Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One (2021)

Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One (2021), developed and published by Frogwares

In their previous Sherlock Holmes titles, Frogwares flirted with the idea of an open world. Then, finally, in the somewhat lacklustre and frankly incomplete feeling of The Sinking City, they finally plunged into an open-world design. Que from the Lovecraftian horror to Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One, where Sherlock Holmes meets a proper open world, where he can run around solving crimes.

Young Sherlock Holmes, long before he became the famed detective or had met his chronicler, Watson, arrives in the city of Cordona with his friend Jon. The visit to this Mediterranean city isn't for pleasure, it's personal, as Holmes' family lived there before his mother Violet died. This death is what Sherlock wants to dig into and it soon becomes evident, that Violet didn't quite die in the manner Mycroft, Sherlock's brother, had told him. Instead of consumption, she suffered from mental illness, so now Sherlock needs to figure out the whole truth of her death and what is really going on in Cordona.

After a short introduction to crime-solving at the Hotel of Cordona, Sherlock is free to roam the city streets at his leisure. Or perhaps it's more apt to say, you are free to roam the streets at your leisure. You'll find the places of importance soon enough, such as the police station, city hall, and the newspaper. You can get missions and information from these places if the need arises. Actually, if you've played the Sinking City, you should be more than familiar with how the records system works; you get a clue, then you need to match that info on a correct record and voila, you get the necessary piece of information. 

The main case, The Mother's Love, is interrupted at times when other, more pressing cases arise. But, soon enough, you'll find the old family home of the Holmes', Stonewood Manor, where Sherlock can finally unlock his memories. One by one, he manages to open up the old, dusty rooms as well as procure the ages since sold old furniture and family heirlooms. 

Only the main cases need to be solved by using Holmes' mind castle. Here, you can piece together clues of the case to deduce the culprit for each crime you stumble upon. The side missions, be they crimes or mere mysteries, are more straightforward in their nature and solutions. It is possible to come to a wrong conclusion as well.

The mysteries are somewhat typical open-world game tropes. They consist mostly of just running around the city, looking for things like hidden coins or sold furniture. The furniture is fun enough, but the treasure hunts I could have lived without.  There are actually two kinds of treasure hunts, the Cordona official, where you need to locate the local landmarks, and the coin hunt, orchestrated by Mycroft.  So, if you want to run around some extra, that's something to do.

Unlike in any of the previous games, Chapter One has some combat in it as well. As Holmes doesn't kill people, at least supposedly, you can take on the crooks by shooting them in their most vulnerable spots, like ammo belts, hats, etc. It's all rather silly really and the combat is easily the most tedious aspect of the game, not to mention an aspect that causes the most eye-rolling, especially when you think how Sherlock shoots people point-blank to the face to remove their face masks and the like. You can also kill people, but if you do that, you get less money and Jon berates you. 

You'd think Chapter One in the title refers to this as an episodic game, which is far from the truth. The moniker refers to the fact that this is young Sherlock's first proper entry into the world of consulting detective work. This is the story of his beginnings, how he became who he is, and how the people he met during this time formed his thinking and behaviour. 

Graphically Chapter One is a good-looking game. The people, the houses, and the streets of the city are very well made and at times, the game manages to be quite atmospheric. The music and the voice acting are both more than passable, so in those aspects, there's really nothing wrong with the game. The cases, and investigating them, are mostly fun as well.

That said, I'm not convinced that the open world was the right choice for a Sherlock Holmes game. A lot of it feels overly padded and just like in most open-world games, you spend a lot of time running around. Again, the open world here sounds better as an idea than it actually is in practice.  Frogware's previous open-world title, The Sinking City suffered from this as well.

I wouldn't call Chapter One a bad game though. There's a lot to like in it, but at the same time, the execution leaves a lot of room for improvement: the whole of it doesn't quite work seamlessly. Personally, I would have dropped the combat system altogether and replaced it with some kind of other puzzle, like Sherlock helping the police to safely raid a criminal gang with the help of his deductive powers or something like that.

If you can stomach some padding, Chapter One can be a pleasant playthrough, but it's hard to see it becoming one of the better-liked Holmes titles in the Frogwares library. 

For those having an itch to play Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One, you can get it from the usual stores, such as GOG and Steam. It's also available for the consoles.