After the disappointment I felt with Frogwares' The Sinking City, I yearned for a more traditional detective mystery, which is exactly what I got with Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments. I mean, what could be more traditional?
Crimes & Punishments is a simple, yet effective caper, taking the dynamic duo of Holmes and Watson through six cases with their own unique circumstances, locations, and stories to tell, all while an overarching plot slowly unfolds in the background. Unfortunately, I felt that this overarching plot was one of the weakest parts of the game, as it's barely mentioned halfway through before being shoehorned into the ending decision of the game.
The rest of the game, however, consisting of self-contained mysteries, is consistently solid from the first to the last. While the penultimate case was the weakest in my view, it still delivered a solid story and suitable motivations for the characters.
The mystery-solving elements themselves are nothing new, though they don't really need to be. They mostly consist of your basic loop of investigating, collecting evidence, and interrogating. What truly sets Crimes & Punishments apart, however, is the free-form nature with which you connect the dots and ultimately draw the conclusions. There's some handholding and guidance along the way, but the case's resolution is ultimately up to you putting all the pieces together and discerning the guilty party.
This part of the game is by far its most compelling and engaging aspect. Though its systems and logic can seem convoluted and archaic at times, this is one of the closest instances in which a game has emulated the feeling of being a real detective.
The puzzles that you solve along the way in your investigations are also largely solid, albeit with some unnecessarily elaborate ones, like the lock-picking mini-game, which the game starts to throw at you with frequency towards the back half.
Despite these setbacks, however, I truly enjoyed my time with Crimes & Punishments and hope that as I move forward, the series can build on this formula and throw a much stronger overarching narrative on top of it to really deliver the full Sherlock Holmes experience this franchise deserves.
7/10
Crimes & Punishments is a simple, yet effective caper, taking the dynamic duo of Holmes and Watson through six cases with their own unique circumstances, locations, and stories to tell, all while an overarching plot slowly unfolds in the background. Unfortunately, I felt that this overarching plot was one of the weakest parts of the game, as it's barely mentioned halfway through before being shoehorned into the ending decision of the game.
The rest of the game, however, consisting of self-contained mysteries, is consistently solid from the first to the last. While the penultimate case was the weakest in my view, it still delivered a solid story and suitable motivations for the characters.
The mystery-solving elements themselves are nothing new, though they don't really need to be. They mostly consist of your basic loop of investigating, collecting evidence, and interrogating. What truly sets Crimes & Punishments apart, however, is the free-form nature with which you connect the dots and ultimately draw the conclusions. There's some handholding and guidance along the way, but the case's resolution is ultimately up to you putting all the pieces together and discerning the guilty party.
This part of the game is by far its most compelling and engaging aspect. Though its systems and logic can seem convoluted and archaic at times, this is one of the closest instances in which a game has emulated the feeling of being a real detective.
The puzzles that you solve along the way in your investigations are also largely solid, albeit with some unnecessarily elaborate ones, like the lock-picking mini-game, which the game starts to throw at you with frequency towards the back half.
Despite these setbacks, however, I truly enjoyed my time with Crimes & Punishments and hope that as I move forward, the series can build on this formula and throw a much stronger overarching narrative on top of it to really deliver the full Sherlock Holmes experience this franchise deserves.
7/10