I love a good mystery game. Murder Mystery Machine, Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders, and plenty of other games have captured the good serotonin boost of solving a good whodunit recently. The successor to The ABC Murders, Agatha Christie Hercule Poirot: The First Case continues that brain-tickling fun, with a few improvements.

I suppose you could call Hercule Poirot: The First Case a bit of a prequel to The ABC Murders since it takes place during one of Hercule Poirot’s (you guessed it) first cases as a detective. You find yourself called to investigate a string of blackmail occurrences but quickly discover much more than simple blackmail at work. You traverse a large mansion, and each chapter has you solve a specific piece of the mystery.

As you explore, investigate parts of various scenes, and talk to witnesses, potential suspects, and members of the family in question, you’ll be able to collect information. By doing so, you unlock nodes on the Mind Map, which you connect to make various conclusions. Much like with The ABC Murders, this system is somewhat limited by the developer’s imagination. My investigative process led me to make connections that the game wouldn’t allow until it was ready and certain combinations just don’t work even though they make sense.

In that vein, The First Case has a bit of linearity to it. This isn’t surprising, considering there is ultimately a singular mystery at the heart of things, and there’s not much room for divergence. However, the ending can shift somewhat depending on how your investigation goes. Specifically, there are conversations in which you can push suspects, witnesses, etc to try and get them to tell you the truth.

These conversations can lead to Hercule Poirot getting information that he might not otherwise or even can lead to him encouraging NPC’s to see the situation differently. Hercule Poirot: The First Case doesn’t have the visual issues that The ABC Murders had. However, I would argue that despite some graphical upgrades, the facial expressions of the characters need work.

Specifically, I’ve noticed that when talking to NPC’s, their facial expressions look pretty dead. The artwork itself is good, but the character models have a hard time showing emotion. It isn’t a big deal really, but it does lend to some slightly hilarious moments where things are very serious and the NPC has a weird facial thing going on.

Overall, if you like a good mystery, I can’t recommend Agatha Christie Hercule Poirot: The First Case nearly enough. The controls are good, the gameplay is clever, the characters are interesting, and it is just a great experience overall. It is fairly short, but I could see myself going back to it when I just want something to tickle my brain a bit.

A Nintendo Switch review copy of Agatha Christie Hercule Poirot: The First Case was provided by Microids for this review.

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Agatha Christie Hercule Poirot: The First Case

$19.99 USD

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• Great Storyline
• Interesting Characters
• Simple Mechanics and Controls
• Elaborate Environments.

Cons

• Emotionless Character Models
• Some Obvious Conclusions Can't be Made