Sherlock Holmes The Devil’s Daughter Review

Recently, Sherlock Holmes has gotten a lot of traction in pop culture, spanning many great adaptations such as the Robert Downey Jr’s movies, Benedict Cumberbatch’s BBC Show and the severely underrated Ian McKellen’s Mr. Holmes.

When it comes to gaming though, Frogwares always took up the mantle of delivering a multitude of solid Sherlock Holmes games. Despite not being the best of the genre, they still provide a lot of fun for fans of the character.

The last game they released was Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter. Launching in 2016, the game focused on Sherlock Holmes’ relationship with his mysterious adoptive daughter, Kate. We decided to review this game since we recently bought it on sale and enjoyed it more than we expected to. If you enjoy our review, please let us know in the comments below. If you’d like to see some more of our screenshots from the game and from the other games that we play, follow us on Instagram.

In Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter, you play as the titular detective as you try to solve a number of gruesome and compelling cases. Once again developed by Frogwares, this installment ranks as our second favorite Sherlock Holmes games, with the first being Crimes and Punishments.

6 Brilliant Cases

The game features six cases, with one of them being a minor one that can be finished in about ten minutes or even less. Therefore, overall, it’s right to say that the game offers the players only five fully-fledged cases. It would’ve served the game better if there were more cases, even if they were a bit shorter. The limited number of cases can annoy some players, especially the fact that if you hate one of the cases, then that ruins the majority of the game for you.

The cases and their puzzles are difficult to solve, which is wonderful in a game like this. As cliché as it sounds, The Devil’s Daughter truly makes you feel like Sherlock Holmes. At the end of every case, you have to link the clues you got together to make up your own conclusions. However, they end abruptly and the game is keeps you in the dark when it comes to confirming whether you made the right conclusion or not.

Instead of making a good first impression, the game begins with the weakest case of the bunch. Prey Tell is a case about a boy whose dad went missing. Although the plot becomes more satisfying as you progress, it still isn’t that great of a case.

It’s all so puzzling to me

The game features a range of puzzles that challenges the players. While some of them can get frustrating such as a puzzle that requires you to translate a mayan calendar, most of them are a fun diversion. You also get the opportunity to study and analyze each character you talk to by examining their bodies, their clothes and their faces. It often feels like a half baked mechanic though, since the only good thing it does is provide a bit of background information about them and open up a few dialogue choices.

You often get the chance to examine a few objects for clues, in a fashion similar to that found in LA Noire. You get to rotate and move the object with your left and right stick, trying to find something unusual about it.

When the cases involve a dead body, you get the chance to stroll on over to Scotland Yard and examine the cold corpses for clues. This can also feel like a missed opportunity, since like almost every diversion in the game, it’s used only a handful of times.

As cliché as it sounds, The Devil’s Daughter truly makes you feel like Sherlock Holmes

Stunning Environments, Meh Animations

Graphically, the game looks much more stunning than one would expect. Exploring London’s Whitechapel and Baker Street is an absolute treat; they’re bustling with people going around their daily business. Although lacking any astonishing landmarks, they’re still a decent rendition of London’s streets. Strangely enough, exploring is one of the best activities you’ll do in the game.

The facial animations, as well as the characters movements, aren’t up to the standards set by the wonderful environments. The characters move in a wooden and stiff manner, the emotions conveyed by the voice acting are nowhere to be found in the characters’ facial expressions.

Voice acting is solid for almost all of the male characters, but the female characters’ leave much to be desired. Sherlock’s daughter, Kate, is overly excited and cheery, way more than a child should be.

To shake things up, Frogwares injected in each of the cases a variety of activities. However, most of the times, they’re underwhelming and overly long. They’re fun at first, but they quickly overstay their welcome. What should feel like a nice variety often ends up feeling like unnecessary padding. What’s good though is that the game rarely makes you go through the same activity more than once. You also have the option to skip any of them, as well as any puzzles you are stuck on with a quick tap of the touchpad.

Wait, what? Sherlock has a daughter?

Kate was first introduced during the ending of The Testament of Sherlock Holmes. But for people who had never played that, The Devil’s Daughter, with its not so subtle name, gives away her origins — at least for the people who are a bit knowledgeable in the Sherlock Holmes lore. The overarching story with Sherlock’s adoptive daughter Kate provides a nice change of pace from the previous installments. When a new neighbor named Alice moves into 221B Baker Street, Sherlock is intrigued and seeks to learn everything about her.

Especially considering the fact that she knows all about Kate’s mysterious origins, which the game keeps you in the dark about for almost the entirety of the 12-hour campaign, before revealing it in the last case. This subplot is explored during the events of the cases, and it delivers a rather nice change of pace.

Most of the Writing is solid

The writing and the dialogue is usually strong, except during the plot with Kate and Alice. Unlike the rest of the game, these sections are fun to play through, such as breaking into your neighbor’s house, and having to deal with an American actor that’s obsessed about Sherlock. Yet the story is somewhat flimsy and the relationship between Sherlock and his daughter is a bit underdeveloped.

For example, in one instance, Sherlock gets offended at Alice’s approach with Kate when he himself had forgotten her birthday; he remarks afterwards that women are better at those things. The great detective can’t even bother to check a calendar.

Overall, it felt like the introduction of Kate was mainly a way to explore more of Sherlock’s human nature. Yet the writing was so strong in many other aspects that the Kate subplot wasn’t needed at all. Sherlock is a decent human being when dealing with the supporting characters, and his humanity truly shines. Unlike BBC’s Sherlock series with the wonderful performance of Benedict Cumberbatch, this Sherlock is no sociopath. Often showing emotions and caring about the people around him, he’s even somewhat nice to Lestrade, Scotland Yard’s finest detective.

A lot of loading screens

The game does have a few setbacks, one of them being the constant loading screens. Solving the cases will have you going from location to location, examining every nook and cranny to find the next clue. Unfortunately, you can’t reach all of the locations by foot so you do have to endure some lengthy loading screens in between locations. They’re not that bad but they do make the game a chore to play at times.

Overall,

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes are as wonderful as they’ve always been in the Devil’s Daughter. Despite the bad animations and some of the bland gameplay mechanics, it’s still a worthy title for fans of Sherlock Holmes. This review was done on a PS4 and we didn’t encounter any technical hiccups or problems.

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