The framing narrative of the Devil's Daughter revolves around Sherlock's relationship with his adoptive daughter Kate, whose real father was the late Professor Moriarty, who met his demise at the end of the Testament of Sherlock Holmes. A mysterious woman, Alice, moves next to Holmes and soon befriends Kate, who has arrived home from school. Holmes soon realises not all is right with Alice, but he is constantly disrupted by several crimes as well as his inability to parent Kate.
The first of five cases, "Prey Tell" takes holmes at the heels of millionaires, who have taken it upon themselves to hunt the most dangerous game, humans. A young boy, Tom, approaches Holmes, asking him to find his father, who has gone missing. Soon, Holmes uncovers the disturbing truth of the favourite pastime some of the London elite has mixed up with.
"A Study in Green" begins with Holmes having taken an interest in lawn bowling. After winning a tournament, he returns to the Archaeological Society, which hosted the tournament, only to find one of the members speared to death. There's more in the case than meets the eyes, as the reason for the murder is hidden far in the past and the expedition a group of men took.
An American method actor hitches on Holmes' side in the case of "Infamy". Keen on studying the great detective, he intends to follow him everywhere he goes. Things heat up when someone tries to assassinate Holmes, so he soon begins to wonder, if the actor might have something to do with it, or maybe he's just nuts and the real culprits are the members of the London underworld.
"The Chain Reaction" is in many ways, the best case in the game. On their way back to 221B, Holmes and Watson stumble upon a severe road accident. Their first task at hand is to save as many people as possible. Then Holmes has to figure out, who was behind the accident.
In the midst of solving the cases, Holmes is trying to figure out Alice. He learns that she is a daughter of a criminal who died after Holmes' investigations pinned him down. it seems the woman intends to take revenge on Holmes by using Kate, who is still unaware of her fathers' real fate, as Holmes has been afraid of telling her the truth in a fear of alienating the young girl.
The final case "Fever Dreams" has Alice finally enact her plans. Kate has gone missing and horrified Holmes is ready to turn over the heaven and the earth to find her. Several clues lead him to an old boat, which Lucy has set on fire, with an intention of burning Kate and herself alive. Kate, who is now terrified of her own ancestry doesn't know which way is up, so Holmes has to tread carefully in order to win her back over.
After fantastic Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments, The Devil's Daughter feels somewhat underwhelming in addition to Frogwares Holmes-series. While it delivers more crimes for Holmes to dwell upon and you have very similar mechanics to the previous entry, it also feels like if Frogwares wasn't sure if they had enough gameplay in their previous game, so they ended up adding several quick time and reaction-based minigames to the mix, just to make the players think they were doing something besides just sleuthing.
All of the cases rely more on minigames and at times, the actual investigation feels like a second fiddle. There's been a huge visual change as well, as now Holmes and Watson look like they are paying a homage to Guy Ritchie's Holmes movies starring Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but the difference to the previous games is quite noticeable. The previous games were more content in improving the graphics game by game, but since Crimes and Punishments, it seems that Frogwares was keen on capitalizing the hit movies to their benefit.
Another link to the movies is the several slow-motion action scenes, during which Holmes has to make snap decisions on his approach. These would be fine, if not for them being completely linear in nature. They all have only one way of approach for a win state, so basically, it's all trial and error until you get over the finishing line.
The cases aren't that strong either. For example, The Study in Green suffers immensely from turning into a puzzle fest after Holmes enters a Mayan temple in his imagination. And as you can just skip all these puzzles, it feels Frogwares knew as well that the game wasn't at its strongest during these minigames and timed environment puzzles. You can actually skip all of the minigames, so this allows you, effectively, to skip about half of the game if you so choose. This also shortens already short cases immensely.
Like I said, The Devil's Daughter is somewhat of a disappointing game. While it does have its merits, the deduction works just as well as it did in the previous game, it veers too heavily in towards tedious slow motions and quick time game events. The writing leaves a lot of room for improvement and in many places, especially with the framing story, I can't help but think it was a rushed production, which was butchered in the cutting room.
This isn't, by any means, the worst Frogwares Sherlock Holmes game, but it's not their strongest effort either.
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