Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter (2016)

Creo que este ha sido mi tercer juego de Sherlock y la verdad es que no me ha defraudado. Lo he pasado bien con las historias y las novedades añadidas me han parecido un acierto.

Si hay que ponerle algún "pero" sería que algunas escenas en las que hay que actuar rápido, no te dan ni tiempo a prepararte (ni a respirar jaja).

Me habría gustado que tuviera otro par de historias al menos.

Seguiré jugando...

Sigh* Well I believe the first two cases started out really strong. And I almost believed in hope and dreams again,But that got thrown out pretty quickly.

I will admit this definitely isn't the worst of the Sherlock Holmes games. This felt more like Indian Jones trying to be smarter, than ol' Sherlock Holmes himself. They veered a lot out of his character. But hey, I guess one should always try something new😗. But deep down inside I really hope they don't do it again. OH AND that ending........I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing 😐

Things I liked:

• deduction segments
• menus are well-organized, lots of clues and data for you to mull over during the long loading screens

Things I didn't like:

• bad stealth segments
• bad action segments
• bad mini-games
• random quick-time events that are very poorly signaled
• gimmicks, gimmicks, gimmicks
• didn't care for how the story played out
• didn't really care for this take on Sherlock and co. (they're... dull?)
• they want you to connect each bit of evidence together in a mind chart thing, but so much of it feels rather arbitrary so "solving" the case doesn't feel all that satisfying

I looked forward to playing this game for some time, so I really hate to grade it below the mark. Right up until the end, I thought it'd eke out three stars on rounding up. There's a number of changes made to the game mechanics that I enjoyed, including the moral choices. Some of the cases were better than others, but I generally enjoyed the process of solving them. (That said, there's also a lot of heavy padding here in the form of minigames and whatever was going on with the Mayan temple; I'm thinking Sherlock needs to start laying off the cocaine.)

But that final chapter is ridiculous and capped with such an abrupt ending that my three-star plans were lost at the eleventh hour. What a letdown. Glad I didn't buy this one for full price. Two out of my customary four stars.

I first learned about these Sherlock Holmes games a few years ago & I've been hooked since. They scratch that itch for playing detective & this series is sort of a comfort food of gaming for me, the Baker Street theme makes me feel warm & cozy. With Devil's Daughter, Frogware shook up the formula to interesting results.

The most obvious change is the general world design. Holmes and Watson have both been redone, with new voice actors as well. Gone is the more traditional, stuffy Sherlock in exchange for a Sherlock that feels more like the modern artistic renditions of the Victorian hero. Watson has a hipster vibe & Holmes dresses more like the Cumberbatch version. Luckily, you can still change Holmes' clothes and he's got the suits seen in the past games to wear. Watson doesn't really play much of a role in this game, he accompanies you to a few places, but he isn't as ever present as in past titles. Baker Street and London also look a lot grittier, like they went through a Guy Ritchie filter, and you can't visit the Bookstore that's been a staple of the series. I also never remember hearing that Baker Street theme I enjoyed so much.

The next big change is the gameplay. The Sherlock games were never known for their action scenes, but Devil's Daughter tries to change your opinion on that. Be ready for lots of quick time events and balance beam mini-games. All of this new action doesn't take away from the solid mystery work either. Every case has a lot of sleuthing, puzzles and compiling clues involved, the last case not withstanding. And if you have trouble with puzzles, they give you a skip option, which I used at least once. Of all these games, this one does have the most AAA feeling to it. With the action mixed in, it feels more like it was made by the LA Noire team.

Like Crimes & Punishment, this game is rather short. There's only 5 total cases to crack and each one probably has an hour or two of content. They are all engaging, but I still wish they went all in and gave us a few more cases to play. Each one is self-contained and takes you to lots of neat locations to see different aspects of life in London. There is an overarching story about Sherlock's Daughter coming to visit. It's actually his adopted daughter, and we learn from Watson that Holmes was responsible for her father's death, but the rest is left in mystery. There's also a new lady who moves in next door who strikes Sherlock as an odd sorts. My guess was they were building up a love interest, I was wrong, very wrong.

The final case isn't a case, but a mission wrapping up this overarching story. It also adds in some sorta supernatural vibes which was odd when the rest of the game played it pretty straight. We learn who Holmes' adopted daughter's father really was, which after they revealed it, I realized I should've seen coming, but the twist got me.

All in all, I enjoyed this game. Some people said the added in action cheapened it, but I don't feel Frogware over did it, and they still have the solid detective game base they've perfected over 8 games. The fact this is game 8 may also show Frogware was getting a little tired with making Sherlock Holmes games and wanted to change it up, especially since Devil's Daughter is the last one we'll have for a while now that they're working on a Cthulhu game.

To start off this review, I want to say that I only played this game because I had a free month of Xbox GamePass, and Microsoft was running an event for the month that would give you a reward if you played a GamePass game for 30 minutes every day. I had looked this game up and saw it was a simple and easy 100% achievement completion so I figured I would kill two birds with one stone.

While I initially enjoyed the game at the start, I found it quickly began to get tedious and annoying to play. While I greatly enjoyed the investigations, clue searching, analyzing and interrogations, all of the "action" sequences and quick time events really bogged down the game. I found myself quickly dreading the next escape, chase or infiltration event because the clunky and poor controls made them more irritating to play through then fun.

Nothing in the game is overly difficult. Your casebook pretty obviously tells you what to do, where to go and what to look for. When investigating for clues, the game makes it clear that there are more clues to find or that you've finished either through text prompt or the camera de-selecting whatever item or group of items you're looking at. Forming deductions isn't difficult either - each clue only matches another one and you can try every combination until two of them match. You can even skip many of the puzzles, although this voids some of the achievements. I would have appreciated a little more difficulty to make me have to actually think about who committed the crimes instead of the game handing the answer to me on a platter.

I enjoyed the story very much for the first half of the game. Each of the cases felt unique and interesting, with very different environments, people, scenes and events. Unfortunately I feel like they completely mishandled the overarching story in chapter 3. The first few cases included very subtle hints about where the story was going to end up. Nothing too concrete but enough to get you thinking. And then all of a sudden in chapter 3 they completely gave up on subtlety and decided to smack you in the face with what was going to happen. When the final chapter happened I was already expecting the majority of what was going on simply because they had decided to show me so much information.

At the beginning of the review I mentioned that I played through this game for free. I'm happy about that because if I had paid any money for this game, I would be extremely disappointed. The fun and enjoyable evidence collecting was marred by the frequent and tiring action sequences, the controls are clunky and while initially strong, the story was ruined in the middle of the game. I could only recommend this game if you can play it for free or extremely cheaply and want a quick and easy achievement completion for your system. It's not worth playing for any other reason.

First we'll start off with some positives - this game is broken down into separate cases, like Crimes and Punishments, which I find much more enjoyable than the games that have you solving one case for the whole game (like Jack the Ripper). The cases are interesting, the observation and interrogation puzzles are fun.

However, it also adds elements which I think make the game worse. One of the first major gameplay moments involved tailing someone as Wiggins. It was like a bad Assassin's Creed sequence, and really had no place in the game. Similarly, there's another overly long sequence where Holmes is running from people who are shooting at him. It just doesn't really fit or add anything to the game. Thankfully, these kinds of things stopped occurring in the latter cases.

Another observation I had is that Sherlock doesn't seem that much like Sherlock. The main thread throughout the whole game has to do with his daughter (what?) and a new neighbor. Daddy Sherlock was a strange thing to behold, though not that unwelcome. I found his temperament much easier to tolerate in this game, as it plays down his more arrogant and insufferable traits.