Despite an early disclaimer about the game being set in different times, there are few cases that hang on characters and twists that feel clumsy rather than capable.
One of the more subjective struggles I had with the game was some of the more nuanced stories it attempts to handle. These whole sections could have been scrapped or reduced to just the optional bandit hideouts, and the game would have been better for it. Someone could have budgeted for a few more voice lines for these sequences too, prepare to hear "I will end you" and "I didn't want to miss the party" in indefinable accents at least 237 times. The sequences are too easy to clear once you get the hang of them, new enemies are funneled in a few at a time, and they start to drag on. When you're shooting off a man's hat while he's moving, it's surprisingly easy to do. Crucially, despite being equipped with a gun, you're not supposed to actually kill anyone, and Jon will berate you if you do. Stunning an enemy means you can arrest them after a simple QTE punch-up. Enemies also handily wear accessories that you can shoot at to stun them too, hats, armor, little vials of combustible substances. Exploding canisters, bags of flour, valves, lamps, the Victorian equivalent of red barrels. You're thrown into a room that serves as an arena with a few objects that can be triggered to deal environmental damage that stuns enemies. These action sequences - which you can trigger with the hideouts or will occasionally happen as part of a case - start out interesting, become tedious, and then sort of circle back to hilarious.
It's this set of gameplay mechanics that really are what keep people coming back to the Frogwares series, a chance to play pretend from inside the mind of a genius, to feel like a bit of the Sherlock cerebral superpowers have rubbed off on them. Sherlock can also focus his concentration to see the likely path of a suspect, or do quick chemical analysis (a math-based logic puzzle that - thankfully - you can skip without incurring any sort of penalty) on mysterious substances and observe suspects and witnesses to glean clues from their clothes and demeanor. Searching the crime scene for every last piece of evidence, dressing in disguises (purchased from various vendors) to win the confidence of sailors, workers, bandits, or vagabonds, and searching the archives of the local paper or city hall for relevant clues.
#SHERLOCK CHAPTER ONE FULL#
The best part is absolutely working your way through the bigger cases, using Sherlock's full skill set to do so. Cases range from sprawling investigations tied to the main storyline, to smaller mysteries that focus on one location.
#SHERLOCK CHAPTER ONE SERIES#
Platform(s): PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, PCĪs you'd hope, once you've arrived in Cordona with your mysterious, bossy companion Jon, you barely have time to buy a souvenir fridge magnet before you're working on a case.