Sherlock Holmes - Nemesis

I have a soft spot for literary crossovers that actually respect their source material, so a Holmes-versus-Lupin setup is, on paper, exactly my kind of adventure. Arsene Lupin, the gentleman thief invented by French writer Maurice Leblanc, announces he will steal five of England's greatest treasures across five days and invites Holmes to try to stop him. It is a premise so inherently theatrical that the game almost cannot fail to entertain on concept alone. Almost. The structure is a cat-and-mouse chase across some of 19th-century London's most iconic locations: the National Gallery, the British Museum, the Tower of London, and Buckingham Palace, all rendered in real-time 3D first-person with WASD movement. You play primarily as Holmes, with brief sections handing control to Watson and Inspector Lestrade. What holds the whole thing together narratively is Lupin himself. He leaves riddles, coded messages, anagram-laden calling cards, and elaborate breadcrumb trails after each theft, and following that chain of clues genuinely produces something rare in the genre: a sense of personal rivalry between two equals. The finale, where Holmes corners Lupin and the two trade mutual admiration rather than blows, is the kind of ending that justifies the whole journey. Fans of the Lupin books will also catch layered in-jokes, like the painter alias Horace Velmont, whose name is an anagram of Arsene Lupin. The puzzle design is where Nemesis earns both its praise and its bruises. When it works, you are decoding poetry, measuring footprints, cross-referencing paintings across gallery corridors, and performing elimination-logic puzzles that feel genuinely Holmesian. The game also functions as an accidental history lesson: nearly every exhibit in every location has flavour text, and the level of period detail is consistently impressive. When it does not work, you are scanning rooms pixel by pixel for items the game never hinted existed, rotating jigsaw pieces the tutorial never told you could rotate, and trekking back and forth across the same location to hand one item to one character so you can unlock the next item. The repetitive back-and-forth structure of each theft chapter accumulates into a genuine pacing problem, and some players will hit a wall in the British Museum chapter specifically and not come out the other side without outside help. Production-wise, this is a 2008 game and it shows. Watson's pathfinding is a running joke among Frogwares fans: he teleports to your side whenever you look away, which is more unsettling than any horror game I have played. There are texture glitches, occasional misspellings in the text, and stiff character animations. The remastered version on Steam and GOG adds an optional third-person perspective and walking animations for Holmes and Watson together, which softens some of these rough edges but does not fully sand them down. The voice acting, however, is solid, and the classical score fits the Victorian atmosphere without overstaying its welcome. If you have played The Awakened and want to continue Frogwares' loose trilogy, the tonal shift from Lovecraftian dread to a lighter, almost comedic rivalry is handled well. If Nemesis is your entry point into the series, the story is self-contained enough to work standalone, though the darker, denser The Awakened is the stronger game overall.

Monika · Scout Team

RPGs

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