The Testament of Sherlock Holmes Review (Pharap)
The Testament of Sherlock Holmes
I really struggled to decide whether or not to recommend this. The earlier half of the game was enjoyable, but I feel like the ending and the messy plot really let it down. The plot wasn't as well thought-through or as well communicated as some of the earlier games.
It's better than Sherlock Holmes vs. Arsene Lupin and more enjoyable than The Case of the Silver Earring, but not as good as The Awakened, Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper, or Crimes & Punishments.
It's an alright time-killer on sale, but too much of a let-down to buy at full price.
The Good
Despite what some other reviews have said, the voice acting is generally very good. Holmes' and Watson's voice actors very much fit their characters. There are just a few occasions where the tone is wrong or the stress is on the wrong word, likely due to the voice actors being given the wrong direction or not enough context to know how the line ought to have been delivered.
The graphics here are generally nicer than the earlier games, though the animations could have used a bit more fine-tuning.
Bringing back a few characters and locations from previous games was a nice touch that will please those who have played other entries in the series.
Most of the puzzles were nicely done - fairly logical and not too difficult. I quite liked the lock in the journalist's office, the lock on the secretary's box in the prison locker room, and the lock on the chest in the millhouse.
Good use of the deduction board mechanic in the early part of the game, though it is a shame this gets forgotten about and thrown to the wayside by the latter half.
The early half of the game has some very compelling murders and mysteries.
You get to play as Toby in one section. Toby is a good dog.
A nice variety of locations to visit.
I didn't encounter any bugs.
The Bad
Spending half the plot trying to paint Holmes as a plausible villain was a pointless waste of time that served to do little more than sour the story.
After about halfway through the game ceases to be about solving mysteries and more about trying to convince you that Holmes has become a villain, followed by Holmes faking his death, Watson deciding to visit the sewers for no discernable reason, followed an exposition dump which explains away all of the earlier mysteries, and the rest of the game is just 'stop the villains'.
The frame story involving children finding one of Watson's unpublished stories was incredibly weird. It made more sense by the end, but it still felt really out-of-place.
The ending was incredibly weird. It seemed to come from absolutely nowhere, and felt generally really out of place, and almost tacked on as an afterthought. The poisoner, Hans Shielman, somehow ends up ingesting his own poison for seemingly no good reason, and then Moriarty apparently has a daughter, and Holmes decides to raise her as his own. I suspect it was written in at the last minute to tie in with the Devil's Daughter, but I think doing so has done this game a disservice. It gives the impression that the developers cared more about their next project than giving this game a proper ending.
Hinging the entire plot on miraculous poisons that can inhibit people's will and drive them into a murderous rage somewhat undermines the idea of the main character being a highly logical detective. The real Sherlock Holmes stories often had elements that were a bit farfetched, but never so laughably implausible. I could have forgiven such fantastical story elements if they had been better utilised.
By the end there are several plot threads that are left unanswered, or with ambiguous answers. Such as: How the bomb actually got into Judge Beckett's house. Was it Holmes's doing, or someone else?, Whether or not Holmes really killed Inspector Baynes, how Shielman came to end up ingesting his own poison at the end, and why the bloody hell did Watson conviniently decide to visit the sewers?
Sometimes it could be very difficult to locate the right objects or trigger the right events. Even with the object highlighting button it could be very easy to overlook interactable objects and clues.
Some of the puzzles were not so enjoyable. There were quite a few that were tedious, cliché, or rehashes of those from earlier games. For example, an early puzzle is a Knight's Tour. I was fortunate enough to solve it quite quickly, but it's such an old and tedious puzzle that would only entertain chess players and mathematicians. Following that was an Attacking Queens puzzle, with the twist being that it's 7x7 with 7 queens rather than 8x8 with 8 queens, which made looking up a solution more difficult.