You know, for someone born and raised in Britain, I've somehow dodged most of the big British stuff we tea-drinkers get hooked on. I've never watched a full episode of Doctor Who, crumpets aren't to my taste, and Sherlock Holmes has always been one of those things I just know about without ever sitting down with it. Deerstalker, pipe, "elementary, my dear Watson", that's about the extent of it. So a game about a young Sherlock, before Baker Street, felt like the perfect excuse to finally catch up on one of our national treasures.
Sherlock Holmes Chapter One is a detective game made by Frogwares, who've been making Sherlock games for years, and this one goes right back to the start. Sherlock (or Sherry, as he's more commonly called in this one) is 21 and he's come back to Cordona, the Mediterranean island he grew up on, after his mum died there ten years earlier. He's brought his mate Jon along with him, and the two of them settle into his childhood home to put the old family trauma to rest. The main story is Sherlock trying to work out what really happened to his mum, but around that you're solving all sorts of cases for the locals and the police. So let's dust off the old magnifying glass and ask ourselves, is Chapter One a game worth investigating, or has the case gone cold?
The detective work is what most of Chapter One is built around, and Frogwares have been making Sherlock games for over 20 years now, so they know what makes a detective game tick. A typical case has you poking around a crime scene and chatting to anyone who might know something. Once you've got enough, it all goes into Sherlock's mind palace, where you link the clues up and come to your own conclusion. You also get a "detective vision" mode for spotting clues, a bit like Batman in the Arkham games. On top of that, you can change clothes to blend in and get people talking. The cases are genuinely engaging, and half the fun is working out who to ask about what. My favourite part, though, is that the game doesn't hold your hand. Each case you solve has multiple endings to choose from, and if you accuse the wrong person and make the situation worse, it lets you, and you have to live with it. That isn't to say the moment-to-moment gameplay is perfect, however. The detective vision takes some of the magic away, since it turns into walking to whatever's glowing rather than actually looking for things. It's also far too easy to skip dialogue by accident, and the police archive could've done with some explaining. The chemistry puzzles were a bit on the easy side as well, which was a shame. I expected the world's greatest detective to be pushed a bit harder, but I guess with that baby face the world is just giving him an easier time.
Out of everything this game brings, combat is the weakest link in the chain, which is quite fitting for a man who's more brains than brawn. It's sluggish, and cover barely does its job, with bullets going straight through barrels at points. The game wants you to take enemies down without killing them. To arrest someone you have to shoot at certain weak points, and you can't do that while they're wearing armour. So you have to take their arm armour off first, then their eye mask, then immobilise them, which gets a bit tedious. Their shoulder armour doesn't actually do anything, and if you go for the eye mask too early you just kill them and lose points. Thankfully, there isn't much of it. What slows things down more, though, is the open world. Cordona is big, so a lot of time goes on wandering the streets looking for the right building. When a case has you going back and forth across the island on Sherry's poor little twig legs, that adds up, and some of the cases drag a lot more than they need to.
Visually, Cordona is a beauty. It's a sunny Mediterranean island with plenty going on, and I didn't mind walking around it, even when I was completely lost. Sherlock himself has been given a major makeover, I'd say maybe a bit too glossy for a man I've always pictured with a lot more wrinkles. It does get a bit janky the longer you play, though. Scenes sometimes fade to black mid-scene, and when they come back the characters have moved a few inches. People in the street also have a habit of just vanishing, and at one point I caught Jon floating a good few inches off the ground. Knowing how this story goes, he might be the one character who can get away with it, but I'm pretty sure that one was a bug. Another time the game wanted me to find scratches from a broken shoe that weren't there, and it only fixed itself once I got to the next set of footprints. None of it ruins the game, but it does pull you out of it now and then. The voice acting is fine for an independent studio. I couldn't tell you a single bit of the music but that works for a more subdued genre of game. The little sound when you find a clue is really pleasant, though, and I always liked hearing it.
The best moments for me were when a case finally clicked. After running around collecting clues for ages, getting it all to line up in the mind palace and making the accusation felt great. The worst part was the open world, and I kept asking myself the same question while playing. Did this need to be open? All the good stuff happens inside the cases, and the island in between doesn't really add much. There isn't a lot to do on the way from one lead to the next, and most of the side content is reading signs, so it ends up being a lot of walking. A lot of the districts look fairly similar too, which makes finding one building harder than it should be. You can ask people for directions, but finding someone friendly enough to help is agonising. The worst of it was a case where the description hinted the police station was in the Grand Sarary district. I spent a good ten minutes searching every street there before finding it in the district just above. I'd have happily traded the big island for a smaller one if it meant the cases kept moving.
So, has the case gone cold? Not at all. Chapter One is a really strong detective game, and at its best I didn't want to put it down. Working through a case and figuring things out for yourself is a lot of fun, and I wanted to know what really happened to his mum right up to the end. It does have its sticking points. The open world slows things down and the combat isn't great, but neither stopped me enjoying the cases. If you're even slightly into detective games, it's worth your time, even if you only play the main story. As someone who'd never sat down with Sherlock before, I can see why people love him now. This one was also a request, and after playing it, it doesn't take the world's greatest detective to work out why you asked me to. You know who you are, and I'm pleased to report the case is now closed. If anyone else has a game they'd like to see on the Quest Log, send it my way on Bluesky and I'll see what I can dig up.
Well then Watson... The game's afoot, and so is the next quest log. Cheerio!