Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments

yep

Bottom line:
Awesome game if you're into detective games, which although being detective do not require you to be insanely smart

Short review:
Pros:
+Engaging investigations: Inspect crime scenes and suspects, arrive to conclusions in the mind palace, just like a true Sherlock :)
+Nicely told cases
+Varies puzzles

If that's your thing:
+/-Light gameplay, progress mostly flows but still gives sense of achievement
+/-And along with that there are weird, very specific moments which felt, to me, like a difficulty peak
+/-You can skip many of the challenges if not into them

Cons:
-Limited replayability
-Mild problem of random crashes (but not enough to ruin experience, sheesh)

Longer review:
Here's to getting into ~1-2 decades old franchises.
So, having read some of the short stories and watched Sherlock, some Elementary, I'd say I'm (not a die-hard, but still) a fan of the character, and had my eyes for a while on this series.
Also contemplated on whether I'd like to start with the original series or the more modern reboot, and here I am writing a review after having completed Crimes and Punishments.

I must say I had a great fun and this went above my expectations.
I'm guessing part of it was due to the game being very accessible. While this is not a "Hidden Object" casual, I'd say the gameplay is definitely leaning towards the casual side, which is not definitely a bad thing when you've busy life. The beautiful thing is that I felt it still managed to preserve the sense of actual detective work, although I didn't find it very challenging most of the time.

So, some details - gameplay is a bit of a point & click style in spirit, although navigating in a 3D world, but you're going to analyze scenes, looking for and at objects around every corner. Naturally there's also interviewing suspects. There's an interesting (although a bit too simplistic) mechanism of inspecting characters while interviewing them, noticing details and coming to conclusions.
As you gather clues, you have some sort of a minimalistic "mind palace" where you'll have to connect the dots, and be able to arrive at several conclusion, it's up to you to pick the correct one. An incorrect conclusion can also be picked, and there are no many true consequences for this at the game, as far as I know.
Several mini-games\puzzles are obviously also apparent, which were quite diverse, and I mostly found them fun and engaging. In case you don't, you can always choose to skip, which is a nice gesture from the devs for those who may have a little less patience.

As I've already said I found the gameplay to be relatively light but not too much, so I've personally really enjoyed this construction, allowing me to flow with the game without grinding my teeth, and still have the sense of achievement.
Another point I liked is that the game is very friendly towards short sessions, it auto saves pretty much your every bit of progress, and without any annoying loading screens and opening sequences, I could easily come to this game after a long day with very little free time, and just have a 10-20 minutes' go. I appreciate this very much.

Most of the cases I found cool and intriguing, I'm not enough die-hard to know whether they're based on the real stories and if that's a good adaptation, but I did enjoy the experience.
I didn't feel the soundtrack, graphics and ambience were anything extraordinary, but definitely did the trick if you're not looking for anything out of the ordinary.

I did find the voice overs to be a bit irritating, but I guess one could live with that.

Perhaps I only found two true downsides - As I said the game is generally with fair to light difficulty, yet at some specific instances I felt it was extremely unclear what should be done next, or alternatively some Case solutions seemed either extremely unlikely or I didn't truly find any sense in the final conclusion.

Another annoying point on the technical side was random crashes to desktop, as well as constant crashes on certain part which after a long research I found out is caused when two controllers are connected to the PC, which is very weird, but at least solvable.
It is a bit annoying as there is not much info about ways to work around issues and general technical support for this game. Luckily the random crashes were not that frequent, and along with the frequent auto saves, the experience wasn't ruined.

Perhaps only shame is I felt this game has little replayability value. At some points you could make some choices which would result in slightly different cutscenes, but really, after one go with everything solved, I imagine future runs will feel a little pointless.

Still, it's an awesome game if you're into detective games, which although being detective do not require you to be insanely smart ;)

10/10. I should have played it a long time before

Amazing Game.. Cool graphics, Intriguing cases and very nice game mechanics. Apart from few strange case conclusions, the game delivers what you would expect from Frogwares !
9/10 recommended !

There could be more suspects & interrogations and less puzzles, but still good enough for brain exercise. 6/10

Elementary my dear Watson, I did also click everything in the screen to find the next clue and follow a guide because some time the game actually docent tell you whats the next clue

i didnt get the vibe. it feels like waste of time.

Not a bad game, but unfortunately it may just be easier to follow guides for this one. A few of the cases I didn't even understand how Conclusion A could be ruled out in favor of Conclusion C or whatever, and would have gotten it wrong without a guide. In addition, some achievements are easily missable, and require a lot of work redoing entire cases to get them if misses (one requires you to SELECT every conclusion to read them, even if you don't use it as your final guess). Also some of the mini events are very confusing as what to look for and what controls to use are not clearly stated. But I did enjoy having some good old-fashioned mysteries.

Good

Although cases are interesting and I've enjoyed mechanics of solving them, I can't recommend this game and here's why (just examples, not all cons):
1. Game is constantly crashing.
2. I've got free light show when it comes to graphic. Textures kept blinking all the time, tried different settings and nothing helped. Was a nightmare to play it.
3. Ridiculous mini games like arm wrestling or crossing the bridge.
4. Watson. Watson. Watson. Please, stop following me and stop blocking me from moving anywhere. Ridiculous.
5. Idiocy of some things. Like one of the traps. You use rope to tie chandelier and hammer and then hang chandelier on ceiling. How tf no one would see this rope hanging all over the place? Also why Watson can follow me, but Sherlock is not following his dog? Quite dumb.
6. Terrible controls. You press W but Sherlock does a dance for you instead of moving. Sometimes he gets stuck and you need to repeatedly press and hold W to be able to move anywhere. At some point I couldn't even walk because it got bugged and I had to run everywhere.
7. Sherlock's voice acting. It's T-E-R-R-I-B-L-E.

Maybe I could overlook some of my complaints but simply because game is crashing all the time I'm giving it a negative review.

Хорошая игра, действительно интересные, увлекательные кейсы, приятный визуал.
Управление от третьего лица отвратительное, переключайтесь сразу от первого.
В целом игра очень понравилась, рекомендую для прохождения.

It's a good game but I can't help but feel that it could have been much better.

The graphics certainly improved from the previous games in the series and the gameplay is smoother. I liked the deduction mechanism and the fact that you can be wrong with your conclusions.
With that said, it feels that in some of the cases the conclusion is a bit arbitrary and I didn't get a sense of achievement or failure because the game only tells you if you were right or wrong but not where and how you got it wrong.

But I think that the weakest part of this game is the story. It feels less meaningful to solve 6 unrelated short cases than to solve a long unfolding one. Some of them were intriguing, but in the end they were simple murder or theft cases with forgettable characters.
If we got the same gameplay and graphics with one long meaningful plot that would have perfect.

.

I had so much fun with this game! I really enjoyed that there are multiple different paths you can take based on your own interpretation of the clues. My only complaint is that I wish there were more mysteries in the game/that it was longer. If you like mystery/puzzle games this is definitely for you!

It was easy enough to piece together the puzzle but sometimes determining who was guilty was just difficult enough. 8/10

This game was fun, some cases were pretty cool to solve 7/10

Excellent continuation of the game, improvements are visible, for example, you can study other characters, there are also options to choose who to blame and how to do it, in a soft or hard form. Many new puzzles were also liked. The only minus is that there is only automatic saving.

its fun :)

must play!

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments is an adventurer detective game, that has you playing as the titular character, Sherlock Holmes as he takes on six different cases, where he must deduce the guilty in each one.

Unfortunately the game largely plays itself, the majority of the game is just walking around and examining various objects simply by clicking on the examine button, which means you end up going through the motions through every case, with very little if anything to deduce or solve, especially in light of the fact you play as The Sherlock Holmes, known for his powers of deduction and incredible intellect.

During gameplay these various bits clues must be put together to ultimately point at a culprit of the case, usually from a selection of a handful of suspects, each with their own plausible motives. However all the evidence you come across is circumstantial at best, without a clear case for either outcome of guilty or innocent, there is however a “correct” solution, as so deemed by the designer but this isn't really obvious from what the game presents to you. This is the same situation for all the six cases in the game.

This stands in rather contrast to the description on the Steam page, which states the following “Become the most celebrated detective of all time: Sherlock Holmes! Use your impressive talents as a detective to solve six thrilling and varied cases: murders, missing persons, spectacular thefts and numerous investigations that sometimes lead you into the realms of the fantastic.

Will you follow your moral compass, or will you apply the letter of the law?”

I’m not even sure which extraordinary skills of detection they are referring to, let alone 14 of them.

There is also no overall arching red thread throughout the six cases, they are all stand alone and there’s nothing that ties them together, making the end of the journey feeling a bit meh.

This is again despite what the Steam description says, “The ramifications are far-reaching, and your decisions will exert a real influence through your reputation or the surprising consequences that will arise where you least expect them…”

Since the stories are standalone, it also doesn’t matter whom you choose to convict, or absolve, and you are free to replay the cases to get to the “correct” solution.

There isn’t much Sherlock Holmes without John Watson, but he feels entirely pointless, window dressing at best, as he doesn't offer clues or insight. He just follows you around like a puppy, he may as well have been Toby.

The writing and storytelling is decent, the narrative aspect of the game is reasonably decent enough for the most part, but the gameplay aspects cannot support the game, so what you’re left with isn’t as much of an adventure game, or even a detective game, as it is a narrative driven walking simulator.

Detective vision comes up a couple times, similar to Batman vision from the Arkham series, but it’s limited in use, shows when you should use it, thus making it automatic and simply a button press with no thought behind it, making it a rather pointless mechanic. The same goes for the pointless Quick Time Events.
You can skip the “puzzles” entirely if they bother you too much, but that just leaves even less gameplay in an already gameplay lite game.

Technically it runs and looks reasonably decent, it’s an adequate game, although there are a lot of loading screens, as you change location often, which is a bit of a tedium.

Amazing game-play, beautiful stories and excellent choice of characters. 9/10

nice

Several short self-contained stories.
The first three make you think, throwing many different ways of interpreting the situation, and to make the correct conclusion you really have to pay attention to details.
The last three are more streamlined and obvious, but not without unexpected twists.
Good graphics, voice acting, puzzles make sense and the game has overall pleasant feel - a no-brainer recommend

A most stimulating diversion, this game engages the mind with modest yet satisfying puzzles and a captivating mystery. Its atmosphere is immersive, and the narrative, both clever and compelling, requires sharp observation and deductive reasoning. A most gratifying pursuit for those with a taste for intellectual challenge and refinement.

10/10 - you can play as a dog! And now serious... I recommend the game - you will have fun even many years later. I played in 2025. :)

PROS:
– Lots of great different (not boring) minigames and puzzles, I liked experiements with vials the most during first part of the game
– Addictive - completed 100% in one go in 15 hours
– Important decisions actually shape the story
– Mind games, logic and deduction
– Variety of immersive & pretty locations, each making perfect sense – Baker Street, Scotland Yard, a normal hut, a butcher shop, bars, train stations, Rome’s baths, an archaeological site, an Indiana Jones-style sanctuary, a fancy villa, Kew Gardens, the Divine Syndicate gardens, dark alleys of Half Moon Street and even a circus.

CONS:
– Game crashed about 10 times
– Some dialogues are unskippable
– No clear instructions on unlocking costume skins, mustaches, etc.
– Watson keeps body-blocking Sherlock especially in narrow places
- Personal one: really wanted the fourth case to be WLW romance motive, but it was not :(

I only got to play the first case before the game completely died on me. You have to jump through multiple hoops to get this game to run, and the constant crashing on case 2 did not allow me to continue.
The first case has fun puzzles, but the open ended concept of solving the case left me feeling quite underwhelmed. It feels unfinished. I love the voice acting and art. I am very disappointed we aren't allowed to customize our Sherlock whenever we want. I get he's an established character, but why give us the option of cool beards and glasses if you wont let us wear them whenever we want?

I greatly enjoyed it and I'm sure I would've liked the following cases, but I can't recommend due to the technical issues. Steam won't refund me because I had over 2 hours of playtime.

After watching some mystery movies, I was in the mood for a good detective experience, and Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments delivered exactly that. The game puts you in Sherlock’s shoes, solving six intriguing cases that range from murders to spectacular thefts. The deduction system is engaging, making you feel like a real detective as you connect clues and draw conclusions.

One thing that slightly bothered me was the small mini-games, which could sometimes feel a bit annoying. Thankfully, the game allows you to skip them if they become frustrating. The atmosphere and storytelling are excellent.

Would I recommend it? Absolutely—especially if it’s on sale at its lowest price. It’s a fantastic experience for fans of mystery and deduction!

great game

nice

I haven't played much of this game yet, but so far, I give Holmes 10/10. He is so attrac- I mean... attentive and clues into some of the most impossible scenarios! Very fun and thrilling gameplay, music is awesome as well. Will buy the rest of the games because of Sherlock's look... ahem, ability to look outside the box.

Cozy point and click game. Not too short, not too long. Interesting mechanics, and I didn't find them repetitive during my gameplay. Movement can get a bit clunky, but it is 11 years old, so it gets a pass. Overall, not my top 3 games ever, but still 10/10 from me.

Great puzzles & storyline.

I've been wanting to play this game for ages, and it did not disappoint! It's quite fun to piece everything together, especially since the UI isn't so invasive - so a lot of times, you need to figure out where you need to go and what you need to do on your own. My only issue with it is that Holmes can only walk when you need to move short distances - the lack of running gets to you during the case of the missing train, to be quite honest. But I do love this game dearly, and the characterization for each and every character is fantastic. So far, the mysteries have been very well-crafted, my most profound admiration for the team!
Of course, if you want to be pedantic, you can say that the expressionless animation did not age well, but we all grew up with PS2 and Wii graphics here, let us not pretend we did not.

Really good game

Such a great game! Good atmosphere and characters, great voice acting, and very pretty (considering it came out over 10 years ago). The settings for each mystery were varied and each one was so delectably Sherlock-ian (in my casual opinion). I felt a couple themes repeated themselves occasionally such as the culprit having killed their lover's spouse, but this didn't really annoy me enough for me to care.

I love the lack of hand-holding, but they still managed to trim much of the fat without sacrificing that difficulty (such as kicking you out of an observation once you've clicked on every point of interest). I loved checking the archives and using the analysis table and interviewing suspects at Scotland Yard. Highly immersive. Recommended for anyone who is looking for a mystery game where you aren't railroaded into the right answer! Also recommended for Nancy Drew fans; this had many similarities but is not point and click like ND, and there's more to it (probably due to a higher budget; I'm not knocking my beloved Nancy Drew games).

Great, straightforward point and click adventure.

Great game,
make you genius like sherlock after beat the game without walkthrough or google something (little bit i guess)

Great for folks who like traditional point and click detective games.

This game is way more fun than imagined, the puzzle and the story it self is compelling. Though there is a choice statistic in the game it's a shame it's not showing up during my gameplay.

The game offers detailed inspections of people and objects all in 3D making the inspections of the crime scene fun, definitely will be buying more from the franchise in the future!

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This is an older game, but I bought this one because the game allows you to decide who you think the culprit is, and there are multiple clues leading in other directions which can work against you when it is time to decide who dun it.

I just finished the first mystery and I'm very happy with the game so far.

I did have some issues with the game crashing, but through searching in the forums I found enough to help me sort out the game. I increased the amount of memory to textures and shaders and I'm using launch parameters for a high end computer: -nosettingslimit.

You can find the info in the forums if you are having problems. Another issue was the Pagefile and it is recommended by one user to install this game to your hard drive with your Windows Installation. After I installed to my Windows Drive, I haven't had another crash.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (8/10)

If you love detective games, Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments is a must-play! Frogwares has crafted a fantastic mystery-solving experience that truly makes you feel like the legendary detective himself.

The game features six gripping cases, each with multiple outcomes depending on your deductions. The investigation mechanics are incredibly satisfying—you gather clues, interrogate suspects, and piece together the truth using Holmes' brilliant mind. The moral choices add real weight to your conclusions, making you question whether justice and morality always align.

Visually, the game is beautifully detailed, with immersive 19th-century London settings that make each case feel authentic. The voice acting is top-notch, and the soundtrack enhances the atmosphere perfectly.

Whether you're a Sherlock Holmes fan or just love a good mystery, Crimes and Punishments delivers an engaging, thought-provoking experience that rewards keen observation and logical thinking. Highly recommended! 🕵️‍♂️🔍

Only issue is that the game crashes every time I try to review conclusions of prior cases in my logbook. Other than that, this game is 10/10 classic. I wish they would remake the older ones. I started with Sherlock Holmes Chapter 1 and it was too overwhelming. I'm glad I felt the random urge to try this one out, what with it's more linear stories and problem solving that is satisfying, now it makes me feel confident to retry the newer games.

Lovely, cosy Baker Street apartments.
Exciting to find all possible clues.

Semi-premium UE3 walker-and-talker. No big challenges, just look around and talk to people and click clues together. Writing, voice acting, and general atmosphere is good enough to carry the recommendation. UI and narrative cohesion has slight jank to it, but not a huge deal. Locked 60fps on Steam Deck with postprocess set to medium, everything else on high, otherwise works great. On a sale, and if this is your vibe, it’s a great deal.

The best Sherlock game by far.

I had a lot of fun with this game. There was a lot of exploration and discovery

As someone who has read the original works of Arthur Conan Doyle and watched many adaptations—ranging from the BBC series, the movies, the old classic versions, cartoons, and even the anime (though that one focuses more on James Moriarty)—I find this to be a fresh take on Sherlock himself while still having his personality intact. Great game, I will soon do The Devil's Daughter

Sherlock Holmes Crimes and Punishments Review

Pros:

• Lovely, cosy Baker Street apartments.
  
• Exciting to find all possible clues.
  
• Let's me act as Holmes. This is why I love gaming.
  
• Excellent voice acting by all the characters.
  
• Excellent facial animations.
  
• Helpful hints for solving cases along with mechanisms for hunting for clues.
  
• The game does what it focuses on really well.
  

Cons:

• Game gets stuck and crashes at the end of each episode.
  [* ]Some case conclusions are a bit obscure.
  
• Some of the mind mapping connections can be brute forced.
  
• Only 6 cases, wish there were more.
  
• Almost all the cases are related to murders, perhaps a robbery or embezzlement case would have added more variety.
  

Advice:

• When the game gets stuck and crashes at the end of each episode, close the game process using task manager and restart the game. Game will proceed from the start of the new episode.
  
[*] All clues should be blue and point in the direction of the final conclusion. That's the way to identify the correct resolution.

nice

A significant step up from Testament. The most interesting part of the game is that it lets you fuck up. You reach your own conclusions at the end of each case, and then you get to see if you were right at the end of the game. Are you truly the world's greatest detective, or did you sentence innocent people to death just because they were annoying?