Sherlock Holmes: Hakushaku Reijou Yuukai Jiken (loosely translated as Sherlock Homes: Kidnapping of the Young Countess) is an adventure game developed for the Famicom by Towachiki, and released in 1986. The game puts the player in the role of Sherlock Holmes, who must travel throughout England (by train) while trying to solve the mystery of a kidnapping. In this unusual portrayal of Holmes, his only means of interrogating anyone to obtain information is by attacking them with jump kicks until they run out of stamina and reveal clues. The game alternates between a zoomed out view of England streets, where every bystander can damage Holmes simply by running in to him, to a zoomed in side scrolling view of buildings or sewers or parks. Besides interrogating people for information, or simply beating them up for train fare, Holmes must search seemingly random cracks or trees in order to find important clues, or inventory items.
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Up until I actually played FF in 2013, I didn't like the RPG genre.
I've previously played Shin Megami Tensei II, and I thought it was a
boring waste of time where you play as a bunch of dumb anime characters
going from point A to point B, and discovering the true power of Anarchy
and saving the world of friendship
inscrutable game.
most hostile thing I've touched with no exaggeration.
I have a theory that this started out as a poorly coded action game engine made by like one guy that later had the Sherlock Holmes character wrapped around it, and the devs decided to treat it like the joke it is once they realised how terrible and misguided the development plan was halfway through.
the titular detective has been (d?)evolved into jump kicking his way across the anarchic UK slaughtering everyone in the streets for meagre cash and breaking into people's homes, interrogating them for such inane dialogue as "are you satisfied with our current society?" "do you know how to use the controller?" "keys are valuable!" and "the game is Sherlock Holmes, of course!". this information is essential because it builds up your "reasoning" stat which must be raised to 100% to access the final stage, one .4 percentage increase at a time.
I should add that you interrogate people by kicking them to death.
(jump)kicking is the only thing Holmes can do in this game without outside help.
several other RPG/adventure systems are present here, all solely to make sure you get yourself into possibly unwinnable situations (the one easily accessible continue code in this game will start you out in the streets with half your cash and no HP; sounds like standard RPG fare but this is an action game with no invincibility states. the only way back home to Watson the healer is a very expensive train ticket.)
speaking of codes: the manual will feed you misleading information to impede your progress, such as "controller 2 is not used in this game". actually, controller 2 is your only method of saving progress and finishing the game. this is a single player game. I haven't even gotten into the vaguely hinted pixel hunting.
I'll revisit this review when I finish the game- without a guide. few games, even those touted as being hardcore or hostile or leaving everything up to the player to suss out, could ever hope to be as obstinate and impenetrable as this.
the worst part is that the non sequitur dialogue, chintzy presentation and absurd game design will pull you back in for more, definitely. I haven't been able to get this game out of my head for a week so I had to write this out. I'm barely even scratching the surface here.
THIS is the definitive private detective experience. everything is left in your hands and no one wants any of your shit. well, maybe they don't want you dead, but you get the idea