A very good murder mystery adventure whose quality visuals, music and voice work bring to life its alternative history world: a killer blend of Victorian London and industrial revolution America, serving as backdrop to protagonist Miles Fordham's quest for sanity. It has however a few problems which keep it from realising its full potential.
The game tries to streamline the adventure formula by doing away with the cumbersome inventory management which gets in the way of progression in many such titles, replacing it with a clue notebook in the vein of Sherlock Holmes games. Also similar to recent Holmes products as well as LA Noire is the case wrapping system, which grants the player freedom to rush to incorrect conclusions by being deceived by one of several deliberately placed misdirections, accusing the wrong suspect as a result. Sadly that works better on paper than it does in practice. For one thing the red herrings meant to throw you off the scent are sometimes so shamelessly coincidental that they feel forced: two unrelated suspects for the same murder might have a connection to completely disconnected elements that are homonymous for no reason whatsoever. Without spoiling anything, imagine if you found a letter mentioning the name "Ophelia" in relation to the killer, and one suspect had a daughter named Ophelia, while the other one had a horse by the same name. Another time the game might try to convince you that something different has taken place by presenting crime scene clues that are revealed to be false and then never explained: again without spoiling anything, a body might be found with what look like ritualistic cuts that turn out to be nothing of the sort, but the game never illustrates why they look like that. Truth of the matter is they are there for no reason other than misdirecting the player, and one is simply not supposed to think about it too hard, which in a detective game kind of defeats the purpose.
As a result of these red herrings you might conceivably be fooled into accusing the wrong guy... only to then never realize you did, since, barring one, the game never follows up on the cases, nor does it provide an immediate review of your conclusions. You will keep expecting your decisions to come back to bite you in the ass or reward you, but that never really happens. Same goes for one major moral decision near the end of the game, which has little consequence and even so you might happen to play it out one way and then immediately load a save and change it, just to avoid a major case of annoyance: the core gimmick of the game (established in the prologue) is in fact that Miles hears the voice of his murdered partner in his head, and the aforementioned moral choice can make him even more annoying than normal.
And annoying he is, since, in an unfortunate design decision, they have decided to voice this character with the thickest "fuggedaboutit" Brooklyn accent imaginable which, combined with his constant dad jokes, make this character very very grating. One could be forgiven for considering abandoning the game early on when it is discovered that not only the annoying guy from the prologue (who you hoped would drop out of the game upon dying) now lives in your head, but he also delivers every single item description in the game with the same snarky goomba accent. That might be a personal pet peeve which may not affect others as much, but it's worth mentioning.
Thankfully the rest of the cast is likable, starting with the protagonist, who is voiced by an actor who sounds shockingly similar to George Stobbart from Broken Sword. Quality writing helps too, and the game delivers on that front, barring a few minor dips.
The game is regrettably very light on puzzles: having no inventory means that solving the cases is a simple matter of clicking on everything until you unlock the conversation topics needed to question the suspects, with very little to tease your brain along the way. The only time you might get stuck is when you've overlooked a clickable spot, like a barely visible storm drain or a drag mark on a floor, as what little puzzles there are are really easily solved once the game gives you the info you need to do so.
All that is what prevents Lamplight City from shining as bright as it might have. Proper consequences to your actions and better puzzle design would really have placed this game among the best. As it stands it's just a very good one.
The game tries to streamline the adventure formula by doing away with the cumbersome inventory management which gets in the way of progression in many such titles, replacing it with a clue notebook in the vein of Sherlock Holmes games. Also similar to recent Holmes products as well as LA Noire is the case wrapping system, which grants the player freedom to rush to incorrect conclusions by being deceived by one of several deliberately placed misdirections, accusing the wrong suspect as a result. Sadly that works better on paper than it does in practice. For one thing the red herrings meant to throw you off the scent are sometimes so shamelessly coincidental that they feel forced: two unrelated suspects for the same murder might have a connection to completely disconnected elements that are homonymous for no reason whatsoever. Without spoiling anything, imagine if you found a letter mentioning the name "Ophelia" in relation to the killer, and one suspect had a daughter named Ophelia, while the other one had a horse by the same name. Another time the game might try to convince you that something different has taken place by presenting crime scene clues that are revealed to be false and then never explained: again without spoiling anything, a body might be found with what look like ritualistic cuts that turn out to be nothing of the sort, but the game never illustrates why they look like that. Truth of the matter is they are there for no reason other than misdirecting the player, and one is simply not supposed to think about it too hard, which in a detective game kind of defeats the purpose.
As a result of these red herrings you might conceivably be fooled into accusing the wrong guy... only to then never realize you did, since, barring one, the game never follows up on the cases, nor does it provide an immediate review of your conclusions. You will keep expecting your decisions to come back to bite you in the ass or reward you, but that never really happens. Same goes for one major moral decision near the end of the game, which has little consequence and even so you might happen to play it out one way and then immediately load a save and change it, just to avoid a major case of annoyance: the core gimmick of the game (established in the prologue) is in fact that Miles hears the voice of his murdered partner in his head, and the aforementioned moral choice can make him even more annoying than normal.
And annoying he is, since, in an unfortunate design decision, they have decided to voice this character with the thickest "fuggedaboutit" Brooklyn accent imaginable which, combined with his constant dad jokes, make this character very very grating. One could be forgiven for considering abandoning the game early on when it is discovered that not only the annoying guy from the prologue (who you hoped would drop out of the game upon dying) now lives in your head, but he also delivers every single item description in the game with the same snarky goomba accent. That might be a personal pet peeve which may not affect others as much, but it's worth mentioning.
Thankfully the rest of the cast is likable, starting with the protagonist, who is voiced by an actor who sounds shockingly similar to George Stobbart from Broken Sword. Quality writing helps too, and the game delivers on that front, barring a few minor dips.
The game is regrettably very light on puzzles: having no inventory means that solving the cases is a simple matter of clicking on everything until you unlock the conversation topics needed to question the suspects, with very little to tease your brain along the way. The only time you might get stuck is when you've overlooked a clickable spot, like a barely visible storm drain or a drag mark on a floor, as what little puzzles there are are really easily solved once the game gives you the info you need to do so.
All that is what prevents Lamplight City from shining as bright as it might have. Proper consequences to your actions and better puzzle design would really have placed this game among the best. As it stands it's just a very good one.