Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter might be of high quality, but I found them to be lacking a hint option to make it more enjoyable.
Type: Single-player
Genre: Adventure
Developer: Frogwares
Publisher: Frogwares
Release date: 10 Jun, 2016
Intro
Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter is an adventure game that is focused on murder mysteries. You’ll be able to collect clues, deduce hypotheses, and figure out the perpetrator from the possible suspects.
Visuals
Characters might look a bit weird due to their blurry texture whenever you see them up close, but they still look decent otherwise. The backgrounds look realistic with the varied interior and city landscapes, although I admit that the map can be too vast for its own good. I tend to get lost whenever I step outside the building and never dared to step outside anymore unless necessary because of it.
Story
The story seems to be a continuation of another Sherlock Holmes game made by Frogwares. I never played any of their Sherlock Holmes games before, and since the story proceeds after an event in the previous game, I didn’t understand what happened whenever it mentioned those events. Luckily, the game never focused more on this except on the beginning and the end of the story, which also helps to clear the context somewhere in between due to the revelations.
The case itself is alright. I did manage to deduce most of the perpetrators correctly, although I found it hard to figure out how one of the perps manage to do their crimes. It seems that the game wants to make it look as if you are always “correct” in solving the case because they never provide a summary of how the perp killed the victim. You also have options to either jail or let them go, which leads to different cutscenes.
The Game
Gameplay
The game is played like point-and-click games, except that you are moving your character with the keyboard. You’ll be able to interact with any objects to gather clues and use an ability that allows you to see other things that can be missed with the naked eye. It’s not a hint system though. You’ll need to use this to collect different clues, so expect to explore the whole area at least twice to get all clues that you can get. However, there isn’t a hint system in case you are stuck. Most of my playtime was spent roaming around the area several times just to figure out which clues that I missed since the game apparently won’t let me proceed with the story if I missed any.
Puzzles, minigames, and QTEs are abundant in the game, allowing you to play different things to proceed with the story. They are usually unique and easy to finish, although I found that the ones in the second case to be difficult to solve. Moreover, the lockpicking minigame can also give some trouble due to its controls. I still didn’t get used to its controls even after I finished the game.
You need to make hypotheses based on the available facts, where you often have to choose between two choices to deduce the perp. Most of these decisions are usually quite vague since you need to pick up subtle hints given by the game. Understanding the suspects’ personalities, motives, and backgrounds is needed for this, and solving the case will be more or less of a guessing game if you don’t get them right.
Length and Difficulty
I finished the game with all achievements in 11.5h. I found that finishing the puzzles to be hard compared to solving the case, but you can always skip them if you want. However, doing so might ruin your gameplay experience due to them being abundant in your playthrough. Sometimes, I even thought that there are just too many “actions” and moving around in the game compared to the solving case, and the loading screen is way too slow if you like to run back and forth between places.
Problems
The game stutters a bit when I played it. It doesn’t happen that often though. The character’s movements are also stiff since they might stop walking or correct their positions.
Specs
Intel Core i5-9300H 2.40GHz, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650
Verdict
The game might be of high quality, but I found it to be lacking a hint option to make them more enjoyable. A lot of puzzles can be difficult to solve, and there is no hint or whatsoever that can help you to solve them. There’s only a skip button, which is not fun to use all the time. That being aside, some puzzles are easy and fun to solve.
Despite it being a continuation of another game, you still can enjoy it without playing the first one if you don’t mind brushing off some facts. Some events might be too vague to you although they will be revealed in time.
To be honest, I didn’t enjoy the game at first, especially because of the second chapter that has nothing but frustration in almost everything that it had, but I ended up enjoying the game because of the following chapters. I still had difficulties in collecting all clues, but it becomes more tolerable after I knew some subtle hints that were given from the game. I won’t recommend buying this at full price, but make sure to wait for a big sale before picking it up – the base price is way too expensive.
