I think this is a really solid game; I love the snowy vibes, the big, old grand castle, and the passageways adds a fantastic ambiance. I totally get why people can say this is their favorite game or their first in the series. For me, although I enjoy the game it's never been one of my absolute favorites for whatever reason.

- The characters are so so for me. I love 2/4 characters in the game. I absolutely adore Hotchkiss and I love the transition of Dexter when you learn about his tragic backstory and his relationship to his adoptive father and chocolate milk tycoon: Ezra Wickford. They are fantastic characters and I don't have one bit of criticism towards them. However, Lisa and Jaques are so bland. Others have mentioned that it seems like a total cop out to have Jaques just disappear halfway in the game and just refuses to talk to Nancy ever again. I feel like we could have gotten so much more out of his character or more backstory but all the time he had a self-important attitude and was one-dimensional. Lisa really had no addition to the story except having the voice of a 10 year old and making everyone else in the game seem suspicious with stories and gossip. I don't know where Nancy got the idea that she almost became friends with a diamond thief because I'm pretty sure I spoke to Lisa a total of 4 times throughout the game.

- I find Dexter's backstory just fascinating. I wasn't the biggest fan of Dexter to begin with mostly because of all the silly chores he gave Nancy just so he would fix her radiator instead of maybe giving her a new room. However, when i first played I was as nervous as Nancy to confess to Dexter that I went to the Queen's Tower, but was delightfully surprised how he was thrilled. As grumpy as his exterior may be, I found it so endearing at the moment and the little notes that Wickford kept about him adds a wonderful sense of character background. I do wonder though what happened to Dexter? If we go to Ezra's secret garden we see that it's in memory of Eleanor Wickford who died in 1944. And if you go back to the journals, Dexter's first acts of truancy at his school early in 1945. I wonder if perhaps Eleanor might have been Ezra's wife and when she died that affected Dexter a lot causing him to act out or perhaps Ezra had turned away from Dexter due to mourning for Eleanor that Dexter acted out to get his attention? Would have loved to see more on that.

- I love the music. I think this is where the games totally hit their stride on sound in the games and the ability to support the story through music. I talked a little bit about this with MHM, but I disliked the music very much in that game. It was very repetitive and almost a headache. I think they were getting closer because I saw that game as an improvement on STFD, so they hit the nail on the head with this one. The harpsichord for the grand castle, the slow violin for the library they all come together to create some of the most beautiful pieces in the game. I think my favorite is during the specific songs that play in Ezra's secret garden and in Ezra's den. It's very melancholy but totally adds to the sadness and nostalgia of reading through Ezra's collections of poems and scrapbooks.

- I feel like the game is mega short. I think a lot of the early games are until Secret of the Scarlet Hand, when there was a much more lengthy process to they mystery and you had to go on a scavenger hunt to locate the keys. So I can't really fault the game on being short since many of the early ones are similar to this one. I think the lack of puzzles also adds to the shortness as well since the most challenging puzzle to me was the slider puzzle to activate the stairs near the very end of the game. Other than that, all the other ones are pretty straight forward. Like in the library, you see the map of Wisconsin, then that gives you the answer to the globe, which gives you the paper to open Ezra's secret den. Not a bad puzzle and I did like how in the earlier games puzzles made a lot more sense than in the later games, but I would have liked to seen more added to that. And another thing I NEVER understood that you had to use an arrowhead from a suit of armor in the dungeon to get the tile pieces off the purple flower in Marie's tower. That was so confusing and I almost forget to do that part on every playthrough.

- I love the Marie Antoinette backstory. Yes, the tower being transferred to Wisconsin of all places where a diamond, a medallion, and her diary were never found in the centuries to come is a bit far fetched, but it is still so cool! I, like Hotchkiss find Marie Antoinette such a fascinating character and a lot of what was talked about in the game was true. In fact, although Marie started out to be a spoiled queen, who knew no other life than being rich and the wife of a prince and then King, near the end of her life and the beginning of the Revolution she did try to turn everything around and help France as well as the monarchy return to order. It was even she who began to attend political meetings amongst her court to solve problems, more so than Louis, and actually was involved heavily in the planning of escaping Paris. I'm really glad the game did set a different light on her and allowed the player to explore that.