Boleskine
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Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter
- Thread starter Infinitron
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Gord
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2011
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- 7,049
After buying the game during the fall sale and having finished it, here are my 2ct
Overall, at <10$ TDD is an okay entry in Frogwares Holmes games, but certainly not the best one.
It is clear that they wanted to give Holmes and Watson a more youthful and energetic appeal - the best I can say about this is that in the end I just didn't care much about it.
Watson is barely visible 90% of the game anyway and I didn't mind Holmes being inspired by the Robert Downey Jr Holmes that much after switching to first person.
The game itself has 4 real cases and a final sequence which serves mostly as a tie-up for the main story about Sherlock's daughter Kate (from Testament of SH) and his new neighbor Alice, including the obligatory love story.
The quality of the cases I would rate as serviceable, although they do have their moments.
To some degree all of them seemed to include some logical issues of varying size - luckily minor ones most of the time.
E.g. it never became quite clear to me how the (correct) culprit of the first case found out about the things that led him to his actions - it wasn't necessary for the conclusion, but it certainly would have helped the logic of the backstory.
By the way - contrary to Zombra, I didn't quite find the second case so bad. It certainly did have its logical issues in some of the details, but at least there wasn't an army of Steampunk-robots marching around.
Instead, the solution turned out to be relatively down-to-earth, if a bit silly (but still one that I could imagine to find in one of Doyles short stories).
They try to mix up Holmes' different deductionary devices a bit over the course of the game, so you won't find yourself repeating the same moves too often.
The most important one is the deduction board, which has you combining clues you found to form conclusions - which then can give you right or wrong solutions for the cases.
Some clues remain ambiguous, making it a bit unclear at times what the "correct" deduction would be. Usually the final solution makes it clear who's guilty or not, but in one case in particular even the correct answer results in a somewhat unclear resolution. Usually you can also choose whether you want to condemn the criminal for their deeds or you can sympathize with them to some extend.
The difficulty of most riddles is not particularly high, although there are one or two which I found anoying mostly for the fact that the right solution could not really be deduced, but needed to be guessed by trial and error.
The clearly biggest annoyance for me clearly where the QTEs - of which there are far to many for a proper Holmes game. Some typical examples:
There's also a timer mechanic behind Holmes' deduction of certain facts about people's lives when analyzing their appearance, although I found that one to be ok.
In total, I spend 16 hours in the game according to Steam, which is around the same length as the other SH games I played.
Whether I would recommend it to fans of the series depends on what you liked about them and how important those things are to you.
You get to be SH - but his characterization is different from earlier games
You get to do Holmesy things - but you also have to deal with shit like QTEs
You have to solve riddles/problems - but on average the difficulty is much lower than in the older entries
Instead of a single big "case" forming the storyline, you get several independent cases and a backstory which is only forwarded occasionally and mostly independent of said cases
Overall, if you can get it for cheap during a sale, Devils Daughter might be worth a look, but imo it's amongst the weaker Holmes games from Frogware.
Overall, at <10$ TDD is an okay entry in Frogwares Holmes games, but certainly not the best one.
It is clear that they wanted to give Holmes and Watson a more youthful and energetic appeal - the best I can say about this is that in the end I just didn't care much about it.
Watson is barely visible 90% of the game anyway and I didn't mind Holmes being inspired by the Robert Downey Jr Holmes that much after switching to first person.
The game itself has 4 real cases and a final sequence which serves mostly as a tie-up for the main story about Sherlock's daughter Kate (from Testament of SH) and his new neighbor Alice, including the obligatory love story.
Just joking, there's no love story
The quality of the cases I would rate as serviceable, although they do have their moments.
To some degree all of them seemed to include some logical issues of varying size - luckily minor ones most of the time.
E.g. it never became quite clear to me how the (correct) culprit of the first case found out about the things that led him to his actions - it wasn't necessary for the conclusion, but it certainly would have helped the logic of the backstory.
By the way - contrary to Zombra, I didn't quite find the second case so bad. It certainly did have its logical issues in some of the details, but at least there wasn't an army of Steampunk-robots marching around.
a statue has seemingly killed a guy by throwing a spear. The owner of the foundry where said statue has been made is also a mechanical engineer of sorts and has a simple unfinished automaton using the torso of one of the statues. So you might think he's behind it, but you can conclude that it's not technically feasible to create a statue that would have committed the crime you are supposed to solve, given all the evidence.
Considering that the guy is somewhat obsessed with the subject of the statue and the story around it, him building such an automaton is actually not that far fetched and it turns out to be a false lead
Considering that the guy is somewhat obsessed with the subject of the statue and the story around it, him building such an automaton is actually not that far fetched and it turns out to be a false lead
They try to mix up Holmes' different deductionary devices a bit over the course of the game, so you won't find yourself repeating the same moves too often.
The most important one is the deduction board, which has you combining clues you found to form conclusions - which then can give you right or wrong solutions for the cases.
Some clues remain ambiguous, making it a bit unclear at times what the "correct" deduction would be. Usually the final solution makes it clear who's guilty or not, but in one case in particular even the correct answer results in a somewhat unclear resolution. Usually you can also choose whether you want to condemn the criminal for their deeds or you can sympathize with them to some extend.
The difficulty of most riddles is not particularly high, although there are one or two which I found anoying mostly for the fact that the right solution could not really be deduced, but needed to be guessed by trial and error.
The clearly biggest annoyance for me clearly where the QTEs - of which there are far to many for a proper Holmes game. Some typical examples:
- keep Holmes' balance by simultaneously pressing buttons and moving the mouse (a similar mechanic is used for eavesdropping)
- do typical "Press a random key at the right moment to avoid death" QTEs
- find a highlighted spot with the mouse in a time-critical scene
There's also a timer mechanic behind Holmes' deduction of certain facts about people's lives when analyzing their appearance, although I found that one to be ok.
In total, I spend 16 hours in the game according to Steam, which is around the same length as the other SH games I played.
Whether I would recommend it to fans of the series depends on what you liked about them and how important those things are to you.
You get to be SH - but his characterization is different from earlier games
You get to do Holmesy things - but you also have to deal with shit like QTEs
You have to solve riddles/problems - but on average the difficulty is much lower than in the older entries
Instead of a single big "case" forming the storyline, you get several independent cases and a backstory which is only forwarded occasionally and mostly independent of said cases
Overall, if you can get it for cheap during a sale, Devils Daughter might be worth a look, but imo it's amongst the weaker Holmes games from Frogware.
Last edited:
FWIW, I found that having a controller plugged in was helpful. The game was clearly designed for consoles first. When one of these asinine events comes up, you can grab the controller and the game will seamlessly switch over. Then when it's done you can go right back to M&K.
Gord
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2011
- Messages
- 7,049
Yeah, figured as much when I saw the OSD that comes up at those times. However, being a highly
gamer and all that, I don't own one, so I had to suffer through them with m&k.
I have started playing this ; this is my second Sherlock Holmes game, after Crimes & Punishment.
Wow, what a change of pace. Crimes & Punishment felt alwkward ; it had elaborate hidden object game mechanics with things on top to make it more interesting and complex and overall did a very good job at what it tried to do. At the same time, you could see they were tempted to rejuvenate the formula.
And they went all in DD, probably inspired by Robert Downey Jr or something. Stealth sections ? Running from gunshots sections ? Holmes and Watson are like 20 years younger but Lestrade is the same age, and , even more awkwardly, so is the kid Wiggings ? What ? What the hell is going in this games ?
At least it still has interesting cases and detective mechanics but I hope they don't stay in that direction for their next Sherlock game.
I was shocked to hear that Frogware was not a french team, incidentally.
Wow, what a change of pace. Crimes & Punishment felt alwkward ; it had elaborate hidden object game mechanics with things on top to make it more interesting and complex and overall did a very good job at what it tried to do. At the same time, you could see they were tempted to rejuvenate the formula.
And they went all in DD, probably inspired by Robert Downey Jr or something. Stealth sections ? Running from gunshots sections ? Holmes and Watson are like 20 years younger but Lestrade is the same age, and , even more awkwardly, so is the kid Wiggings ? What ? What the hell is going in this games ?
At least it still has interesting cases and detective mechanics but I hope they don't stay in that direction for their next Sherlock game.
I was shocked to hear that Frogware was not a french team, incidentally.
With the Sherlock Holmes games, you should go back, not forward. The best ones of the bunch are probably The Awakened and Jack the Ripper, they are really solid adventure games in general. Testament of Sherlock Holmes and vs Arsene Lupin are also ok, but the former is kind of stupid tryhard/grimdark, while the latter is more of a straight up puzzle rather than adventure game, in that it's p. much a yuge series of puzzles barely held together by an excuse for a plot.
Ringhausen
Augur
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2010
- Messages
- 252
I just convicted the witness. "So you're telling me you saw a statue come to life, throw a spear and run off.. Are you fucking shitting me?! YOU killed him."
Holms always gets his man.
The Devil's Daughter will be free as part of Twitch Prime loot in December. As it was free on the XBox last month, I just played it through on the TV with Mrs Plugg... and I enjoyed it, despite its many and glaring deficiencies: loading times are epic, the main story is not good, the cases are packed with un-fun distractions jammed in from other games that no-one can possibly have been asking for, the actual detective stuff hints frustratingly at a better game where the various mechanics are always present: e.g. the various detective vision modes, the ability to add a new dialog option based on deductions, research in your archives. Even tabletop games like Consulting Detective or Chronicles of Crime do this better.
But there's a niche in my leisure time ecology that can be occupied by Telltale-style linear story games that masquerade as something more mechanically substantial. TDD found a home there, along side the likes of Afterparty and Man from Medan. To be clear, the alternative to playing those games is probably watching something on Netflix, not other games, so adjust your expectations accordingly. But sometimes the act of sitting down and ritually manipulating the controller in a cargo-cultish pantomime of what a "real" video game does is enough for my stupid, stupid brain.
The intrusions of activities from other games, implemented in half-baked and annoying fashion, are frequent and wretched, it is true. I think you can (and should) probably immediately skip them when offered the opportunity. There's a chase through a swamp in the first case that you should under all circumstances abandon ASAP. The Uncharted-style puzzling in the second case is also a frustrating time-sink. JUST LET ME DETECT, GAME. You should also set the game to easy and let it tell you when to turn on your different detective vision modes, as they are sporadically and inconsistently available.
But when the game does let you detect, it's fun. Even though you have almost no freedom to carry out the investigating, I was enjoying myself during the individual cases. I even looked up videos of The Sinking City and would have spent actual money on it. I then immediately recoiled at the prospect of an entire game where what looks like a Frogwares attempt at Dead Space meets stealth meets survival horror could be dumped in my lap at any moment. Goddammit Frogwares.
But there's a niche in my leisure time ecology that can be occupied by Telltale-style linear story games that masquerade as something more mechanically substantial. TDD found a home there, along side the likes of Afterparty and Man from Medan. To be clear, the alternative to playing those games is probably watching something on Netflix, not other games, so adjust your expectations accordingly. But sometimes the act of sitting down and ritually manipulating the controller in a cargo-cultish pantomime of what a "real" video game does is enough for my stupid, stupid brain.
The intrusions of activities from other games, implemented in half-baked and annoying fashion, are frequent and wretched, it is true. I think you can (and should) probably immediately skip them when offered the opportunity. There's a chase through a swamp in the first case that you should under all circumstances abandon ASAP. The Uncharted-style puzzling in the second case is also a frustrating time-sink. JUST LET ME DETECT, GAME. You should also set the game to easy and let it tell you when to turn on your different detective vision modes, as they are sporadically and inconsistently available.
But when the game does let you detect, it's fun. Even though you have almost no freedom to carry out the investigating, I was enjoying myself during the individual cases. I even looked up videos of The Sinking City and would have spent actual money on it. I then immediately recoiled at the prospect of an entire game where what looks like a Frogwares attempt at Dead Space meets stealth meets survival horror could be dumped in my lap at any moment. Goddammit Frogwares.
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