YMMV / Shadows of Doubt

• Game-Breaker: The Government Database is seen by many players as extremely overpowered, to the point of trivializing the cases. By using any computer in city hall, you can access this database, and search for anyone by name, printing a record of them. This record includes their name, photo, address, and fingerprint. The only restriction is that you must search by name, but since typing in two letters is enough to generate a list of names with that string of letters within it, it's very easy to brute force the system. A very common Self-Imposed Challenge is to ban using this database, specifically because of how broken it is.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Walking into a crime scene in a private residence without permission from one of the owners, one of whom (possibly even the only one) is guaranteed to be the victim, counts as trespassing. This effectively turns the Constables into your biggest physical threat when it comes to murder cases, as getting seen will immediately turn them hostile. Not only does this force you to either fight back, easier said then done considering they're all armed with guns, or run out of the building, but it can also result in the scene being contaminated and leave you with tons of false leads. Thankfully, getting high enough Social Credit will eventually make it so you're allowed onto crime scenes by default, but it's still a pain to deal with in the early-game.
  • There's one Calling Card in particular is actually somewhat despised by the playerbase for being too obvious; the "Let's Play A Game" note, which has a scrambled version of the killer's last name and the first initial of their first name. This can make finding the killer ridiculously easy, because not only are these notes almost guaranteed to have their fingerprint on it, but finding out who in the city is the killer is as simple as going to the nearest City Directory book and filtering through names (Which are listed in the exact same format of first name initial and full last name) until you find one that matches. From there all you need to do is go to the address listed under that name and match the fingerprints. The only times it isn't effectively an instant solve is in the extremely rare occasions where the killer is homeless or if multiple people have the same last name and initial, but both are so rare that most of the time the clue just spoils the entire case immediately.