Game Review - Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter

Game Review: Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter by Frogwares
Score: +1/-7 / FAIL x2

"Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter is a fantastic adventure with unique gameplay that blends investigation, action and exploration for an extraordinary experience that will test the limits of your nerves and intelligence.
Track down evil in the darkest corners of London and the human soul while playing as the great detective, as you untangle a web of intrigue leading to the final stunning revelation.
Each of your deductions and actions affects the rest of the story, for better or for worse...
Play as Sherlock Holmes and use his extraordinary abilities to progress through the adventure. Freely explore several of the city's neighbourhoods in search of clues and suspects. Interrogations, combat, chases, infiltration… discover a game that is unlike any other!"

It's not easy making murder mysteries or any other mysteries, but that is the specialty of the Frogwares studio so it is especially disappointing to see how badly this one turned out.

The FAIL verdict is primarily based on how mysteries are solved (or rather, how we are allowed to solve the mysteries). We'll touch on other aspects of the game afterward.

Because we need to discuss mystery elements, BEWARE OF SPOILERS.

The reason we're scoring the game a FAIL is in the unsatisfying nature of some mystery elements. In this discussion we'll focus on the second case, A Study in Green.

(That said, you might find some cases adequately resolved so it's not a total loss since there isn't just one mystery case in the game.)

• Some Deductions you can make are imprecise or outright deceptive, but you still need to choose them for the proper case solution.
• For example, in one deduction, you have to choose between:
• A: "Sir Charles is aware of the curse. He had the perfect opportunity."
• B: "Sir Charles is unaware of the existence of a curse. Opportunity doesn't make him a murderer."
• In order to get the correct solution at the end of the case, you have to choose the "unaware" deduction, but this is in fact a wrong deduction.
• Sir Charles already knew about the curse from the other expedition members, and possibly as early as before the expedition 14 year ago, an archaeological expedition he led.
• Whether each member believes curses are a real thing does not change their awareness of the curse. And whether someone personally believes a curse is real or not doesn't stop them from potentially using the legend of a curse as a scapegoat for murder.
• Some Deductions do not have valid choices, but you have to choose the one that the developers want you to choose.
• For example, in "A Study in Green", you have these choices about an automaton:
• A: "The club's statue of Tecún Umán was an automaton."
• B: "It's not possible to build an automaton with such a precise moving mechanism."
• Choice A is probably not true since we were at the club the day before the murder and saw the statue was solid. Though this does not discount the possibility of an automaton brought in to replace it. After all, the statue on the pedestal has somehow been removed at some point before the police arrived and we never resolve when or how this was done.
• Choice B is highly deceptive since we can make this deduction right after seeing an automaton bust hurl a spear with great force. What does "precise moving mechanism" refer to? An automaton ripping free of its pedestal and running away? Or simply throwing a spear? There's more to the case than simply throwing the spear at a location where a murder victim can be predicted to stand -- such as leaping up a tree to help climb over a high wall -- so this statement is also not true.
• With neither statement true, this deduction is very poorly designed.
• Further, the necessary statement for the correct case solution is statement B, which is highly ambiguous as to its meaning and deceptive based on what we see in our investigation.
• Some Deductions are both correct, but you have to choose the one that the developers want you to choose.
• For example, in "A Study in Green", we have a written statement from a suspect: "I know I am the chosen one... Tecún Umán wants to use me for his purpose... Oh god... Protect me... I don't want to die..."
• The choices available to you on the Deduction board are:
• A: "Bernard Marley truly believes that he is the 'chosen one', to do the curse's bidding."
• B: "Bernard Marley is afraid of the curse and is trying to defend himself from it. He cannot be the 'chosen one'."
• The problem here is both statements can be true. In support of option A, he believes he is the "chosen one" and we see he is taking actions in that direction: He is building murderous automatons of Tecún Umán. So there's clearly some ambiguity in how he feels.
• At the same time, option B is not mutually exclusive. He can be afraid of the curse and can try to defend himself from it (we see he is wearing protective charms) but he can still believe himself to be the 'chosen one' and resist the role. After all if he cannot be the "chosen one" then why the need for protective charms?
• The wording in option B -- "He CANNOT be the 'chosen one'" -- feels deliberately deceptive because it is directly counter to the evidence you find and in a way it suggests that the murder must have been done by someone who believes themselves to be the "chosen one". And yet this is the option you must pick in order to reach the correct case resolution.
• At the conclusion of the case, if you accuse the correct person, Holmes proceeds without clear evidence of a killer of "short stature" and instead relies on luck that the pygmy killer (nevertheless capable of throwing a very large metal spear with great strength and accuracy) will be present and peaceful with the accused (whereas during the first encounter, said murderous pygmy is never clearly seen and tries to murder Sherlock Holmes).

Through trial and error you can try different deduction choice combinations and arrive at the correct solution to the mystery, but particularly in a Sherlock Holmes mystery, this is highly unsatisfying. Sherlock Holmes relies on logic and deduction, not guesswork.

For this reason, Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter fails as a mystery game, any other merits notwithstanding.

Also, the statue "red herring" in this case is not resolved.

• In this mystery, the initial inspection suggests the spear that was part of a metal statue at the crime scene was the murder weapon; that the statue was somehow removed from the pedestal forcibly; and an eye witness claims to have seen it run away from the murder.
• Since it is unlikely for a metal sculpture to run away from the murder scene, the question still remains: Where did it go, and more importantly, how, especially in such a short period of time?

* * *

Here are some other observations on the game:

FAIL Highly deceptive trailer and title: The cinematic trailer shows spooky/horror stuff but the mysteries you solve before the final mystery that finally involves "the Devil's Daughter" are nothing supernatural at all and seemingly unrelated. The final mystery isn't spooky or supernatural and has none of the elements in the cinematic trailer. Not even close.

-1 "Moral Choices" are sometimes not moral choices at all but incomplete investigations where you guess the solution. Maybe it's not possible to get all the information to properly deduce what really happened, but that still doesn't make it a "moral choice".

• Example: Each of the the "Moral Choices" for case 3, "Infamy" are based on a completely different assumption of Jeremiah's role. The choices are:
• Condemn Percy Flemming: Percy Flemming forced Jeremiah to do his dirty work, and threathened to send Jeremiah's sister to the brothel if he disobeyed. Percy "the Dart" Flemming deserves a heavy prison sentence.
• Absolve Percy Flemming: It was Jeremiah who offered to kill Sherlock Holmes for Percy Flemming. Jeremiah played on Percy's ego in order that his debt be written off. Percy Flemming was manipulated, and should not be sent to prison.
• It is not so much a moral choice as it is a guess about what really happened.

ceptive trailer: The launch trailer shows spooky/horror stuff but your first mysteries involve nothing supernatural at all.

+0 Graphics are passable considering you get good performance.

-1 The character animations are terrible. Stiff/jerky, enough to look unnatural.

+1-1 A wide variety of minigames and some are quite good. But some are really terrible, and some are terribly implausible.

• A really early one involves one of the Baker Street Boys tailing a suspect. It's actually quite good with a fair sense of urgency... Until you need to clean a chimney in the middle of tailing the suspect. Surely you would have lost the suspect by the time you're done?

-1 Really bad trial and error and memorization puzzles. A really bad example happens in the second mystery, A Study in Green.

• In the Mayan Temple scene, there is a room where certain stone faces on pillars spit poison. A safe path involves looking all around you carefully before you make your move. If a poison-spitting stone face has a line to you, even from far away, it will spit poison on you and you will immediately die.
• But you really don't have a lot of time to do this because stone blocks fall from the ceiling to shrink the area. So you just end up finding short paths, dying repeatedly, and piecing them together to memorize a successful path to the exit. This is not a satisfying way to succeed.
• You can see in the below solution video that the player doesn't bother looking around for the dangerous statues because they are following a memorized route.
• +0 At least they let you skip their nonsense minigames, just like in previous titles.

-1 You have to click useless or obvious things to advance

• Example: In the very first case, "Prey Tell", you have to conclude your examination of the client's apartment in order to proceed to the next stage. You must find all the "clues" that the game wants you to find.
• One of them is a small card that shows the pub you have to go to next. Here's where some players get stumped: They know where to go next but they can't because they haven't found all the clues.
• Usually the last remaining clue is to turn the flyer over and click on the brown stains. Except this "clue" doesn't factor into our investigation at all. Why are we even clicking on it?
• Example: When you are investigating a clipboard in the Department of Tropical Diseases in the second case "A Study in Green".
• The dot in the reticle changes from yellow to green when you have inspected all possible items at an inspection location.
• On the clipboard is a sheet of paper with the header "Department of Tropical Diseases" and a list of patients. Obviously, because we are in the Department of Tropical Diseases.
• One of the clickable items to conclude your investigation of this clipboard is that very header, "Department of Tropical Diseases". Yes, I know where we are, thanks. And yes, we can read what it says from just looking at it.

-1 It's often hard to find where to click on objects you are inspecting

• Example: In the second first case, "A Study in Green", you can inspect some of the victim's belongings, including a wallet and a pocket watch.
• In order to open the wallet or pocket watch you have to keep hovering your mouse all over until you find where they have hidden the interaction point for you to open it.
• This wouldn't be so bad if the interaction point is obvious or intuitive, but it is not. For example, pocket watches are opened by clicking the knob at the top, but that's not where the interaction point is located.
• It's even more vague how to open the wallet.

-1 You cannot investigate obvious things. For example:

• You can observe in-game a small bed and implausible bedroom for Albeit's son in "A Study in Green", and you can choose a deduction that he's lying about his son. But you cannot confront him about it.
• Certainly sometimes what's obvious to developers isn't obvious to players and vice versa, but when you can make a deduction choice about a glaring issue, then both the player and the developer are aware of it, and yet in a murder mystery, you cannot pursue the line of inquiry?