Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One

Sherlock Holmes Chapter One is a masterpiece of a detective game as it manages to deliver a thoroughly enjoyable open-world adventure with an interesting cast, stunning environmental visuals, and highly immersive and engaging sleuthing gameplay. The fact that I was having such an awesome time made dealing with the odd progression issue worth it as I loved taking in all of the sights and stories.

Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One is a big story-driven game with familiar characters, captivating cases to solve, and a big open island to explore. All the fantastical stuff aside, the team at Frogwares treats Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's work with utmost respect, and for that we are grateful.

Sherlock Holmes Chapter One is one of Frogwares’ best games to date.

Way better than Devil's Daughter, Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One has a captivating focus on Sherlock himself, but the open world feels there just for the sake of it.

If you can get through the relatively humdrum, lifeless and unneeded open world of Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One you'll uncover a whip smart detective adventure that is up there with the series best. It's just a shame that a smattering of technical issues and poorly executed combat sections detract from what should have been the Pride of Baker Street's triumphant return to PlayStation.

Technical issues and an excessively padded out plot makes Frogwares' open-world rendition of its Sherlock Holmes games a disappointing experience.

Watson, the game is a muddle. [Issue#367, p.119]

This Sherlock game is best. My favorite release of this year: great story, interesting characters. Gg frogwares Gg Slavs

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

I can from the get-go just admit that I'm biased writing this review, since I want to encourage all developers within this genre to continue producing detective games, especially such an experienced studio as Frogwares. With that said, I can recommend this to any sleuth out there looking for a fix. The general gameplay is well crafted and provides an appropriate challenge and suspense in most of the mysteries. There are several new mechanics that gives anyone the prerequisites to feel like a genuine gumshoe. However, they have thrown in a horrendous combat aspect of the game which is just as repetitive as it is comically... bad. Thankfully it appears seldom in the main story, but for all non-trophy/achievement purposed, stay clear of the bandit lairs! As for the "open world" part of it all, I'd refrain from calling it open world, and I think a lot of the backlash against the game comes from creating the expectancy of some sort of GTA/RDD world with endless side hustles. What this game provides is a looser transition between missions, where the "open world" just serves as a way to choose in what order you want to tackle the story. The game as a whole is actually beautiful, but the scenery has very obviously come at the expense of hiring an animations team. I'm fully aware that this is far from a triple-A title, but at times its resemblance to N64 Donkey Kong is almost frightening. The cutscenes are (thank god) given a bit more love animation-wise, but the fish-mouth speaking animations are a tad immersion-breaking in my opinion. But the pure amount of content is awesome for a game of this genre, and almost all of the side missions are worth playing (some of them are almost the length of a main mission). The main story itself is excellent and will keep you guessing until the very end. All in all it's a very entertaining game, which in many ways sets a new standard for the genre, but unfortunately in some other ways fall flat. PS. Not incorporated in my review score is the horrific day 1 DLC, which both in principle and in execution shouldn't exist DS.

It has a nice history but an awful gameplay too. You always waste your time because you can’t understand what you have to do, it’s not clear, the instructions aren’t helpful. The positive is the possibility of choice, like every Sherlock game, and interesting endings.

I admire the effort they put into this to try something different, but the execution falls short. I didn’t have fun while I was playing. I feel like I spent most of the time confused about what to do and where to go, and forced to do something tedious to proceed. The majority of the game felt like a chore, where I constantly got stuck at what to do next. I think the game design fails to point you in the right direction. I wanted to spend more time finding clues and solving puzzles. I don’t think the open world works well for a Sherlock game.