Frog Detective 3 Review - Third Best Detective

Frog Detective 3

The first Frog Detective was a 30-minute first person adventure that basically amounted to what would happen if a young kid made a detective game. There was a lot of impromptu dancing and other silliness, the characters had the attention span of a particularly distractable kitten, and there weren't actually any crimes. There wasn't really anything else like it, and for $5, it was a heck of a deal.

Frog Detective 2 was more or less the same thing, but longer. Frog Detective 3 is that again, but longer still. It took me about 90 minutes to get through, and while that's still very short for a game, it felt like too long for this particular game. I spent a lot more time just walking around with nothing happening than I did in FD1 or 2, and since the trading questline at the core of the story is resolved in roughly the same order as the location of the NPCs from left to right, it felt more like ticking boxes than in previous games. The humor is still largely on-point, but it's diluted by a bunch of minor annoyances like slow text speed, a brief transition every time you try to use your scooter, and an overall feeling that this is a 45 minute game stretched out to 90.

I don't have strong feelings either way on recommending this game. It's fine, if unquestionably the least enjoyable of the series. I think someone who started here might have a better time since it'd still be a new idea, but for $5 I can't be too disappointed.

Rating: 65%

Time to beat: 90 minutes.

MSRP: $5