Initially beat this in 2017, but went back to it because it aligned pretty well with my current situation of "detective game itch / something to play on my Steam Deck / as a bonus a game I can get all achievements in". Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders was a pretty solid choice in that regard, as I only had a few more achievements to get from my initial playthrough, plus I had forgotten most of what this game was about.
As someone who has had no prior or subsequent experiences with detective Hercule Poirot, I can't say this is a good introduction to the character. Or maybe it is? Poirot doesn't have much of an interesting personality, he's just a rude dick and can also be an terrible detective based on the dialogue choices you pick and the writing in general in this is not great. An example for how dumb Poirot can be, the game sometimes asks you to deduce something via dialogue choices and the "wrong" dialogue choice pretty much makes Poirot sound like a 5 year old imbecile, like when you're asked about whether you know anything about the killer and can answer with "he is unpredictable", even though you just went through 2 hours of detective work with roughly 89 points of evidence clearly showing a pattern.
There is a nice bait and switch to the resolution of the ABC murder mystery here (probably more due to the source material rather than what the devs came up with), and a few of the puzzles are challenging in a good way, so I'm not going to say that this is a bad detective game. But the pacing is one of the issues I've had, being locked out of investigating thoroughly because you accidentally investigated the person/item that moved the story forward is not great, areas in this game are very tiny and lack much detail and as mentioned, the writing is forgettable.
It's probably below average all things considered, so I guess to sum up I would say: If there are other, more acclaimed detective / mystery games that you have not played (Disco Elysium, Return of the Obra Dinn, Her Story, Orwell, Ace Attorney, Judgment, LA Noire and lots more), I would suggest picking those. If Agatha Christie is in your library and you got very few other choices though, I guess the game is servicable enough to provide you with two afternoons worth of entertainment. But I doubt that's the case (The Wolf Among Us, Grim Fandango, The Council, Danganronpa, Paradise Killer, Subsurface Circular, Sexy Brutale, Ghost Trick Phantom Detective, AI The Somnium Files ... again, the list of games I'd rather recommend is pretty high).
As someone who has had no prior or subsequent experiences with detective Hercule Poirot, I can't say this is a good introduction to the character. Or maybe it is? Poirot doesn't have much of an interesting personality, he's just a rude dick and can also be an terrible detective based on the dialogue choices you pick and the writing in general in this is not great. An example for how dumb Poirot can be, the game sometimes asks you to deduce something via dialogue choices and the "wrong" dialogue choice pretty much makes Poirot sound like a 5 year old imbecile, like when you're asked about whether you know anything about the killer and can answer with "he is unpredictable", even though you just went through 2 hours of detective work with roughly 89 points of evidence clearly showing a pattern.
There is a nice bait and switch to the resolution of the ABC murder mystery here (probably more due to the source material rather than what the devs came up with), and a few of the puzzles are challenging in a good way, so I'm not going to say that this is a bad detective game. But the pacing is one of the issues I've had, being locked out of investigating thoroughly because you accidentally investigated the person/item that moved the story forward is not great, areas in this game are very tiny and lack much detail and as mentioned, the writing is forgettable.
It's probably below average all things considered, so I guess to sum up I would say: If there are other, more acclaimed detective / mystery games that you have not played (Disco Elysium, Return of the Obra Dinn, Her Story, Orwell, Ace Attorney, Judgment, LA Noire and lots more), I would suggest picking those. If Agatha Christie is in your library and you got very few other choices though, I guess the game is servicable enough to provide you with two afternoons worth of entertainment. But I doubt that's the case (The Wolf Among Us, Grim Fandango, The Council, Danganronpa, Paradise Killer, Subsurface Circular, Sexy Brutale, Ghost Trick Phantom Detective, AI The Somnium Files ... again, the list of games I'd rather recommend is pretty high).