Frogwares had a long journey with Sherlock titles and while some of the previous ones were really good and worth playing, it was not until this game that they've finally cracked how to produce a game that can be both a fantastic adventure title and a game where you feel like Sherlock Holmes. Almost every feature here is designed to make you feel challenged, yet smart. And even when you make a mistake it feels like a natural thing for such a usually infallible character as Sherlock to do. You always have a choice, but the choice is always within reason – mistakes can be made if you overlook some element or put more emphasis on a wrong element, meaning that Holmes will never look like a complete idiot even if you come to the wrong conclusion, since there will be a solid trail of evidence and facts to back it up. It feels empowering, yet still works really well as an adventure game with player agency and choice. The overall mood of the game, touches on the themes of big and minor corruption is society, topics of what pushes the “little men” to oppose the law, and even uses Mycroft in one of the most effective, in how minor his role is, ways out of all Holmesian stories I’ve seen. The characters are spot on and the melancholic, yet hopeful, mood is also enhanced by another “morality” choices. It fits the complexity of Sherlock Holmes personality so well. The character, who can remove himself from pity and sympathy, but isn’t necessarily “heartless”. If I were to point out things that don’t always work well, I’d say that some elements feel a bit low budget, especially compared to the rest of the game. Some of the “mini-games” that be skipped can become a bit annoying. And there are moments where it’s not exactly clear what the game means or expects you to do. Also, music is, sadly, all royalty free, not custom made. But Crimes & Punishments is still one of the best adventure games of the past decades and a fantastic title for Sherlock Holmes fans.
I played all of the Infinity Engine games, except IWD2, when they were new and of the ones that I've played, IWD was the only one that I immediately forgot about. Couldn't remember anything about it apart from it being boring and full of combat. Upon recently replaying it in the EE remaster, I'm not surprised that was the case. Interplay really wanted a piece of a Diablo-like action RPG pie. With Infinity Engine, D&D license and Fallout team being less stubborn about not doing a Diablo clone, they finally could get what they wanted. And it turns out that a party-based, D&D based, realtime with a pause Diablo is simply not fun. It's pure dungeon crawling, with magic items and exp showering the player constantly. The plot is... well, present, but has nothing substantial to it and barely any atmosphere, unlike Diablo. Locations get progressively more boring to go through, with more and more sluggish fights, which are sometimes incredibly cheap. And then the whole thing kinda ends, long past due. EE does make a lot of tiny welcome improvements that make this boring slaughter-fest less tedious (lack of loading screens alone makes the experience far more fun), yet doesn't really fix the terrible party pathfinding and AI, so you still need to babysit your team through every smaller in size room or corridor unless you want to watch them violently vibrate into walls and each other for half a minute. IWD was an okay way to pass time before Baldur's Gate 2 release, though even then it was forgettable to all but most die-hard min-maxing Infinity Engine combat fans. But ever since then, the reasons to return to this game were growing slimmer with each year. By now? IWD, and especially the terrible expansion+add-on, might as well be forgotten.
