Following the same structure as Crimes & Punishments, The Devil's Daughter sees you returning to the homey, familiar vibes of Frogwares' Sherlock Holmes series to complete a string of cases that are connected via a surprisingly emotional wraparound story that ties into earlier games in the franchise in a way that will be a real treat for longtime fans. Right from the get-go you can tell things aren't where you'd want the second entry on the 8th generation of consoles to be from a technical standpoint. The graphics (specifically the character models, the environments are fine) are dated and ugly, there's light screen tearing throughout, and a host of weird bugs diminish the experience. Such as one where a line of dialog would constantly repeat in a certain area, often over other conversations, despite the character that uttered it being long gone at that point. As bad as these problems are though, the real issues holding this back are the gameplay and writing deficiencies.

Once again you'll engage in a variety of one-off, mini-game-esque segments designed to inject some action into the proceedings. They feel like the kind of things Telltale Games might have come up with had they continued to evolve the level of interaction players had with their titles outside of just making story decisions. While there are some genuinely inventive and enjoyable scenarios and puzzles, on the whole there isn't really anything that matches the level of fun and depth found in TDD's most direct predecessor, leaving me wanting a bit more on this front overall.

The real highlight of these Sherlock Holmes adventures is still how much freedom you're given in making deductions. You always have access to everything you'll need to uncover clues and are left to piece together what you've discovered on your own. So whether or not the right person is brought to justice depends entirely on how you interpret the information given. This can lead to some exhilarating moments of sweaty palmed second-guessing. At least when it's not leading you down the wrong path that is. In one of the mysteries you'll be tasked with solving there aren't just red herrings, but blatant, highly detailed misinformation that leads to an outcome more logical and supported by greater evidence than what the writers actually intended. It's so egregious I unapologetically sided with my headcanon over the case's legitimate ending.

For all of its faults however, it's hard to keep a good gumshoe down. You can still walk away from this feeling incredibly clever and that, along with the thrill of agonizing over whether you're about to accuse the wrong person and condemn someone innocent, remains a high worth chasing. It's just unfortunate that due to its flawed state only the most dedicated of supersleuths will find this a case worth taking on.

6/10

Fever dream of a game. I played Devil's Daughter because it came bundled with Crimes & Punishments for $50 cheaper than either game on its own. Despite being bundled with C&P, it's actually a direct sequel to Testament, a game I have not played, in which Holmes and Watson have adopted Moriarty's daughter Katelyn.

Not that the chain of sequels and prequels really matters, because Devil's Daughter's biggest stylistic influence isn't either of its predecessors, but Guy Ritchie's Holmes films. Which is fine, if you liked them. Though I can't understate the uncanny valley effect of seeing C&P characters alongside Watson's Jude Law glow-up and Holmes's dangling suspenders.

I'm genuinely unsure if I enjoyed this or not, let alone how to rate it. There are a truckload more QTEs than C&P (including the entire final segment), but they play better. Cases 1 and 4 are good (or at least, good fanfiction of the Ritchie movies)--case 4 in particular I enjoyed far more than anything in C&P. The domino effect deduction was great fun, and it didn't overstay its welcome. On the other hand, case 2 mirrors Sign of the Four down to the racist elements, and the treatment of Alice is just awful across the board (at one point you can backhand her).

Mostly, I was left baffled. A sequence I can only describe as Assassin's Creed: Wiggins (featuring a "lung disease" meter) had my wife in hysterics. At one point, Sherlock Holmes is hunted for sport. There's a metallurgy rhythm game, a lawn bowls tournament, and a sewer platforming level. And the final case is... how do I even describe it. It's directed like a "journey to the centre of the mind" dream sequence, but for no apparent reason, because all the events are supposed to be actually happening. I felt like I was playing an improvised children's bedtime story. When the case ended abruptly after perhaps an hour, I turned to my wife and whispered, "What the fuck?"

Una de las mejores historias, aunque corta, de Sherlock Holmes

Pongo sobre aviso, de que si no os gustó la trama de "Awakened" por ser demasiado fantasioso o sobrenatural, este no os gustará. En cambio, si disfrutasteis de la trama de "El testamento", "Awakened" y buscáis una historia de Sherlock más cercana a las películas actuales y series, disfrutaréis mucho, de sus 10-12 horitas de juego.

La investigación: si somos expertos en juegos de este estilo, la superaremos sin mayor complicación. Lo Difícil vendrá en nuestras moralidades, y en las acciones que creamos que son las correctas.

Nos encontraremos 5 casos, que al principio no pintan tener ninguna correlación, pero que al final sí que importaran, se conectaran y tendrán mucho que ver la elección de nuestros actos.

A nivel de jugabilidad con mando, es de los más fluidos, y lo dice alguien que no tiene el pulso para robar panderetas😂, y en los puzles de equilibrio y habilidad, los he superado sin problemas.

Controlar de nuevo a Toby❤️ y tener un Sherlock, más humano y cercano, el humor de algún capítulo (el exorcismo con los irregulares de Baker Street😂😂😂) y las deducciones en profundidad, sin duda, son mi 10, aunque le restarían nota, su corta duración, para mí (te deja con muchas ganas de más) y lo poquito que sale John Watson😔

The gameplay is obsolete and stiff as hell, and some of the mini-games are frustrating to say the least (God, that temple section was a nightmare). It looks like they tried to make the game more appealing by throwing in a bunch of elements from different genres, but couldn't manage to do a decent job with any of them.

The cases and investigation parts are good enough to make it worth playing, though. I was always wanting to find out what comes next, and not all resolutions were as obvious as I expected. You have the freedom to choose the culprit based on the evidence you could collect, but the game does not show you the direct consequences of your choice. The case just abruptly ends without any kind of closing scene or cutscene. There are also some leaps in the plot that disorient the player quite a bit. For example, at the end of the first episode you find yourself in a completely different place being hunted by someone with no transition nor explanations about how it happened.

Maybe we cannot expect polished gameplay from such a small studio, but there's a lot of room for improvement.

The mechanics improved since their last SH game even though I was sometimes still confused as to how certain things were supposed to work.

Not a fan of kids in games, so all soon as that little goblin was introduces I knew I had to save her at SOME point...I'm just glad, I was wrong about the parentage of the kid.

I had the feeling they really wanted me to like her but I just couldn't. She was too saccharine for my taste and had nothing to add to the story. She was there so we have an emotional connection to what happened in the last act.
Couldn't care less about her :/ But it's hard to make me care about any child character so this one had the odds stacked against her from the very beginning.

The game also ends rather suddenly which robbed me of a satisfying ending scene. A quick voice over to what exactly happened after the last scene would have been nice. :/

All in all, I had fun playing this game. :)

Muitas melhorias em comparação ao anterior, mais puzzles, melhorias de mecânica, maior exploração do mapa com um mundo semiaberto, melhores composições de cena e uma boa construção narrativa durante todo o jogo, mas com um problema que diminui sua qualidade: a conclusão dos casos. A maneira abrupta que o caso se conclui, após todo um complexo processo de investigação pode deixar o jogador desapontado, independente de sua escolha. Poderia ter uma cutscene mais impactante para finalizar o capítulo.
Os casos não apresentam muita dificuldade, diria que possui um nível médio, e ao meu ver podiam ser um pouco mais longos (entendo que poderia ser entediante se fossem maiores, mas como eu sou fã do Sherlock, eu ia gostar) e melhores desenvolvidos em certos pontos.
O dublador do Sherlock Holmes teve um trabalho excepcional, ele deu vida ao personagem que pareceu ser um filme live action e não um personagem de desenho, não posso dizer o mesmo do dublador do Watson, mas não é ruim, porém podia ser melhor. O personagem principal, Holmes, é muito bem trabalhado, porém seu desenvolvimento não é tão notório, suas questões com a Kate parecem ter sido desenvolvidas apenas no final, apesar dos outros capítulos tentarem construir a relação das duas personagens. Além disso, faltou a cômica e fraternal relação entre o Sherlock e o Watson, este que teve pouca participação e tempo de tela no jogo, sendo que nas obras de Arthur Conan Doyle, os dois atuam boa parte do tempo juntos e se completam como equipe.
Dito isso, daria uma nota 7.5/10 ao jogo, me diverti com ele e gostei, mas senti que poderia ser mais, visto que teve um grande avanço em relação ao jogo anterior.

This is probably the best way a Sherlock Holmes story could be translated into a game, or at least the best straightforward way. Walk through the city, find clues, combine them, talk to people, sneak around. I just can't shake off the constant feeling about the production value while playing. You walk through gorgeous places for five seconds, interact with many people for a minute and wonder how so much effort has been put into a world that's almost too full, an uncanny level of detail. Probably not a bad thing in itself, but it would've been more impactful if the game had been memorable.

The Devil's Daughter, Frogwares' follow-up to Crimes and Punishments, tries its best to shake the formula up a little more, for both better and worse this time. Better, in that the parts of the previous game that needed refining or adjusting are improved and fixed.

Lockpicking, for instance, is a much simpler affair that hearkens back to Oblivion or the old Splinter Cell games in its design. The overarching plot is also given a lot more prominence this time around instead of being relegated to a barely-mentioned side note in the background of certain cases. This time, there is a clear and concise narrative that follows through gradually with each case until culminating at the final one.

The freeform detective work is still strong in this one, albeit perhaps not as vast as the previous game due to this one's truncated length. The individual cases all once again deliver compelling stories that are on par with or, in some cases, exceed those in C&P. The overarching plot is decent, although not as strong as the mysteries you uncover along the way.

As for the worst aspects of The Devil's Daughter, perhaps the most baffling one is the decision to recast Holmes and Watson with a younger voice and face model. They do a decent enough job, don't get me wrong, but both of these men are supposed to be pushing 60 in this canon, and yet here they are looking like grizzled gentlemen in their mid-30s.

The newest and perhaps biggest addition to the gameplay this time is also baffling: a semi-open world. At any time, you can leave your Baker's Street office and explore the surrounding area, which is surprisingly large, at least more so than I was expecting. What is there to do in this semi-open world, however? Well, nothing really. There are mini-games and colorful NPCs dotted around, but as far as I could surmise, none of them contribute much of anything useful or helpful. They merely exist for flavor. Mostly, it seems to just exist as a 'next-gen' showpiece of what can be capable, but beyond that, it contributes next to nothing, unfortunately.

There's also an overabundance of action scenes, in particular action scenes that involve QTEs. This could be fine if they were sprinkled with some variety or decision-making that leads to different case outcomes, but again, it seems to mostly exist for flavor and to spice up some of the mysteries.

All in all, The Devil's Daughter is a decent entry in the series, but not one that many would be clamoring to return to any time soon. For every great decision or narrative moment, there are a lot of things that it gets in its own way with.

Also, how Frogwares didn't get sued by Jon Hamm for using his likeness for Sherlock is the real mystery to me. It's uncanny.

6/10

After playing Crimes & Punishments as my first Sherlock Holmes game I was excited to try out The Devil's Daughter. Unfortunately, I was left mildly disappointed as everything here is a downgrade from the what came before.

The character models have taken a dip in quality and detail, which makes the performance issues all the more surprising. The game is no graphical powerhouse yet it would get jittery at times on my machine and even on an SSD loading times could get annoyingly long.

Poorly implemented action sequences are the bane of every adventure game that feels like it needs to do something "more", and that's no change here, unfortunately.

Some of the puzzles cross the border from complex into obtuse, which comes admittedly with the territory of the genre, but there are a few that seem at odds with the concept of being the ultra-logical Sherlock Holmes. As a character famed for their logical thinking, it was disappointing to have sequences where you are playing fantasy in imaginary locations with no evidence to support the detective's theories. Holmes is traditionally about attention to detail, not "I reckon this probably happened."

That's not to say the game is bad overall, but playing it soon after Crimes & Punishments puts in stark contrast how much better these games can be.

Based, underrated detective game. Respects time period and players intelligence. I only played C&P before and I would rank them about equal. Cases still rely heavily on red herrings and unreal coincidences, but I have faith that logic is intact. You just need to pay attention. Not everything is put into your journal. I suggest writing down your own notes, because fun factor relies heavily on putting it all together yourself. Unfortunately it ends abruptly. One second you are finishing 3rd case, and the next you are seeing end credits after underwhelming finale.

This seems less popular than the previous entry, but I enjoyed it as well. It has a very strong Guy Ritchie influence which works in its favour, though some of the "discombobulate" moments became silly at times.

The more personal attachment of each case to Holmes' life, as well as an overarching plot, made it feel more personal. I really like the individual disconnected case approach, but this works to bring the character more to life.

The more open environments, bigger variety of puzzles, and (for me) more interesting and challenging scenarios than the previous game.

The downside: sometimes the mini-games and gimmicks became to much.