Loretta no Shouzou: Sherlock Holmes

Synopsis

Loretta no Shouzou or Loretta's Portrait is an adventure game. In this title you play as Sherlock Holmes at the end of the 19th century who has agreed to find the portrait stolen from the art gallery. Basic gameplay is based around choosing appropriate commands such as Look, Take, Talk, Examine and so on, a separate menu also summons up the verbs related to movement such as Move or Enter. Despite those commands being in English, the majority of game text is in Japanese only, as the game was not released anywhere else.

To solve the case you are free to explore the city of London which is presented as a grid map with 34 square in total, each of whose could be visited by a persistent investigator. To advance the plot you'll have to search the locations for clues, collect them in your inventory and speak with the characters by asking them about things you have learned so far. You can highlight objects and people using a cursor to get descriptions from Holmes which makes Loretta no Shouzuo somewhat a point'n'click title. Besides the city map, there are also a couple of maze-like locations that needs to be explored on their own.