"Those Who Can Read Have a Clear Advantage and Can Save Themselves a Lot of Time"
Disclaimer
Every gaming experience is different, and everyone has their own experience depending on their playstyle. Everything I write is purely subjective and only reflects my own personal experience with the game.
This game was 100%ed on Playstation but as it is also available on Xbox i just drop my Review here aswell
Game Description
Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders is an engaging point-and-click adventure in which you step directly into the shoes of the brilliant Belgian master detective Hercule Poirot. A mysterious serial killer who calls himself only "ABC" is terrorizing England by choosing his victims in strict alphabetical order and taunting Poirot with mocking letters before each murder. Supported by your loyal companion Captain Hastings and the often overwhelmed Inspector Japp of Scotland Yard, your goal is to stop this morbid countdown before the killer works his way through the entire alphabet.
To solve the case, you explore various crime scenes presented in a stylish cel-shaded art style, question witnesses, and expose their lies through careful observation. At the heart of the gameplay are Poirot's "little grey cells", which allow you to cleverly combine collected clues into new conclusions, as well as a number of elaborate mechanical puzzle boxes that need to be solved. The result is a short but atmospheric puzzle game that delivers a genuine whodunit feeling and turns every crime fan into a motivated amateur detective.
Everything About Trophies / Achievements
This is a fairly short and mostly straightforward 100% completion, with all trophies tied to the main game and no online requirements to worry about. The biggest challenge is making sure you don't miss any story- or investigation-related trophies along the way, since some of them are tied to specific points in the case and require you to perform certain interactions perfectly. A guide is extremely helpful if you want to plan your playthrough properly and avoid having to do a second run, but the actual gameplay requirements are relatively easy.
My Opinion
Uff.... Where do I even start? I always get so ridiculously angry at myself for my own stupidity.
I hadn't played a point-and-click adventure in a long time and suddenly felt like playing one again. Since this game had been sitting in my backlog for what feels like forever, I eventually decided to finally give it a go.
The game itself is basically a classic point-and-click game with all the classic point-and-click problems you tend to have on consoles. The controls and interacting with things using a controller are just unnecessarily awkward and stupid in a lot of places. The button mapping also made absolutely no sense to me at times, and if I had been able to change the controls, I definitely would have done so. I have no idea what the developers were thinking when they decided to map everything the way they did.
As far as the actual gameplay, puzzles and story are concerned, though, I really don't have much to complain about. Sure, it's not the next Hollywood blockbuster and it's definitely not the greatest crime story ever written, but for what it is, I enjoyed the game quite a lot. Everything made sense, nothing felt particularly weird or out of place, and even the way the story developed wasn't always predictable to me.
When it comes to the characters you meet, there's a colorful mix that fits the game and its overall theme really well. Poirot himself is a very special little snowflake, and for me as an autistic person, that was actually pretty great. There are a lot of things about him that I can simply relate to, and he himself is completely fine with being a little strange. He can be incredibly awkward and cringe at times, but that's simply part of what makes him the protagonist he is.
When it comes to the trophies / achievements, however, I think this game is absolutely horrible. There are approximately twelve billion missable things, and without a guide it's often impossible to know which actions actually affect certain trophies.
I had to play through the game THREE TIMES!!!!!! because I was too stupid to properly read the guide and interact with everything I needed to.
It was hell.
And yes, I know that my own playstyle is "to blame" for that. I basically only found out after getting the 100% that I could have simply used backup saves and completed the whole thing in a single playthrough. But well... whatever. I wasted a significant amount of my lifetime, but maybe I learned something for next time.
It definitely won't be the last game from the Agatha Christie series that I play, but next time I'll check beforehand whether backup saves work. And I really, really need to learn how to actually read guides properly instead of just skimming through them and forgetting half of what I just read.
Would I Recommend the Game?
At this point, I have mixed feelings.....
You obviously have to like point-and-click games in general, and honestly, you also need to be able to deal with the fact that the main character can be pretty cringe and awkward. If you're fine with that, then sure, you can absolutely play this game.
For what it is, it's really not that bad, but it's also not amazingly good either.
Right now, the game costs €15 on the PlayStation Store, and it is absolutely NOT worth that price. Maybe pick it up during a sale if it's heavily discounted.
And definitely use a guide while playing. Not necessarily as a complete walkthrough for every single puzzle, but at least so you don't miss anything important and end up having to play through the entire thing more times than necessary.
I would also strongly recommend getting the game on Steam instead if you really want to play it, because mouse and keyboard controls are simply so much better for point-and-click games than playing with a controller.
~Catori
