So I just finished the game.. [Review]

[Fantoche]

So I just finished the game with 20 hours of playtime, so here is my review! I consider myself a longtime fan of Sherlock games and completed everything from Frogwares. My current inspiration was to play this game as the Call of Cthulhu inspired game left me with a sour taste. Seriously, how can you go from this to Sinking City? You're really burning gamer goodwill with this.

The good :

Graphics
Like Crimes and Punishment, you're operating at a gorgeous, cinematic like level of details. I was often just pausing to look around the grimy, gorgeous old timey London and its surroundings. Sherlock's flat looks amazing, each location is unique and full of personality. As with C&P, Frogware loves demonstrating its amazing models with the "Character inspection" phase, where you examine someone and determine what kind of people they are from their clothes, injuries or whatever they might have that makes them stand out.

Note : It seems Frogware listened a bit and had Sherlock bathe now and then in this one so you don't do most of the cases looking like you haven't showered in weeks.

Gameplay
There is a LOT to do here. All four cases (plus the two short ones) feel like high budget episodes. You get into gunfights, there's stealth sequences, fights, you interrogate suspects, piece together puzzles, there's horror bits even. There's even exorcism, a bomb defusal and a mass carnage on the streets requiring you to help a crowd of dying of injured people. There's varied minigames and the game never feels boring with such a variety of things to do. I found myself really enjoying the lockpicking games, they were pretty clever.

Note : Like in Crimes and Punishment, you CAN be wrong at the end of a case and the game will only let you know after. Examine your evidence closely because often, the murderer is far more sympathetic than the victim. You can also follow your heart, with appropriate consequences. One case has a guy who did a bank robbery to pay for his daughter's medical care and killed two people (and by accident several more!) so it's a bit heart breaking to visit him at the hospital and arrest him. Hey, I'm Sherlock, I solve crimes, tell that to the judge for leniency, buddy.

Music
It does its job. It is subtle but picks up when there's action sequences, you don't really notice it so it does its job as it should.

Characters
Holmes is rendered in the Guy Ritchie style, which is fine. I had him dressed up like Livanov in Crimes and Punishment so I liked the change of looks. Familiar and fresh. Watson sports interesting facial hair this time and my favorite character of the whole game was Orson Wilde, an obvious pastiche of Orson Welles and Oscar Wilde. In fact, he made his case my favorite by far, as he was so entertaining. An american actor visiting Baker's street to study Sherlock and get in the role? And he's so good that you have to bail him out from bad guys who want you dead and they think he is the real Sherlock? Great stuff.

The so-so :

Puzzle placement?
Not really a negative but there are times, and I'm well aware this is on par with the serie, where you have certain kinds of puzzles that takes you out of the immersion. Testament of Sherlock was a heavy culprit in this and while not a negative per se, it can be jarring. Fortunately, there's very few of them that made me groan but the Mayan temple was very much the worst offender. It was entertaining, basically a serie of Mayan-themed puzzles, all in Sherlock's head but it felt like it was him challenging himself more than a realistic temple with some traps. If you thought Indiana Jones' puzzles tend to be a little far fetched, wait til you see the Mayan sequence. The vast majority of puzzles are intuitive and clever so it's just this long sequence.

The detective sense :
This should be used better than it is now. Right now, when you activate it and there is something, you see a sliver of gold on a location, showing that there is something there. Great. Now, can I have that for my "interact" button? It seems to only activate when you are very close, sometimes you walk by something and don't see the button until you face it directly. The detective sense should highlight or make these interactable objects more obvious. The puzzle in the sewers for example, there was a lever to move a ladder that was a bit on the side and it took a while of fidgetting to even see it was there.

Story
This is only a spoiler if you haven't played Testament but Sherlock now has an adopted daughter, Kate who is Moriarty's biological one. He is trying to raise her properly but since it's Sherlock, he has problems being a decent father. It's a great story but I felt the villain, the black girl who recently moves in next to Holmes, shows her cards way, way too early. Right from the second case you can see she's trying to turn Kate against you and is generally very suspicious. Heck, right after the creepy sequence in her appartment, if I had been Holmes I would have sent my daughter as far away from this woman as possible. And her motivation is... what? Vaguely avenge her father, or turn Holmes' daughter against him? The last sequence was really good but you are left wondering why she'd doing this in the first place. If it's just brushed off as her being mentally imbalanced (by sleeping in the same room as her mummified father) it feels a bit too easy.

This only applies to the game arc's villain, not the individual cases. "Infamy" is fantastically written and I would absolutely replay it.

The Bad

You can't remap controls. At all. Why do I need to press T or B on a WASD configuration? Why not letting me remap controls? I use a G13 so it was ok but if I wasn't I would have been very annoyed.

Another annoyance of mine is when you are incorrect in the portraits, you cannot retry unless you reload the last checkpoint. Why? If you were incorrect in C&P you could retry. If you die, you can retry, or if it's a puzzle, you can try until you get it right (or skip it if you really want that)


Verdict : Highly recommended for any Sherlock fans and very accessible to those who enjoy puzzles with action into it.