I really wanted to like this game, and there is occasionally something to enjoy here, but to actually play through this game was a genuinely horrible experience.
The main thing holding it back in 2026 is the fact that it just does not run well on modern hardware. There are a few guides on Steam that can help getting it running and solve the mouse bug (fairly straightforward, but requires downloading a newer version of the DXWnd software the game needs and setting up a game profile in this programme), but in the end despite my best efforts to get it to run in fullscreen, I eventually ended up playing it in an 800x600 window, in which my mouse behaved very erratically (moving faster left and up than right and down, which was infuriating and disorienting and honestly made me almost travel sick; fine control for puzzles and even turning the view was nightmarishly difficult). Even then, it seems almost guaranteed to crash when loading the next chapter unless you skip the preceding cutscene with spacebar. It often crashes during other cutscenes as well, or when trying to load after getting a game over screen. It would often fail to launch after a crash unless I restarted Steam, or in some cases my whole computer.
In addition, the puzzles are generally poor. The first and second chapters I thought were okay, I was on board at that point and could work almost everything out by myself, but it only got more and more painful from there. The problem is that the majority of 'puzzles' are basically just finding some items lying around and working out where to place or use them. Some of these uses are intuitive; many are not. This is compounded by the fact that you often need to be near pixel-perfect in order to pick up items, most of which do not stand out from the environment at all and are not at all obvious as interactables. By the end of the game I was consulting a guide before I left each room just to check I'd found everything before moving on. Also, save regularly, not just because of the crashes, but because there are a few timed sections, one of which is extremely unforgiving and barely gives you enough time to resolve even if you already know the solution.
The next major weakness is that there is a massive ludonarrative dissonance. The puzzles rarely have much bearing on the story, and in general it does not feel like a Sherlock Holmes story at all. The opening and ending cutscenes were the only bits that really felt like Holmes, with the rest of the game being more the kind of puzzles you'd expect from a survival horror game than the sort of wit/knowledge/observation-based deduction Holmes is famous for. The writing, dialogue, and documents throughout are also clunky, often featuring bad grammar (to the point that the actual intended meaning is sometimes hard to deduce) and occasional spelling errors.
This is not helped by the appalling and grating voice acting. Some reviews here seem to regard the voice acting as fun bad, and there is a small bit of that ('my manor is going to be blown up!'), but Holmes' voice acting is not fun, it is just painful. It is one of the most shockingly bad attempts at a British accent I have ever heard, but it is done entirely earnestly and in the most obnoxious tone ever. Lines are often repeated incessantly, such as in the final puzzle, where every one of the 5 or 6 items required to be placed prompts the same 'it's almost ready!' voice line. The actor who played Watson, who only appears in the final cutscene, was the only one I thought gave it a good shot (though again, his impression of a British accent left a lot to be desired).
I can imagine that I would have enjoyed this more if I played it as a child on my Windows 98 computer, where I would only have had to contend with the unintuitive gameplay, and (presumably) less of the crashing and nightmare-inducing mouse control issues. As it is though, it is a very hard sell.
I understand that anyone wanting to play this is probably in the same boat I was, wanting to start this franchise from the very beginning. However, I really think that this is a game that would be much better enjoyed through watching a longplay of it on YouTube. The story is barely there and I doubt it has any bearing whatsoever on later entries in the series. It is not a long game, but the technical issues and fiddly-ness of playing it on modern hardware drags it out a lot.
Ultimately, if you do want to play it, look for the guides on Steam about fixing DXWnd to resolve the mouse issues. You may be able to get it running fullscreen; I could not. Even when I did get it running in some semblance of fullscreen, I found it most stable just using the default settings (use x,y coordinates and 800x600), as mentioned above. Save often. I recommend keeping a guide handy, as some of the items required are damn near impossible to find unless you know what to look for and where (hairpin is the worst). Also, potential spoilers here, but one of the last puzzles is a nonogram. Use the white pieces for the background, the black ones for the main shape. I spent an hour on it the wrong way round and had to do it from scratch (there is a solution online if you just want to copy it and save yourself the pain).
