I, too, like to give warnings that in no way correlate with what you're about to see.

I also don't like the greater leaning into the supernatural, it doesn't feel very Sherlock Holmes.

Even on hard difficulty this is nowhere near how challenging the original one was. There's hardly any actual puzzles as far as I can see, just figuring out the environment. The original's puzzles didn't always feel fair, sure, but I'd rather have that than no proper puzzles at all.

Why is Watson's nose hair sticking out? I thought this was 19th century London, not 21st century London. He probably would take care to trim it.

Why can't we combine things properly when we still kinda sorta need to combine them to progress?

Why does the first hypothesis that Sherlock Holmes has in the game turn out to be a complete delusion? How often has that happened in the books/short stories?

Why a lot of things. Even on hard difficulty this is no harder than any other Sherlock Holmes game, whereas the original was the hardest of the lot (in my opinion) by far. So as a remake it's not good and as a standalone it has nothing to help it stand out.

It was fun, and great to the rest of the Sherlock games, and held similar map systems to Chapter One and The Devil's Daughter but mixed together. It was very gory but tolerable. I would not say it's $40 worth though. For as much content there is, it's not worth the full price. If you wish for more playtime and content, Chapter One would be better.

Amazing game! But the ending was absolute trash. It felt like holding in your poop while being stuck in traffic. Painful, unpleasant, but the thought of you nearing your toilet is what gives you that strength to persevere. Finally, you arrive home, rush to the toilet, plop your cheeks down, and alas, all that comes out is a fart. That's my experience with the ending.

I was expecting an interesting game that would be absolutely stunning. I was skeptical about the combination of Sherlock Holmes with Lovecraft’s horror. And I knew why. Many games have tried to make a great Lovecraftian game, but most have failed. And this one is no exception. They made a lot of references, took you into different realms, and tried very hard to make it feel like Lovecraft. But it’s just disappointing. It had some good steps, but it was rushed. The gameplay is much worse. Instead of solving cases or figuring out the grand conspiracy, you were just looking for new objectives in your story. I was expecting a different results, and option to choose. But you ended up with a linear story with no alternatives. Also, the character profile is stupid. After you observe someone and find out all the key parts of their personality, you can choose from two options (for example: whether the person is dangerous or harmless). It doesn’t matter which one you choose. The last thing is the end. The idea of ending the game at a lighthouse where dozens of hypnotized people and only two cultists are performing the ritual is terrible.
At least there‘s good voice acting, soundtrack and design. The graphics could have been a little better, but that‘s not that important in a detective game, so I can accept it. You get eight chapters and around fourteen hours of play time. Some chapters are good, some are bad. Even though the game wasn’t that good, I enjoyed it. But I’ll never play it again. If you want a good Sherlock Holmes game, I recommend you Crimes and Punishments, from my experience. If you want a good Lovecraftinan game...well, it’s not that simple. I think you could try Call of Cthulhu or The Sinking City. They’te slightly better, but they’re not great games.

Gameplay: 3/5
Story: 3/5
Design/graphics: 4/5
Soundtrack/audio: 5/5

I've been following Frogwares' Sherlock Homes series for years, and I have enjoyed all of their games until Crimes and Punishment, which was really great. I liked both the long adventures and the single cases styles. After that, the series has had a lot of downs. Do not get me wrong, this title has a lot of good things, it is a lot better than Chapter One, or The Devil's Daughter (which was unbelievably atrocious). On the other hand, I fear that everything good comes from the title of which it is a remake (one of my favorite ones), while most of the additions, except the graphics improvements of course, just make playing it more annoying. It feels like Frogwares looks at features that are good, and thinks "uhm, we've been doing this for a while and it works a bit too well, let's change it and make it worse." Or maybe I am just delusional, and everyone except me actually likes them, just decide for yourself.

First of all, the character of Sherlock Holmes. Throughout the different chapters of the series, we were always presented with a Sherlock who was smart, good-mannered, witty, kind in its own way, and the emblem of rational thinking. Since The Devil's Daughter, they decided that Sherlock needs to be a deranged psychopath, suffering from hallucinations of all kind, constantly questioning every choice he makes, and being socially unpleasant with everyone around him. They introduced unnecessary conflicts with the brother Mycroft, and Watson becomes a baby sitter for a helpless Holmes (except when he is helpless himself, or having war flashbacks). Are we sure that a Sherlock Holmes video game is the best place to introduce mental illnesses, family problems, the horrors of war, and so on? This is especially annoying to me because the devs are not Dostoevsky, Kafka, or good writers in general. Every time I saw Sherlock's mental problems, hallucinations, insecurities, or Watson's ramblings on war, I just cringed. It got to the point where I actually felt genuine surprise when Sherlock acted like a detective, or showed some deductive powers. That's sad.

Then, the investigation. There are many things I don't like about this. First of all, I think Frogwares keeps coming up with ideas for adding things to these games, which are not at all what should be in them. Being Sherlock Holmes games, I buy them to investigate things. We got annoying minigames and quicktime events in Devil's Daughter, and those useless and clumsy fight scenes in Chapter One. They probably realized those things were just awful, and they removed most of them here, but it's still annoying. I want to collect clues, make connections, and move on with the plot, not navigate mazes following Sherlock's whining voice, pressing buttons at the right time to move through a crowd, run around Sherlock's hallucinations waiting for them to finally end, or shoot ropes while the aiming goes wherever it wants. The way the investigation is implemented is also clumsy. Sometimes, I knew exactly what to do, but couldn't figure out why it did not work. Turns out, I was not able to proceed before spelling it out in the mind palace or whatever it's called, or pinning the evidence on the menu, or looking at the same thing but with Sherlock's x-ray vision. Why add all of these complications to just collecting clues and deducting things? Also, you can literally brute force all of the mind palace stuff and most "deductions", so I don't see the point. On the other hand, they dumbed down the puzzles incredibly. I agree, some of them in the early games were infuriating, but in this game they are merely a waste of your time, since it takes no thinking whatsoever to complete them. Worst of all, since they divided things in chapter, they ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up the big investigation idea. In the original game, you had all the evidence since the beginning of the game, so that at the end things which were initially "useless" all came together to reveal the final twists. Here, on the other hand, since every chapter is self-standing, they give you all the clues to reveal what is happening at the end, so that some characters appear out of the blue, "here this guy whom I just mentioned or the first time is behind everything". Bleh. Also, they decided to dumb down the clues, so that instead of long texts, you have digested, prepared snippets of info.

Another decision I cannot understand is that of gender switching some characters. Once again, I am in favor of a more prominent representation of female (or transgender) characters in games, and I think that people that complain about "wokeness" in games are mostly people that have some unresolved problems of their own. On the other hand, here Frogwares just decided to take some characters from the previous game, and change their sex. The problem is, in some cases this does not make much sense, historically speaking, and breaks the immersion (not that there is much of it to begin with). It is not mandatory to make your game a parody when you try to be more inclusive.

There are some other things here and there, but I feel I touched the main points. I have seen some weird bugs (graphical artifacts, or Watson floating around). Some people have ten copies of the same paining in their house, and some paintings can be found in every single house Sherlock visits. I do not understand the "bonus" stuff: you unlock bonuses with points, and then? What are they for? A lot of the environments are dark, and the character model covers what you're trying to look at, which makes finding clues annoying. The way the in-game map works is not great at all. The clothing system is mostly pointless. The characters often look really weird.

Overall, I would still recommend the original over this remake. Which is a pity, because they literally were so close to making it amazing, but it feels like they deliberately decided to just not do it. I got to the final "boss fight" of this game, but I got so bored that I really don't feel like starting it again to finish it. I don't even feel curious about the ending.

good one

I love the Art and the game play .