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Judgement: Not Recommended
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It is difficult to fairly judge a game over a decade after its release, lacking the context of its original era and perhaps bringing in biases from modern gaming advances. However, I believe my negative opinions would have been similar back then as they do not seem to be caused by the technological or design limitations of the past. Writing this review made me realize that amazing classics such as Psychonauts (2005) or Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009) are somehow many years older than The Testament of Sherlock Holmes (2012), which was released within a month of Borderlands 2 and Dishonored!
The detective genre is one of my favorites, though I have not experienced much of the other work Frogwares has produced. In terms of the puzzles, I found them generally unrewarding. Many of them are simply a straightforward series of steps that require you to find objects in your general area. There are some more traditional ones, where the "rules" require some thought and perfecting the solution will require some time. Very few make you feel like a brilliant detective however: there are no insights that are carried across scenarios, no skills to improve as you progress, and no consequences to brute force approaches. Unfortunately, there are also frustrating situations caused by asset not loading due to bugs, and illogical gating delaying an obvious solution because you are expected to find an unnecessary item or document. The deductions system, which should have been the highlight of a Sherlock game, also feels somewhat underbaked and inconsequential.
In terms of story, the premise held promise, but the sense of mystery was lost because various plot points were telegraphed early on. The pacing and writing felt somewhat awkward, partly because of a reliance on time jumps and sudden setting shifts. My biggest gripe was the terrible voice acting: the delivery was extremely robotic and boring, especially for Watson. I could not help but wonder if I was watching a silly parody after hours of hearing characters delivering lines exactly the same whether they were happy, shocked, angry, or terrified.
In my opinion, the unimpressive core detective gameplay does not justify slogging through this unpleasant adventure.
My personal rating: 4/10
The detective genre is one of my favorites, though I have not experienced much of the other work Frogwares has produced. In terms of the puzzles, I found them generally unrewarding. Many of them are simply a straightforward series of steps that require you to find objects in your general area. There are some more traditional ones, where the "rules" require some thought and perfecting the solution will require some time. Very few make you feel like a brilliant detective however: there are no insights that are carried across scenarios, no skills to improve as you progress, and no consequences to brute force approaches. Unfortunately, there are also frustrating situations caused by asset not loading due to bugs, and illogical gating delaying an obvious solution because you are expected to find an unnecessary item or document. The deductions system, which should have been the highlight of a Sherlock game, also feels somewhat underbaked and inconsequential.
In terms of story, the premise held promise, but the sense of mystery was lost because various plot points were telegraphed early on. The pacing and writing felt somewhat awkward, partly because of a reliance on time jumps and sudden setting shifts. My biggest gripe was the terrible voice acting: the delivery was extremely robotic and boring, especially for Watson. I could not help but wonder if I was watching a silly parody after hours of hearing characters delivering lines exactly the same whether they were happy, shocked, angry, or terrified.
In my opinion, the unimpressive core detective gameplay does not justify slogging through this unpleasant adventure.
My personal rating: 4/10
Review posted on 23/02/2026, 23:34:00.