Sherlock Holmes The Awakened

The story is well-paced, with no filler — every scene moves the plot forward.

London feels gloomy and mysterious, with every location packed with small details worth exploring.

The story is excellent, the atmosphere is top-notch, and the visuals and voice acting are on point.

Full disclosure, I have never played the original so I do not know how it measures up but as it is, The Awakened takes over many of the excellent things from its direct prequel: Excellent writing in terms of story and characters, atmospheric scenery by way of design and soundtrack, clever puzzles that are well integrated into location and narrative and once again, fantastic voice acting.

Both tone and difficulty are less jumpy than they used to be.

The system is quite streamlined and easy to use: you can always see from your inventory which evidence should be pinned, and there's basically never more than one pinnable thing at a given time.