The Testament of Sherlock Holmes Review (Hildegarde2)
To give praise where it's due, the Baker St flat is really nice, the voice acting is good, and the character model for Watson is dead on David Burke's portrayal of Watson. Their use of Burke's visage and vocal style gave high hopes for an equivalent rendition of Jeremy Brett's Holmes, but alas. Brett is an unenviabley difficult act to follow making the Holmes of the game seem terribly flat in comparison. Of course, he's the main player character so he can't be too quirky or we'll not relate to him.
However... The characters control very clumsily making getting around any environment a chore and there are tedious puzzles which have no rhyme or reason in-context for their nature and usually no explanation as to how to go about solving them). This also has an earlier iteration of the deduction board/mind palace which leaves something to be desired. In one particular instance of using the deduction board, I had to change my deductions to less optimal answers to get the "right" solution, only to be informed in the cut scene immediately proceeding that the deductions I initially had were right. Time and time again I've gotten stuck somewhere wondering what I should do next because not only is there no "objectives" type notebook page, but consulting my faithful and ever-in-my-way companion Watson only results in him asking ME what to do next. Since there's no decent way of seeing my clues spread out and no way of knowing what I'm looking for, I often find myself blanking out with my short term memory bank wiped. When I feel I've clicked all the things a dozen times at least (because you must simply have the right inventory item in hand when interacting with things), I can't leave a site, and Watson is staring at me angrily, I wonder what I'm doing with my life. I've made some mistakes.
I will finish this game, I'm hooked that much at least. It's not bad and it's not good. I don't recommend it, but then again, it's not something you should avoid either if it's on sale and you're curious.
Others of course have mentioned this, but get the patch; it saves you a lot of anguish!
Edit:
I have now completed the game. There is no improvement. The puzzles are tedious time wasters which are constantly fed to you so you don't notice that you're not doing any actual deduction or making any decisions. The improvements implemented in the later games were necessary, for me at least, to be able to enjoy these games, but I'm glad I played them first because this one would have spoiled my taste for the franchise. Would not recommend.