I've been playing through all the Frogwares Sherlock Holmes games, and I'm loving it!!!
I started with Chapter One, then The Awakened (2023). Loved every second of them omg. The level of detail on the cases and the clues were incredible. I got stuck very frequently, but that was probably user error for the most part. Walkthroughs helped me get unstuck.
Now I'm playing through all the other games in reverse order. Going from newest to oldest. It's really interesting seeing the game mechanics that become a bit less polished, and disappear. I get to see in a very neat way how the games evolved over time. The Mind Palace for example, is the easiest to navigate in the latest two games. The way it was displayed was a bit different in The Devil's Daughter and Crimes and Punishments. Once I got used to it, I was fine.
I'm at The Testament of Sherlock Holmes now, and the Mind Palace is now a Deduction Board. Same game function, but more rudimentary. In story, it's Watson's notepad.
Another neat thing is the different versions of Holmes and Watson! I love all of them dearly. Chapter One and The Awakened are the same canon. Devil's Daughter is all on its own. I haven't gotten there yet, but it seems that Crimes and Punishments and all the games before them are in the same canon as each other. Testament of Sherlock Holmes references The Awakened (2008), Jack the Ripper, and I think The Hound of Baskervilles as well. It's fun to see references to games I haven't played yet. I'm really looking forward to it.
And a neat thing! 221B Baker Street seems to have the exact same layout in all of the games! It's decorated a bit differently, but the room placements, bookshelves, ect are in the same places!
And looking back, it's neat to see where certain game mechanics came from. I first got to play as Toby the hound dog once in either Devil's Daughter or Crimes and punishments. I forget which. During that playthrough, I was a bit sad to find there was only one time that I got to do that. I was suprised to see in Testament of Sherlock Holmes that I got to play as him multiple times!
And in The Devil's Daughter, you can explore a bit outside your apartment. There's mini games like arm wrestling, boxing, darts, but they don't play a part in the main plot. They were carried over from an earlier game.
It's just really fun! The stories are so interesting thus far. The friendship is wonderful to see in every variation. And it feels great when I complete a puzzle on my own, even if it sometimes takes a while. Highly recommend!
