The good:
- Meaty adventure of good length.
- Solid plot drawing from Doyle's 'The Final Problem' the same as BBC Sherlock's episode 'The Reichenbach Fall'.
- Strong writing true to the characters and in keeping with Doyle's style
- A plausible continuation more than mere fanfic.
- Explores the idea of Holmes as a villian - always fascinating.
- Generous and varied puzzle selection with the difficultly mostly pitched just right.
- The ability to skip puzzles and use a 'sixth sense' to highlight hotspots, negating most the frustation that plagues many adventure games.
- Top-notch voice-acting all-round and suitably dramatic music.
- On the whole environments and impressively detailed.
- Noticeable leap in production values over other entries in the series.
- Lack of technical issues (frame-rate problems, glitches, bugs etc.)
- Addition of interesting new 'deduction board' mechanic allowing players to actively participate in constructing Sherlock's chain of deductions.
- Occasionally thoughtful use of character switching mechanics.
- Good pacing + lack of repetition in gameplay/environments.
The bad:
-Pointless padding in the form of a segment playing as Toby (dog) and fetch quests as Watson.
-Lack of hints and clear direction at times.
-Many puzzles and mechanics poorly explained to the point of hampering enjoyment.
-Too many important items hard to find even with the aid of hotspot markers.
-Uneven difficultly of puzzles.
-Recycled NPC (and main character!) dialogue and character models break immersion.
-Underdeveloped conversation system.
-A framing story which adds little and comes across ham-fisted.
-Big reveal and info dump 2/3 though the game could have been handled better.
-Graphics nothing to write home about.
-Budget limitations really obvious in larger areas (low-res textures, repeated assets, everything angular).
-Fiddly triggering of events – steps need to be just so to proceed, can overlook a thing and be stuck for ages trying to trigger the next scene.
-Lack of tension in gameplay to match the tension of the plot (probably a good thing since timed puzzles mostly suck and adventure games rarely pull tension off).
-Lack of technical bells and whistles.