open the conversation with, “I know what happened to your mother.” Smooth, Nancy. We tell her that we know now it was an accident, but it seems like everyone at the ryokan blames themselves. Miwako loses it and snaps, “You want to know why we all blame ourselves? Because we were all there that night, and none of us helped her. Now leave me alone.” Yikes.
Hey, maybe Yumi will react better to us just rolling up and talking about her mother’s accident. Haha, just kidding. We try to be sympathetic about it, but unsurprisingly Yumi’s pissed that we even brought it up to begin with. She kicks us out of her bento stand.
Well, we’ve pissed off all our suspects and can’t talk to any of them, so let’s go check out that pachinko place. Much like New Orleans in Legend of the Crystal Skull, the game engine’s inability to populate Kyoto at night is kind of hilariously pathetic; on the other hand, the creepy emptiness of it all does work in the game’s favor.
There are a couple of things we can look at here. The stall in the center shows the prizes we can win, and Nancy will note that we should look at a comic book that costs 1339 pachinko balls. There’s also a purikura booth off to the right, and we can take a picture inside.
Well, we can’t see Nancy’s face, but we can ascertain that she’s wearing an ugly-ass headband. Oh, Nancy, why is your fashion sense so tragic?
We have to play a few games of pachinko to get enough balls, and the card lets us play unlimited times, so that’s cool. Mid-game, I get a phone call from George, who tells us that they’ve found the word to take Suki off guard mode: “Mate.” (Which is Japanese for “wait,” by the by.) Since we have her on the phone, we can run down a few more conversation options with her. We bring up that Takae is pretty shady and not forthcoming with information, and George ominouses that according to Yumi, Takae is much less sweet than she seems. Wow, and she doesn’t really seem that sweet to begin with, if you ask me. Yumi told them that Takae didn’t believe in the supernatural until recently — in fact, Yumi thinks Takae is behind the hauntings. HMMM.
We play enough pachinko to get this comic book, The Adventures of Captain Exposition and His Talking Dog. This issue conveniently happens to be about the creepy, stringy-haired ghosts that haunt Japanese bathrooms! They’re called yurei, and they’re the vengeful spirits of people who died tragically, who have unfinished business in the living world. Uh…isn’t that all ghosts? Whatever. Captain Exposition is using “electronic voice phenomena” (EVP) to record the haunting, and Nancy’s like, “Golly, what a good idea! I’ve never heard of that before!” Somewhere, John Grey is pissed that Nancy wasn’t listening to him.
We go back to the ryokan and wait until 1 AM, when Miwako will be gone from the desk. We use the command to calm Suki down, and now we can get into the puzzle box. God, I hate this puzzle. I mean, it’s my own damn fault because I don’t pay attention half the clues I come across, and as such I didn’t even read the instructions that we found in the train station, but man. It could not be any less intuitive or confusing.
As the instructions say, we have to move the entire panel down first, then keep sliding the pieces until it looks like the pattern on the directions.
We find an envelope containing the password to the computer system, but we have to figure out how to open it without anyone noticing. So we’ll put that aside for now, and we can read yet another letter from Kasumi to her friend Maryanne. She tells her about the snow: “For a full ten minutes Rentaro was too cold to talk. That was really nice.” Dang, Kasumi!
Apart from the letter, we also find a tile in the box. The missing tile from the baths? We’ll have to try that later.
The next day, we try calling Savannah again. Logan picks up, and he’s like, “I’m so glad you called!” Nancy’s still super salty about the last time we talked to him: “Why, so you can hang up on me again?” No, but Logan really is glad we called, because he needs our help wooing Bess. I can’t imagine anyone going to Nancy for advice on social interaction; on the other hand, Logan’s idea of a good time is aggressively hanging up on people, so maybe we’ve finally met someone farther behind on the curve than Nancy.
We agree to wingman for him if he gets us a copy of Savannah’s book, so we can read the chapter on the Ryokan Hiei. “Oh, I see what you did there,” Logan sighs. Did he? Because when we talk to him later, it really doesn’t seem like he did at all. But we’ll get to that.
In the meantime, we should investigate the baths. The tile from the box is indeed the missing bath tile, and once we put that in, it turns into a puzzle. The goal is to fit all the various-shaped tiles in a diamond around the center button. Once that’s done, the button will turn into a peephole. Ooh! Shall we peep?
Oh snap, it’s Miwako and Rentaro! They’re having an argument, conveniently in English so that Nancy can eavesdrop! Rentaro yells at Miwako that every time he brings up moving, she blows him off, and she yells at him to leave her alone. Miwako storms out of the frame, then pops up right in front of the peephole, “**speaking Japanese**” (it sounds like she says “Leave me alone” again). Rentaro snaps that she’s always walking away from him. ~*~DRAMA~*~
Is it a little weird that there’s a peephole in the baths? Like…gross, man.
Well, let’s see what Miwako and Rentaro have to say about this. Miwako snips that things between her and Rentaro couldn’t be better; Rentaro, as usual, is more forthcoming with information. He mentions that things are going worse than usual, and he needs a way to make it up to her. Ooh, is this an errand that he’s going to make Nancy do for him? Of course it is. He tells us that one of the prizes at the pachinko parlor is a collar for Suki, and Rentaro’s been meaning to get it for Miwako. If we could get it for him, that would be awesome. Maybe this is why your relationship with Miwako is so crap, Rentaro. You can’t even be bothered to go out and buy your own damn apology presents.
Meanwhile, despite being pissed at us over our invasive questions, Yumi keeps texting us selfies. We’ll come back to these in a bit.
We win the collar and go back to give it to Rentaro. He runs off to give to Miwako, leaving us alone in his workshop. Sweet! Let’s go through all his stuff! We find a room key that we steal, and take note of the robotic arm on the desk. I guess that’s for his robotic dog?
When we go back inside, Miwako’s all happy with Rentaro for getting a new collar for Suki. She gushes over how thoughtful it is and how the collar matches Suki’s eyes. Aw, well, despite making us get it for him, I guess it’s nice that Rentaro noticed the collar in the first place. Miwako muses that maybe she ought to do something nice for Rentaro now.
We call Logan to check on his progress with getting that book for us. He says he has it, but he needs our help before he sends it over. Oh, of course he does. He wants to buy Bess a new outfit, but doesn’t know what to get her. What? Logan, you don’t even know what size she is. Just buy her jewelry. Anyway, so we have to go make an outfit on Yumi’s doll program and send it to Logan.
Yeah, I’m lazy and I just made the same outfit for Bess that I did for her phone picture. JUST SEND ME THE FUCKING BOOK, LOGAN.
Logan thanks us and says he’ll be sending the book over: “I was thinking that I’d give it to Bess, like – hey, here’s that book you wanted.” Okay, but Bess doesn’t want the book, Logan, we do. I thought he had like, picked up on the fact that we were extorting him earlier? When he said “I see what you did there”? Man, nobody understands Nancy Drew 🙁
We go back to ryokan and get ready for bed. Bess and George call, and needle Nancy a bit for being AWOL on their vacation. “George, did we have a friend named Nancy once?” “Was she the one with the magnifying glass or something?” Heh. Anyway, they promise to send us the book. Cool beans.
The book is delivered the next day. Let’s bug Miwako some more. Does she remember Savannah, the paranormal author who stayed at the ryokan? “I remember that she asked too many insensitive questions,” Miwako snips. “I was happy to see her go.” DAMN, Miwako! Nancy has nothing left to say after that insane burn, so we hustle off to go read Savannah’s book.
“I hope your friend wasn’t kidding about you wanting this book,” Logan writes on the inside cover. LOGAN, WE MEANT THAT IT WAS FOR US. I thought you knew that! Whatever. Anyway, we read up on the chapter about the Ryokan Hiei — Savannah lists the places where she planted her recorders to get maximum paranormal readings, so we’ll have to check on those. She writes that at 2 AM, the lights started flickering, and she saw the yurei wandering in the lobby. Then the next morning, Takae kicked her out. Suspicious!
Since Rentaro is the only one not actually related to Kasumi, and also not particularly tight-lipped, let’s ask him about the book first. “She spelled my name wrong. Maybe she’s being haunted by the ghost of bad spelling,” Rentaro deadpans. Heh. Run away with me, Rentaro. Anyway, he thinks that because Savannah genuinely believes in ghosts, the creepy stuff that happened really messed her up. “A ghost doesn’t need to be real to haunt you,” he ominouses.
We can also ask him about EVP, and of course he knows what that is. The idea is to place a bunch of recorders around record the ambient noise, and then you’ll be able to hear spirits when you turn the volume up. Rentaro, bless him, doesn’t make fun of us for wanting to try it, and volunteers the use of his recorders. He claims he has them because he’s trying to record sounds for Rentaro 4000. Hmm. Rentaro also gushes that he’s trying out a new recorder, that will wirelessly send recordings to people’s voicemails. We’re going to be jacking that from him later, obviously.
So now we want to record all the spooky sites Savannah mentioned in her book: the cherry tree in the garden, the fire pit in the lobby, inside the baths, and the upstairs hallways. Once that’s done, we have to wait for Rentaro to go to sleep, and then we can use his equipment to play the recordings back.
We go back to Nancy’s room to set her alarm and OH DEAR SOMEONE’S BEEN IN OUR ROOM. Someone who left wet footprints all over the room…maybe someone who DROWNED MYSTERIOUSLY! Or, you know, someone who just came out of the bath, Nancy. The footprints seem to go right through the wall, but when we open up the closet door, there are just a bunch of towels. ~*~*~SPOOKY~*~*~
I will say, though, that there’s a lot more creepy haunting shit going on in this game than any of the other “haunted house” games. Like, we saw one ghost in Message in a Haunted Mansion, and had one spooky dream in Curse of Blackmoor Manor. This game is actually really long in general — we’re still not very close to the end — and I really love how dense the story is. At the time it felt like a maturation of the series, which was great for those of us who grew up with it over the course of 10 years. (Which honestly, at last check, was pretty much everyone who plays Nancy Drew.)
That said, I swear to God, this is taking forever and my fingers are about to fall off.
Let’s discuss some of this spooky-ass shit with Savannah, partially because she’s also going to tell us what to look for on the computer once we get past Suki. Savannah’s actually pretty logical about the wet footprints; she points out that since we didn’t see them appear, anyone could’ve just gone stomping around our room in wet feet. I can’t believe a professional ghostbuster is being more skeptical than Nancy right now. She also thinks it’s possible that the doors in the hallway were rigged to slam, so we shouldn’t be too worried about that.
We ask what room she stayed in at the ryokan, but Savannah says she doesn’t remember. She does remember that it had a secret passage, though. Oh, man, it’s been ages since we’ve had a secret passage! Tell us where it is, Savannah! She says that it went down into the basement somewhere, and the entrance was marked by a carved wooden bird. The Shimizus didn’t seem thrilled by her staying in the room, so we should look in the records for a room they don’t let people stay in. Thanks, Savannah!
She also tells us that the scariest place she ever stayed as a castle in Germany. That has no bearing on this game, but it is a little hint towards the next game. Ah, remember when HER had their shit together enough to hint at future games?
(Logan, in the background: “ASK HER IF BESS HAD A GOOD TIME ON HER DATE!” Savannah: “Logan wants to know if — hey, I am not running a dating service here!”)
At 1 AM, we go down and listen to our recordings. We haven’t picked up anything in the hallways, but we did record an argument that Yumi and Miwako were having by the cherry tree. As usual, Miwako feels like Yumi is being selfish; Yumi thinks Miwako and Rentaro are ganging up on her. Yumi dramatically shrieks that she’s SO out of here, and throws something into the pond. Then we listen to the recordings by the lobby and the baths, and they have ~spooky ghost sounds~. Oh snap!
Over at the pond, we fish out what Yumi threw, which turns out to be a key for room 18. Intriguing! Further digging under the bridge reveals a stone under the bridge, which has rock symbols on it. It’s missing some of the rocks, so we have to collect them from around the garden. When we find them, they have to be arranged properly on the stone. There’s a book on Kyoto gardens in the lobby that will explain which rocks are which and where to put them.
When they’re all placed, the stone opens up and we find another letter to Maryanne. Uh, did Maryanne ever receive any of these letters? Is she imaginary? (Interestingly, Takae mentions that Kasumi had a sister who went abroad, who I initially thought might’ve taken the English name of Maryanne, but later it’s mentioned that Maryanne was just Kasumi’s pen pal).
The room 18 key unlocks the cultural room. And hey, right on the floor of the room is the key we need for the lobby security system! I guess Takae was just sitting on it this entire time, how convenient. We can also steal a teapot and this key. The key opens one of the chest drawers, where we get another letter from Kasumi to Maryanne. Damn, Kasumi! Mail your letters! Maryanne probably thought she was being catfished.
We also take note of the origami book, which will cause Nancy to realize that the weird markings on Kasumi’s letter must mean something if the paper is folded origami-style.
So folding the paper will get us an image of bamboo. We have to steal a screwdriver from Rentaro’s shed, and then go find a piece of bamboo out by the bridge. We can identify it because it makes a weird knocking noise. Nancy will be like, “This looks like the bamboo on the letter!” like all the bamboo on the garden doesn’t look the same.
Inside the bamboo shoot is this paper, covered with numbers. If you’ve been playing Rentaro’s puzzles — which I have not, because I’m not a math nerd — you will recognize it as a nonogram. If you haven’t, then I am telling you now that it is a nonogram.
Finally, we want to use the teapot with the fire pot in the lobby, which will make enough steam to open the envelope with the computer password in it. The password is “Takakawa.”
We go back in the records — dig room 24 rented to “Joon”, and 35 rented to “Grey.” “Shannon” and “McGinnis” are also characters from a future game. Also, hey, is that “Berg” in room 11? Is Helena out of jail already?
So it looks like rooms 25, 30, and 33 don’t get let out to customers. Suspicious!
We have to open the cabinet holding the room keys now. The point of this puzzle is to put the colored cards in the correct order (blue, red, green, yellow, purple). Shapes will appear in the boxes below each card, and we have to turn the knobs so that the lit-up squares match the shapes.
There’s only one key inside, which opens room numbers ending in 8 or 9. That isn’t any of the suspicious secret rooms, but Nancy takes it anyway to satisfy her kleptomania.
So we can only enter rooms ending with numbers 8 or 9, but the good news is that all the rooms are connected! We find a panel with a star symbol on it, which matches the key card we jacked from Rentaro’s workbench. We can use that to slip through the rooms until we make it to room 33. Once we get to room 33, though, the door jams, and we’re trapped. Then we start hearing spooky shit, and OH GREAT, this room is haunted. You know, Nancy’s been in a lot of hotels and inns in her life, but I think this is the first game to really utilize the haunted hotel room trope, which is quite excellent.
The good news is, there’s a door to the balcony, so we can escape that way, if we can get it open. Nancy will note that the image looks like it’s mirrored, so we just have to copy all the colors from each wedge onto the others. It’s not hard, but there are so many tiny pieces that it’s easy to run out of time. It’s a little weird, though, because short of the weird noises and general spooky vibe, there isn’t really the implication that anything’s after us or going to hurt us if we don’t get out of there in time. Whatever, I don’t know. Anyway, Nancy escapes out the balcony, and…promptly decides to go back to room 33. You can’t keep us and that secret passage apart, room! Fuck Frank and Ned, Nancy Drew and secret passages are the real OTP of these games.
We go straight back up to room 33, and see the carved bird Savannah was talking about on the wall. The panel opens to reveal a secret passage, because of course it does, and we follow it down to this creepy, janky bath. The entrance is bricked up, and there’s still water in the pool. When we go to check it out, though, it turns black. Spooky! And hey, the nasty-ass walls look pretty familiar — this is the room where Miwako and Rentaro were arguing. Suspicious!
Over on the table, we find a note from “Y” to “M”: Stop it already or you’ll be sorry. Dun dun dun!
There’s a lattice puzzle on the wall, and Nancy will automatically note that we need another set of numbers. Alright alright.
When we get back to our room to go to sleep, though, someone’s written our name in RED INK! Red like BLOOD! ~*~SPOOKY~*~
That’s enough scary shit for one night. The next day, we can wander around and talk to everyone, but none of them actually have anything to say about the freaky basement baths. Let’s talk about Rentaro and Miwako’s love drama some more. Miwako isn’t too happy with Rentaro right now, because he keeps trying to talk to her about moving to the city — Rentaro says it’ll be good for Miwako, but she thinks he’s just being selfish. That sounds pretty likely, but then when we ask Miwako what she would do if she weren’t at the ryokan, she says she wants to go somewhere exciting. This game sends mixed signals on the whole Miwako/Rentaro thing, and I don’t know if we’re really meant to take it as ambiguous or not. On the one hand, Rentaro is overly pushy on moving away; on the other hand, several dialogue options make it sound like Miwako really does want to leave and only stays here out of duty.
We ask if Yumi was here earlier — which we know, because we have the recording of her and Miwako arguing — and Miwako grumbles that we didn’t miss much. Yumi acts fun around strangers, but she’s mean to her family. Hmm.
Rentaro tells us that he and Miwako have been dating for four years, but he’d bugged her to go out with him for years before that. Yeah, so he’s not making a great case for himself, re: forcing Miwako to move away with him. Nevertheless, the rest of the family seems to like him — “I think [Takae] considers me part of the family. At least, she lectures me like I’m one of the family. I’m choosing to interpret that in a positive light.” Hee.
Then we ask him about the weird knocking noise we heard last night. What’s that wood thing in the garden? “The tree?” No, the one that makes the knocking noise. “The door?” Oh, Rentaro, you card. No, he knows what we mean, and tells us the knocking noise is meant to scare away deer, so they don’t eat all the flowers. Then he does his deer impersonation for us. I LOVE HIM.
Let’s talk to Takae. She tells us that Rentaro and Miwako were always fighting even as kids, “except now they say they’re in love.” I feel like my love for the slap-slap-kiss trope is being attacked right now 🙁 It’s cute in stories, Takae! Read some more fanfiction! Anyway, we tell her about seeing the water footprints, and she gets mad and tells us not to joke about such things. Then we ask if she wrote our name in red ink, and she clams up and says she’ll have it replaced. Oookay.
We go down to the train station to see Yumi, and bring up that Rentaro and Miwako seem to be on the outs. “Do they? Come, on make with the details.” Nancy shrugs that it’s just an impression, and Yumi says, “Ugh. Boring. Nancy, if we’re going to be gossip buddies, you’re going to have to work on your follow through.” HEE! Why do I find Yumi so relatable? She tells us that Rentaro’s always loved the city — the ryokan is mentioned as being on the outskirts of Kyoto, not in the city proper, which I guess explains that — and Yumi and Rentaro used to sneak into the city center when they were younger, while Miwako stayed behind.
We wander back to the ryokan after that, and get another selfie from Yumi. This is the final piece of a puzzle, which we know because Nancy will muse that something is strange about all of these pictures. She suggests that we print them out, so we have to go to the purikura booth at the pachinko parlor to do that.
Man. Not to be rude, but George is not cute.
After printing out all the pictures, they’ll automatically be placed inside this box, and we have to arrange them in the proper order. There are numbers spanning the pictures: 6, 9, 2, and 5.
What the fuck are you up to, Yumi? And you better make it quick, because I’m almost at 5000 words here and we’re barely close to the end of the game. Yumi tells us that she knew we wanted to help, but she couldn’t be sure we were able to. Cracking the code she sent us was a test, and we passed. Of course we did, Yumi, we’re Nancy fuckin Drew. Of course, Yumi won’t tell us where we need to use the numbers: we have to figure that out on our own. Oh, and she talked so much that she made us miss the last train to the ryokan, and now we have to spend the night in her apartment. Whether that’s a coincidence or if she orchestrated this is up to you.
Remember way back when we first visited Yumi’s apartment, and we noticed a weird panel on the bottom of her frog toys? Yup, we have to put the numbers in on that panel, and the toy will open up. We get another sheet of numbers, which Nancy will note look like nonograms.
So I guess we’ll just hang out at Yumi’s apartment, which I’m sure is safe from all ghosts and general creepiness…
Uh
What the fuck is this
AAAAAAH WHAT THE FUCK
Well, that was terrifying. But whatever! Let’s just go to sleep by ourselves in this strange apartment!
We do manage to survive the night, and we go back to the ryokan the next day. What’s up, Miwako! Are you ready to talk about your dead mother now? For some reason, Nancy is all pissy that nobody wants to spill their tragic family history to her: “Why won’t anyone give me a straight answer about what happened to Kasumi?” she whines to Miwako. Miwako correctly shuts her the fuck down: “You think you’re entitled to a straight answer? Who are you, Nancy? A stranger. You forget that too easily.” Truth hurts, Nancy! Man, I love Miwako. She and Rentaro are the cold, awkward, emotionally stunted couple of my heart.
Hmm, maybe we can get Takae to talk more about the history of the ryokan if we don’t couch it in questions about her daughter’s tragic death. What a concept! Takae tells us that she didn’t want to run the ryokan, either, when she was young — but eventually she came to love it, and wanted to care for it and pass it on to her daughters. “Kasumi had a sister?” Nancy asks, and Takae’s like, “No! She is DEAD TO ME, because of TRADITION!” Reb Takae’s youngest daughter ran off with some man from overseas, and didn’t even come home for Kasumi’s funeral. Damn, that’s cold.
We have both pieces of paper needed for the nonogram now, so let’s go back to the scary murder basement and solve the puzzle. Now, I have completely avoided playing the nonograms up until now because I fucking hate math, but the gist is that the numbers will tell you how many squares in each row and column need to be blanked out. Removing them will leave dark dots in the remaining squares, in the shape of a…fox? Yeah, let’s go with that.
The puzzle opens up a compartment, and despite this being the bajillionth hidden compartment Nancy’s encountered in her life, she’s all, “OMG, a hidden compartment! No way!” She wonders who could have possibly hidden something down here.
Looking inside, we find a nice letter from Kasumi, telling Yumi and Miwako that they don’t have to stay and take care of the ryokan, and they can live their own lives. She only wants them to get along, and try to make that decision together. And apparently, she thinks giving them a GIANT FUCKING KATANA will help them get along better.
There is no reason for an innkeeper to own a huge-ass sword. I’m guessing HER was wondering if there were any Japanese stereotypes they hadn’t managed to hit yet and decided to throw it in there.
Well, we just found the “treasure”, such as it was, so this is usually the point in the game that we would meet our culprit, yes? Let’s back up and turn around.
OH FUCK ME
GIRL CAN YOU BACK OFF A LITTLE? PERSONAL SPACE, YOU KNOW HOW IT IS
Sadako here backs us up and pushes us into the pool of gross festering water we saw earlier. Ugh, I don’t know if I should be more afraid of the yurei or of getting a disease from swallowing this water.
So now we have to cut our way out of the ropes over us. Wow, it sure is glad that there was a convenient katana hanging around down here. Nancy will say that we have to cut the ropes “in half”, which means that we want to slice through in roughly a straight line to make the ropes fall apart.
We can see the yurei over here, and upon closer inspection, it looks like it’s…a robot. Er…who do we know in the ryokan who builds robots?
Maybe it’s not Rentaro? Maybe someone stole his robot parts? I WANT TO BELIEVE!
But first, we’ve solved the mystery of Shimizus’ tragic past, so let’s go talk to them about that. We confront Takae, and tell her that we know that Kasumi didn’t care if her daughters inherited the ryokan — and Takae knew that too, but kept it a secret so that one of them would stay here forever. And! We bet she made up the ghost business to scare them into going along with her, DIDN’T SHE? Takae cracks and admits that she hid Kasumi’s last letter from them, but she would never use her daughter’s memory to fake hauntings. Fair enough.
And now, we can finally wring the truth about how Kasumi really died from her. Worn down by Nancy asking her every fucking day that she’s been here, Takae tells us that Kasumi was supposed to be meeting with Maryanne that day. Takae guilted Kasumi into staying at the ryokan and cleaning the baths, because she didn’t want Kasumi going out and getting crazy ideas about life outside of the ryokan. Takae was the one who usually cleaned the baths, and Kasumi wasn’t used to walking along the slippery ledges. She fell, lost consciousness, and drowned, and Takae blames herself. Well, damn, that’s pretty sad. Shitty accent aside, Takae’s grief is very palpable and effective here.
Miwako’s not at her usual post at the front desk. Maybe she’s hanging out with Rentaro. No? Rentaro, you there, bro?
There’s a new recorder on Rentaro’s desk, and when we play it back, we hear spooky ghost noises…and then Rentaro’s voice saying, “No, not quite right.” Nancy thinks this is Rentaro’s new fancy recorder, and decides to steal it and leave one of his old janky ones behind in its place.
We also find this ticket, which we can translate with the help of our dictionary. Apparently Rentaro needs to finish something in room 33 today. Uh-oh, that’s the haunted room. What’re you doing in there, Rentaro?
We also pick up a “Door-O-Matic” from Rentaro’s desk, so we don’t have to sneak in through the side rooms anymore. Moment of truth, guys! Maybe it’s not Rentaro in there? Maybe it’s someone else? I don’t want to believe my awkward, endearing, deer-impersonating fictional boyfriend is evil 🙁
DAMMIT! I was rooting for you, Rentaro! We were all rooting for you!
Alright, let’s see what Rentaro’s evil master plan is. He’s pretty effectively sinister: we accuse him of trying to scare everyone away, and he evils that he’s not trying to scare everyone away — he is scaring them away. Yikes! He ominouses that the ryokan is a bad place and needs to shut down, and once he tells Miwako that Nancy is here to spy for Savannah and collect info for her next ghost-hunting book, she’ll kick Nancy out and the ryokan will have no customers left. Mwa ha ha ha! Hey, on the upside, in the midst of Rentaro’s evil monologue, he almost pronounces “ryokan” correctly.
Rentaro will make a break for the door so he can go spread lies and slander about Nancy, so we use the Door-O-Matic to close it. Then Nancy will like…trip? or something? and all our crap will spill out of our pockets. We have to pick up one of the items to convince everyone about Rentaro — so obviously we want to grab the nifty wireless recorder, and start recording Rentaro’s confession.
Rentaro denies all responsibility for the ghost rumors, insisting that tourists want a show, and he gives it to them. He’s sick of the ryokan and wants Miwako to leave with him. And that’s…pretty much his entire confession. Oh. I thought that was gonna be more dramatic.
So now we have two choices. Rentaro will beg us not to send the recording to God and everybody, and give him a chance to confess to Miwako himself. We can either agree to that, or send it anyway, because fuck Rentaro. I choose to let him tell Miwako, because I’m nice like that.
In the nice ending, Takae and Miwako kind of forgive Rentaro after he grovels enough, and let him stay and fix the damage he’s done. Either way, though, Miwako dumps him.
Miwako takes over the ryokan as its official owner, and business picks up without Rentaro around to fuck everything up. Yumi starts coming around more often and picking up the slack as well. The sisters make up, and Miwako starts embracing ~city life~ with her sister. Aw!
And Nancy’s shirts are still ugly. Bless.
This game is so excellent — the story is complex, the game’s creepy, sad atmosphere is really palpable and effective, and all the characters are enjoyable and fleshed out, even our random phone friends. But oh, man, you guys, I have never been this salty about a culprit in my life, ever. It’s been like three years since I first played this game, and I still feel personally attacked by this ending. I’m going to quote myself, back in 2014: I LOVED [RENTARO] SO MUCH, he was so hilarious and dorky and literally every conversation you have with him is the best. I was so, so invested in him and Miwako working their shit out and running away together or something, I shipped it so hard. Even when Nancy’s like “Oh hey, the yurei looks like it was built by Rentaro,” I was like, “Maybe someone was stealing his robot parts!!!” BUT NO, HE TURNED OUT TO BE AN ABUSIVE GASLIGHTING DOUCHEBAG, I HAVE NEVER FELT SO BETRAYED BY A NANCY DREW GAME IN MY LIFE.
THE END.
Leave a Reply