Criminal Expert Reviews

Good way to learn Polish and enjoy a decent crime investigation with decent acting! Where are my pregoies though?

Lame. Unoriginal, appears to be a non-heartfelt copy and paste... a random solitaire game that might crash on you, when it unexpectedly tries to use powershell... a random "create a free comic book, and likely ideas from others. I wished I had played this earlier. Certainly a refund candidate.

It's hard to fully recommend this game, and I bounced back and forth for several minutes before deciding that you should TRY this game, IF you're into FMV detective games. Pros: Interesting crime, decent acting, and the bouncing between evidence in a timed environment can be fun. Cons: There's no replaying anything, and when you die, you go back to the beginning. Skipping dialogue and cutscenes either take too long, or aren't allowed, and this game expects you to play it MANY TIMES to get all the clues, endings, details, etc. It doesn't explain to you the gameplay, and the first time I played I had no idea that some interviews or phone calls are time sensitive to your choices. There is however a fantastic formula here, and I think we some refinement and listening to their audience, this developer may have an interesting series on their hands.

I don't understand all the negative comments, this game is great. I really enjoy playing it so far. IRL you are not hand fed any clues, motives or evidence. One has to work everything out for themselves. It is not too difficult to understand what is going on. Give the game a chance. It is not perfect but it is a good mind puzzler.

Criminal Expert is a game that seeks to be a live action Ace Attorney case, hearing what the characters have to say and finding out the truth when putting this together with the evidence you collect from the police database and what you find while out investigating. It does not succeed in this goal. Interrogations are largely unimportant since they can be skipped. Also, they're in Polish - and the English subtitles are often riddled with grammatical errors are sometimes wholly missing. But even if these issues weren't present, interrogations don't offer a way to disprove statements by presenting opposing evidence, so you have to take everything they say to be the truth since you won't have acquired the truth of the matter from crime scenes. This is because the occasions when you're out of the precinct offer a strange mini-game for acquiring evidence. For instance, in Justyna's apartment, you are searching for three clues that are linked together. This is amongst perhaps a dozen clues and you've only a few attempts to collect the correct trio before the mini-game is over and you cannot return. If you're stuck here, the correct items are the fingerprint on the door, the fingerprint on a wine glass and the fingerprint on the cigarette. A later appearance of this mini-game has you collect everything at the crime scene, some of which had no relevance to the truth but what did served to be mentioned by the detective during a later interrogation. Surely this better version of the mini-game should have been used in all instances of it? These overall inconveniences and there being no tutorial make playing the game a confusing experience until a certain comic book style cutscene appears that results in a game over screen, and this doesn't require you to be out of time. What would have been useful here is some kind of indicator as to why you failed similar to the Case Notes at the end of a case in L.A. Noire. If you failed and this screen then said something like "A guest might have seen Justyna before her abduction, searching her apartment from this angle would have offered a lead." as an indicator to the solution for what brought down your investigation would have served as a great way to alleviate the player's confusion for their next run of the game. I only completed the game myself when I spotted that a full walkthrough had been published on the developer's YouTube channel. I do have a few remaining achievements, but this guide is still highly recommended if you're completely without direction after a few goes of this game. Overall, Criminal Expert's concept cannot be knocked. The concept of Ace Attorney-esque interrogation and investigation alongside the constantly ticking timer to keep me on my toes is why I bought the game the day of its release; and the story is interesting and I was surprised by who the criminal was as well as the depth of the mystery you investigate. The execution however is disappointing, so I cannot recommend Criminal Expert at this time. But I haven't lost hope for this game. The implementation of better subtitles, a tutorial and some clarity as to how to advance after a failure would fix my issues with this game; and English voice actors would be the cherry on top. Keep an eye on this game and put it in your wishlist, but don't make the purchase at his stage - you'll be left bewildered and confused by language difficulties and odd gameplay design.

Overall good concept and story but not recommended in current state Pros: - concept is good and interesting - it's clear that a lot of care was put into the script and directing - good story line Cons: - logic puzzles were not explained clearly and only allowed one opportunity to solve (missing women's form: unclear as to where the information was to be found) - sliding puzzle did not fit in with the rest of the game - evidence matching: got 4 correct pairs and somehow we failed - lost save information after completing the sliding puzzle - confusing dialogue options (might be due to translation?)