I won't say this is the best adventure game I've ever played, but I enjoyed it for what it was worth. The fact that I'm a big fan of Sherlock Holmes did help me look past some of the game's rougher spots, but I'm not sure someone else would be so forgiving. The overall narrative, suffice it to say, is no match for the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle originals, but it's enough to hold the game together, which is really the most you can expect from a video game story.
I called this an adventure game, but I think "puzzle game" might be a more fitting description. Who knew the denizens of Victorian London were so fond of locking their secrets behind intricate logic puzzles? You will encounter around two-dozen puzzles throughout the course of completing the game, and while I didn't find the puzzles particularly difficult once I understood them, the rules and operations of the puzzles were sometimes vague, so it wasn't always obvious to me what I was supposed to do, or if it was obvious, it wasn't obvious exactly how I was supposed to go about doing it. I suppose that's part of the gameplay experience, figuring out exactly what the puzzle is and how to solve it, but there were times I honestly wasn't sure if this was intentional or simply poor game design. No matter, walk throughs are easy enough to find on the internet these days if you need a prod in the right direction; alternatively, the game does present the option to simply skip a puzzle if you're well and truly stumped, but what self-respecting gamer would choose that route?
There are also the more traditional adventure game puzzles that have you exploring your environment for clues, picking up everything you possibly can, and occasionally combining various objects in your inventory so you can proceed. Thankfully, the game has a "Sixth Sense" feature where you press the spacebar to momentarily have points of interest highlighted for you which eliminates the frustrating pixel hunt.
The presentation is a somewhat mixed bag. The environments and character models are generally oustanding with great attention to detail and lots of atmospheric touches that really make Victorian London come to life. The overall character animations are good for the most part, but the lipsynching is atrocious with the characters frequently flapping their lips for a few seconds after delivering their lines, which I found distracting, and the voice acting is average at best. I never really took to Watson's melodramatic delivery where every line is spoken with an awkward urgency, and Holmes speaks in a drone, sounding almost bored at times, as if the whole business of crime solving no longer interested him. Curiously, the bit players you encounter throughout the game are often better acted and sound more convincing then the stars of the show.
The game controls well enough with a mouse and keyboard, although the mouse movements felt somewhat sluggish even with the sensitivity turned up to maximum in the settings. I played mostly from the third-person perspective which gives you a good view of your surroundings, and while a traditional adventure game perspective is offered, I found the controls too awkward (although people with a gamepad seem to have good success playing from this perspective). I'd like to pass on a couple of tips on controlling the game since I'm not sure if it's mentioned in the manual: 1) you can use the mouse wheel to quickly scroll through individual items in your inventory; this is a lot faster and more convenient than opening your inventory screen, although you still have to open it if you want to combine one object with another; 2) if you have a bunch of hotspots clustered together, you can click the left-mouse button to highlight one and then use the WASD keys to cycle through them until you've highlighted the one you want; click the left-mouse button a second time to activate it; otherwise it's just way too fiddly to try and maneuver your character into the right position.
I realize this review might seem overly critical, but none of the criticisms I've noted are fatal, and I did spend an enjoyable 14-hours completing this game. With the noted exceptions, the puzzles are clever and fun to solve, and I have to say again that I found the art design to be terrific making each area a joy to explore, particularly when I came across obscure references to the original Conan Doyle stories. If you're a fan of adventure games, and especially Sherlock Holmes, and you think you could look past the weaknesses I've noted, then I would recommend this game.