Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One review

Recommended

by BloodScorchedSun

I love the stuff that Frogwares puts out, and while I do recommend this game, it's not without its flaws. Overall the general gameplay of solving cases and gathering clues works well. There are a few where things don't really make sense but for the most part it's fine. I will say I liked how the detective vision and imagination worked in the previous games. There are also too many gamified elements here like the eavesdropping for example. There is no real introduction to how this works when you first encounter it and then it boils down to trial and error really as most of things you filter out seem like they could be related. The chemical analysis stuff is also wildly complex and time consuming. Thank god they included a skip feature. The combat sections are awful. While the mechanics are passable, the sections greatly outstay their welcome often lasting 4 waves of tedious combat mechanics. Luckily, there is a skip combat you can select in the options which I didn't notice until nearly the end of the game. The biggest downside is so many of the cases have ambiguous endings with no true culprit and some with loose ends. In a lot of ways this seems like a more improved version of the systems at work in the Sinking City but dressed for Sherlock. It is still a very good game with a ton of content, easily lasting at least 40 hours if you are doing all the side content as well.