Sherlock Holmes Chapter One Review

 Sherlock Holmes Chapter One Review

Investigative game developer Frogwares returns to the Sherlock Holmes series with a new title, "Chapter One," that predates all three of the previous installments. After trying the ambitious and floundering of The Sinking City, I'm entering the new Sherlock experience asking, will the developer deliver an engaging investigation game, or will it make the awkward mistake of offering freedom that it did in its previous game.  These questions will be answered in our Sherlock Holmes Chapter One review.

The story without burning:

The story is about a character Sherlock Holmes at the age of twenty years, back to his homeland, an island in the Mediterranean called Cortona, after the death of his mother to investigate the circumstances of the death and revealed some of the secrets that were hidden by him.

 

A simplified explanation of the elements of the experiment

• As an investigative game, Sherlock Holmes Chapter One introduces mechanisms for gathering evidence through dialogues, checking the elements of the environment, linking some evidence to each other through lists called Mind Palace ingeniously, as well as reading police and press records and various documents to collect evidence. 

• The game offers an open world for the first time in the series, which you can roam freely and contains side missions and general issues. As for the side issues, it's an opportunity for the game to explore the identity of the place you live in more, the culture and life of the people around you, and it's an opportunity that's been nicely taken advantage of.  As for general issues, they are small puzzles that you investigate as a volunteer to help the people of your town, for example, searching for valuables that were stolen from a resident, or investigating the circumstances of someone seeing a ghost, for example!

• The open world does not contain more than that unfortunately, but within this world there are a lot of internal environments that the game takes you inside, and they are perfectly designed.  The neighborhoods of that island differ significantly from each other, which we will talk about in detail in the positives section.

• Disguise is a very important element of the game, you can use clothes to enter places and talk to people you wouldn't normally be able to reach.

• A new addition to the series' content, the battles, for the first time you can shoot and take cover in Sherlock Holmes.

What are the pros of trying Sherlock Holmes Chapter One?

• The game's story is a personal story, which shows Sherlock transforming from an intelligent young man, into a seasoned detective who can solve cases just by talking to the accused.  I was so happy to see the Sherlock Holmes character I've always read about take shape in front of me.

• The story has a lot of unexpected twists, makes you excited to finish it, and it tries to provide some cinematic elements compared to the previous parts. Since the island is large, the events take on a larger area, and the developer was able to use that space to offer something special.

• Investigative systems are fun and invite deep thought into every detail of the case, no matter how small or trivial in your opinion. You can glimpse something in a sub-room of a mansion where a robbery took place, and find that it is closely related to the events.

• The graphics of the game offer a picturesque world, and the interior is colorful and lively. Cortona Island is beautiful during the day, and the game introduces the day-night cycle for the first time, and it gives a special atmosphere to different parts of the island at different times of the day. 

• The addition of a shooting battle system is a good addition to diversify the gameplay and create a state of dynamic action instead of the game is completely based on exploration and investigation, some may not like it, but I liked it even if it was not excellent in terms of  There's also the ability to cancel battles from the menus if you don't enjoy them, which is another great addition from the developer for customizing options.

• The game offers a lot of attractive side characters with whom you will spend long times that will not get bored, unlike the previous parts where the focus was on the character of Sherlock and his friend John only. 

• Cortona Island represents a crossroads of various cultures. It is an island in the Mediterranean Sea that fell under the control of the English Empire in the late Victorian era, but it was also influenced by the Ottoman Islamic culture, and North African Arab.  There is a lot of cultural diversity that appears in the design of the city’s neighborhoods and the dialects of the characters that were presented wonderfully without detracting from any of these cultures.

• The island's neighborhoods differ between the rich neighborhoods inhabited by the original English colonists and their associates, and the middle and then poor neighborhoods, which are inhabited by the various indigenous and immigrant residents of the Big Island.  That variety doesn't offer much in terms of visual, and content side missions.

• The side quests are wonderful and were used to present that era in a semidocumentary way the state of the peoples whose countries were colonized. The game surprised me by offering a lot of bold criticism of the English Empire at the time.

• The game supports the Arabic language in an incredible way, opening the door to a wider segment of Arab players to experience the game and perhaps fall in love with it without the need for a strong English language.

And what are the negatives?

• The open world is huge, but it's not interactive and doesn't have a lot of things that you would love to move around in a lot, and you'll find yourself using Fast Travel on a regular basis. 

• Jon's character criticizes you if you make a wrong choice or conclusion, but it doesn't help you when you can't solve issues, and you get confused, it's in my view a missed opportunity to provide a genius aid in a complex game that you may need, and thus miss the opportunity to attract a wider segment of the audience

• Sometimes you may reach a wrong conclusion, and you want to see its consequences, but the game often deprives you of that and directs you in a way that makes you feel the importance of your decision.

• The characters' facial expressions and design are modest, which is the most you'll see in the game because it's one of the most dialogue-based and character-reading games.

• There is an obvious problem with the pace of action in the game as the heart-pounding moments of the story are punctuated by a lot of monotonous progression due to the lack of a tool for you when the issues are complex. Usually I don't have a problem with games not helping players, but here you can never play the great story intensely like story games. It is therefore a missed opportunity for the type of players who will want to play the story without going through moments of confusion.

• If you expect a lot of action moments in the story and the fast pace, you may be disappointed a little, because the story depends more on its plot and the dismantling of the puzzle in front of you gradually, and the development of the game's characters and not on providing exciting moments that stick in the  This has been the character of the series since its inception and I do not consider it a defect, but it should be noted.

Unfortunately, the game suffers from some frame drop issues on PCs, sometimes reaching less than 30 frames per second, and from time to time there are some problems that disrupt gameplay, such as one of the characters walking with you getting stuck in environment models.