Previously on Nancy Drew: The Phantom of Venice: Nancy arrived in Venice and promptly had an urn dropped on her head, was poisoned by sausages, and dressed up in a leather catsuit for money. Just another day, really. Shall we?
Okay, seriously now: our villainous organization communicates by the devious method of…messenger pigeons. What? Well, whatever. Who I am to judge? We fed one of their pigeons a tracking device, so let’s see where it leads us!
Well, shit.
I’m not going to lie: I suck at this. You get about four chances to click on the right pigeon before they fly off to another destination. I think I had to follow them around to at least three locations before I clicked on the right pigeon. That…was not fun.
Anyway, ignoring my idiocy, the first place the pigeon goes is Campo Santa Margherita, at a place called Casa dei Giochi. Once we finally get the note off the pigeon, we can call Sofia, who helpfully informs us that Casa dei Giochi is owned by one Enrico Tazza, who happens to be a criminal. (He apparently fenced stolen goods for Leo Machiano, who you will remember Helena wrote an article on.) Well, golly, that sure is a coincidence. Sofia tells us to get on Tazza’s good side. And how are we going to do that, Sofia? The Italian police are ridiculously unhelpful. I mean, it’s one thing when the sheriff of Bumfucknowheresville won’t help Nancy chase around a two-bit criminal, but the Italian FBI are involved on this one! You’d think they’d be able to lend a hand, damn.
So, the note: it’s assumed that the message (the paper merely says “hello!”) is hidden in a microdot. Which can only be viewed with a microscope. Hmmm.
Hey Colin, we’re friends, right? :D?
Yeah. Just so you know, you’re not going to need to know this until the very end of the game. By which time I had forgotten it, lololol — D:
So! Let’s inform Sofia of these shenanigans! She suggests that we plant a bug on each of the ca’ residents and follow them. (Spoiler: we do not, in fact, follow them. Sort of.) For Colin: a tessera! Sofia’s like, “He carries mosaic tiles around? He’s that big of a nerd?” and Nancy’s like, “If it’s from me, he will…long story…” Dude, Nancy, it is not that long of a story. Anyway. For Helena: a pen! Because…she writes! (What if she leaves the pen at home? Or it runs out of ink?) For Margherita: a sunglasses case! Why they even bother to bug Margherita, I don’t know. She never leaves the roof.
Anyway, Nancy says, “Keep your fingers crossed!” to which Sofia responds, “My fingers are always crossed.” I think this was the exact point I started suspecting that she was evil. That and her refusal to ever help us with anything, ever. Woman! I am playing on Junior Detective Mode! You’re supposed to be holding my hand for this whole thing!
So we give the tessera to Colin, who is predictably overdramatic about it. Helena’s not at her desk so we take the opportunity to slip the tracking device into her pen and snoop through her stuff, as usual. She’s added a new entry to her ~Interesting People~ list, in which she says that Nancy should consider doing soft drink commercials. Hee!
Margherita is surprisingly nice about the sunglasses case, so, you know, that happened. When we go back downstairs, Colin is gone, so let’s look through his stuff!
Hey, the handwriting on Colin’s notes matches the note that came with the sausages of doom! You lied to us, Colin! I’m shaking my fist at you right now.
Also, whoops, I forgot to check something at Casa dei Giochi. Let’s go back, shall we?
This is the thrilling part of the game known as “dumpster diving.”
GOOD HEAVENS, WHAT HAVE WE FOUND HERE? It appears that our good friend Colin is a crook! (Although that mugshot really doesn’t look much like him. Also, why is he using the same alias he was caught under? Come on, Colin, try harder.) He stole a Renoir painting! A Renoir worth 7,500 pounds. That…seems kind of cheap for a Renoir, but whatever, I don’t know anything about art. Also he hangs out with black market art dealers. SUSPICIOUS.
We also find a letter from the “Doppler Institute for Independent Industrial Arts”, whom Signore Tazza has hired a “Samantha Quick” from. Samantha will be wearing a red dress, white gloves, black sunglasses, and has blonde hair. Well thanks for telling us that, guys! Hey, weren’t they selling red dresses, white gloves, sunglasses, and blonde wigs in that costume shop?
Blah blah buying our disguise, blah blah spying on Fango blah. Hmm, it’s been a couple of paragraphs since we’ve harassed Colin, let’s get on that.
“All right, yes. It was me. But I had no idea those sausages were tainted — I just thought you might like them. I tried to lie my way out of it because I — I couldn’t bear for you to know that I made such a ghastly mistake.”
Aw, Colin. I’m torn between being sympathetic and laughing at him.
Anyway, so then we ask him about his criminal record, and he’s like, “I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT.” Nancy’s like, “Are you really going to try to lie to me?” So he says that he couldn’t ~bear~ to see the Renoir hanging in the home of someone who didn’t ~appreciate~ it, so he took it. And he can’t work in England anymore so he came to Italy. And Margherita’s been blackmailing him so she doesn’t have to spend as much money. (That shouldn’t make me laugh, but it did.)
(If you ask Margherita about it, she’ll tell you that she hired Colin because everyone deserves a second chance but that he’s been pressuring her. HMMMM. Although given that she did the same thing with Helena, I’m more inclined to believe that Margherita’s the liar here.)
Alrighty, so let’s put on our disguise and play cards with a crime lord!
Does he wear that mask to sleep, wtf. Also I enjoy how shiny his head is. ANYWAY. Blah blah introductions blah. Tazza makes you beat him at a card game called Scopa before you can talk business with him. It’s not a supremely difficult game — and coming from me, that’s saying something — and it’s actually pretty fun for a mini-game, in a mindless sort of way.
ALRIGHT, BUSINESS. Tazza wants us to steal the “Sadal Melik” sapphire, which is so famous that no one’s ever heard of it before. It’s protected by one of the ~most sophisticated security systems ever devised~, so of course Nancy has to go get it. Great. Let’s go call Sofia! I mean, this is serious stuff. Surely, surely the police will help us out now, right?
“Oh, no. You must do this on your own. If we make it easy for you, he might become suspicious, and everything would be ruined.”
Really, Italian police? Come on. You can’t be that busy.
We call Ned in our indignation (well, fine, my indignation), except Joe Hardy picks up. Hey, Joe! He always was my favorite Hardy brother. Nancy asks him about the Doppler Institute of Industrial Whatever Whatever, and he says that it’s some kind of spy institute in Switzerland, and no one knows who runs it or if it even exists. (Well, if you can hire your own jewel thief from them, I think it’s safe to say that they exist.) Nancy also asks him about Samantha Quick, and he says the name sounds familiar.
(Note: none of this has any bearing on the rest of the game.)
We also tell Joe about our new job as a jewel thief, blah blah it’s dangerous blah. Nancy’s like, “Bitch, I’m Nancy Drew. LIKE THAT HAS EVER STOPPED ME.” And Joe says, “A girl after my own heart! You rock, Nancy. You totally rock.” Wow, Joe, don’t you have a girlfriend?
Okay, so, remember how Fango spent a weird amount of time playing chess on his computer? Welp, it turns out he wasn’t playing chess, he was talking ~in code~ to that Scaramuccia fellow! So using the chessboard code (each square = a letter), let’s go find out what our dubiously-intentioned friends are up to!
Scaramuccia, you could honestly be more subtle. “A great place to play chess”? Really?
Anyway, nothing left to do but go to sleep and wait for tomorrow!
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
I should add that this part I find genuinely scary — a combination of the music and the first-person view, I’d say. It’s just freaky to have some dude in a mask lean right over you in the middle of the night, especially if you weren’t expecting it. The Phantom steals Nancy’s locket (of all things) and hops off into the night. Helena screams, which is, you know, so helpful.
(By the way, is the Phantom wearing lipstick? Because it’s so important to look your best for those late-night burglaries.)
The next day! I’d say the ca’ is shaken by the Phantom’s appearance, but…they’re not. Apparently in addition to Nancy’s locket, the Phantom also stole the Extremely Valuable Statuette that was sitting on Colin’s worktable. Colin accuses Helena of leaving the door unlocked. She accuses him of leaving the door unlocked, and also of having a crush on Nancy, which shuts Colin up. Prudence Rutherford calls and bitches at us for getting our locket stolen like, whatever, bitch. Don’t you have ~memwaahs~ to be working on?
We go to the Rialto Market to pick up the message from Scaramuccia. It’s another microdot puzzle which means we need Colin and his microscope again.
Then the pager beeps! Spying time! After all, who doesn’t like spying?
Golly, that sure looks like…Margherita! Gasp! Is she the culprit after all? Quelle horreur!
Also, there’s a Scopa card on the ledge. Say, isn’t that from the set in Fango’s office…? :O
Back inside the ca’, we harass Colin some more and notice that he is now the proud owner of a…Chinese puzzle box! Uh, yay? Colin complains that it’s pretty but he can’t open it because “to open it you must solve a puzzle”. (Of course you do.) Anyway, we ask him if we can borrow his microscope and he agrees. But wait! The light isn’t working! We tell Colin this and he completely flips a bitch all, “HOW COULD YOU NANCY? SOMETHING SO VITAL TO MY WORK, HOW COULD YOU BE SO CARELESS?” And Nancy’s like, “Dude, it’s just a burned-out bulb” and he snaps back to normal. Colin is such a freak.
And then he makes us fix his mosaics for him. Grrr, Colin.
This little mini-game? Is really annoying. It’s not difficult, it’s just…boring. Not to mention I started to go cross-eyed after a while. The best part is? There are four of them.
Goddammit.
Anyway, when you’re done with that soul-sucking process, Colin has replaced the bulb and we can read the message, which provides the code to get into the warehouse with the sapphire. Awesome. So now we change into our cat suit, because there’s nothing less conspicuous then a person dressed like a leather cat breaking into a warehouse.
And while we’re changing…THE PHONE RINGS! :O
“Hello?”
“DON’T EVER DO THAT AGAIN.”
“Do what again? Who is this?”
“THERE’S ONLY ONE OF ME. I LIKE IT THAT WAY. IT’S GOING TO STAY THAT WAY.”
Holy shit, it’s Samantha Quick! (Who has a pack-a-day habit, apparently.) She proceeds to be really, really creepy, telling us to “say hi to Ned” for her and then hanging up. SHIT. But who is Samantha? How does Joe Hardy know her? Where is the Doppler Institute? What do they do there? How did she know Nancy was impersonating her? How the fuck does she know about Ned?
Yeah, we’re not going to find out. In fact, it’s never going to be mentioned again. BAH.
Time to go break into the warehouse!
This part is almost as annoying as the stupid mosaic game. Basically there are seven rooms — six side rooms and this main one here. You have to go into the four “corner” rooms, deactivate the lasers surrounding the sapphire, come back here and pick up the sapphire, then make your way out. All while avoiding the sentry bots, who move around the room and, irritatingly, manage to catch you every ten seconds. It is the always-awesome mix of difficult, repetitive, and annoying, so, you know…there’s that.
I’ll spare you the 200 or so screencaps I have of losing the bot game and merely skip forward to giving the sapphire to Tazza. He’s all gleefully pleased, but our mutual gloating session is cut short when someone named Nico calls Tazza whining that he doesn’t know where the next target is. I think Nico sounds like he might be the Phantom! Tazza snaps at him that doesn’t he keep a list, you know, in writing, of all the places they’re going to hit? And Nico’s like, well, shit, I don’t know, and Tazza’s like, YOU KNOW, the list, in the Chinese puzzle box, that opens when you shake it? And Nico’s like, OHHHH THAT ONE, yeah, I kind of lost it, and Tazza’s like YOU ARE A GODDAMN FOOL NICO, also why do you insist on cosplaying every time you rob a house, you are trying Il Dottore’s patience. CIAO.
Hey, you know who had a Chinese puzzle box? I think we need to go talk to our British BFF Colin again!
But first, we have to beat Tazza at a game of Scopa. AGAIN.
This is the part of the game known as “THE COMPUTER IS A CHEATING BASTARD.”
Enrico gets a scopa.
Then he gets all the cards remaining on the table.
GOD. DAMMIT.
Anyway, we finally, finally beat Tazza. He wires our payment to Samantha Quick’s Swiss bank account. I don’t know what that bitch was complaining about, really. We did all the dirty work and she gets the payment. I wore a leather catsuit, dammit!
When we get back, Colin is nowhere to be seen, but eh, who cares about him. Let’s check out that puzzle box!
Inside is a list naming a bunch of palazzos and ca’s (Ca’ Nascosta is on there) and their corresponding scopa cards. You may remember that we found a scopa card on the ledge of the roof earlier (although it doesn’t match up with any of the cards on the list. Fail, game writers).
Anyway, no one else is around, so there’s nothing left to do but wait till tomorrow. We call Ned just to check up. He whines about Nancy being in danger, dancing in a leather catsuit without telling him, blah blah blah.
And say! What’s this on the bed?
Oh. I was probably supposed to look at this before I opened the puzzle box, huh? Well, whatever. Hmmm, I wonder why Colin left town? Was the pain of Nancy’s rejections too much or something?
(Note: we never find out.)
(Other note: if Colin’s British, why does he spell “apologize” with a “z”? SUSPICIOUS.)
The note seems to kind of want us to think that Colin is the thief (“the mistakes I made in the past still dictate much of what I do in the present”) but he has no idea that the puzzle box is important so…it’s pretty obvious that he isn’t Il Dottore. Well, with Colin gone, we only have two suspects: Helena and Margherita. Who could it be? OMINOUS.
Next up: we do some more breaking and entering, have a stakeout (who doesn’t love a good stakeout?), catch Il Dottore, and deal with a bureaucracy. Great fun for everyone!
Leave a Reply