Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter

I have a problem with giving this game a mark. On the one hand it is expanding ideas of its predecessors and you can certainly like some of the cases. London is finally an semi open city. On the other however it ads mechanics that are simply never used or wasted. While playing it you can almost fell the fact that it was either cut in development or publisher forced devs to finish the product on time losing some of the original ideas. Best and most visible example of this is strange and meaningless ending. Buy only if you are fan of the series. If you are new to the genre, I strongly recommend previous entries, especially “Crimes and punishments”

Very polished and fun game (AAA quality). Every puzzle and mini-game is different and the story is engaging. I see other reviews compare it to other titles of the series, from which I only played Crimes and Punishments, but Devils Daughter quality is on a different level. Highly recommend.

Gameplay: inherited same gimmicks and puzzle structure from Crimes&Punishments. "Mind space" (which is a spiced-up version of the deduction board from Jack the Ripper), building a suspects "portrait" as the camera zooms around them in slo-mo, establishing the timeline etc. It feels like this game depends much more on quick time events to add to the "cinematic experience" and personally I find them annoying. You can skip any puzzle you don't feel like spending time on and I thank Frogwares for that. Cases: 5 cases in all (with the last being more a part of the main story, it's filled with QTEs and there's little investigating there). Can't say I found any of them memorable or especially engaging, one consists almost entirely of pretty annoying puzzles that have you jump around (which is made doubly stupid by the fact that the whole thing happens in Holmes' imagination). Another has an interesting premise of recreating the events of a huge traffic accident but the execution is clunky with all the running back and forth. Story: each case is stand-alone with only very tenuous connection to the main story, and "decisions" you make at the conclusion of each one only affect a single scene at the end. Overarching story is fairly predictable and I found it hard to care about it. Overall one of the weaker Frogware SH games, barely enough to scratch the itch.

I can not call this game a great game, but I can call it a good one. It has no issue telling you what you need to do, but what you get out of it is on you to figure out, making for a much more unique way to handle criminal cases. It also has no issue using lots of mini-games/QTEs, but does so in a way that keeps things interesting, but it understands these are not for everyone and will allow you to skip what is holding you back for better or worse. In the end, its definitely a game with some weaknesses, but one fully aware of them. I just wish the game had a better way of handling them.

If it had everything to seduce, this episode, coming after the very successful "Crimes & Punishments" is not remarkable and I was surprised - when playing a second time - to see how much I had forgotten the plot. The + : improved graphics, an investigation system similar to that of "Crimes & Punishments" (which was good) but synthesized. We can also note the introduction of action scenes, and a semi-open world (but is it useful?). The problem with this game is its writing. The dialogues are often poor and the investigations not very captivating (unlike the previous episode, these are not adaptations of short stories by Conan Doyle but investigations written by the studio in the spirit of...). Moreover, this game is full of Hollywood clichés (Sherlock even becomes a kind of Indiana Jones) and Watson becomes sexy (what's the point?) but totally useless (again what's the point?). In short, quickly forgotten. Too bad.