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George and Nico are back in style!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: September 01, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The first instalment in the Broken Sword series (1996's Shadow of the Templars, US title Circle Of Blood) introduced us to American-in-Paris tourist George Stobbart, the glamorous Parisian photographer Nicole "Nico" Collard, the lecherous museum curator André Lobineau, and a host of other delightful (and dastardly) secondary characters. With hand-painted cels by former Don Bluth animators, the game had a revolutionary look and feel--it was like being immersed in an interactive animated movie. BS: SotT's witty dialogue, excellent soundtrack, and well-integrated puzzles made it an instant classic. The sequel, Broken Sword: The Smoking Mirror was released in 1997.

Seven years later, creator Charles Cecil has resurrected George and Nico once more so that they may save the world in style, this time from the evil plans of Señor Susarro, who plans on harnessing the Earth's energy in order to make himself an all-powerful immortal.

The first part of the game cuts between the respective action in Paris and the Congo. Nico is framed for murder and must prove her innocence, and George must discover Chomondely's secret deep in the jungle. Their stories converge in an action-packed fashion (would we have it any other way?). One of the highlights of the game is the ability to play as both George and Nico.

The major difference in Sleeping Dragon is that the series has gone to a 3D prerendered platform in place of 2D painted cells. Another development is the absence of the mouse (Cecil dug an early grave with adventure gamers by claiming that "point and click" was dead)-the controls are the A,S,D, W and directional keys, which takes some getting used to. The constantly changing camera angles are annoying at best and fatal at worst, as several scenes involve timed escapes. I also encountered several bugs, the most annoying of which involved characters pausing during dialogues, and then speaking two or three lines at the same time.

Sleeping Dragon is much more action-based than its predecessors, so expect to shimmy across narrow outcroppings, inch along precarious ledges by your fingertips, leap across chasms, sneak past guards and have the occasional fight sequence.

There are a variety of puzzle types incorporated into the game, most of moderate difficulty. Puzzles can be solved by examining the inventory, combining objects and going through all dialogue options. One glaring pet peeve: the sheer abundance of Sobokan "move this crate over there" type puzzles, which numbered at least two dozen. The first few times were exciting, but I would see another crate, block, appliance, etc. and groan. Next time, less boxes, guys.

The graphics are gorgeous, the voice acting is top notch (a rarity), the music is worthy of John Williams, the one-liners fast and furious, and the storyline is a novel unto itself. Although not without its flaws, Broken Sword: Sleeping Dragon may be the most complete gaming experience I have ever had-once I started playing, I didn't want to stop.

Overall a good game, but mediocre ending

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: March 30, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game will have been an instant classic, if it weren't for the mediocre ending.

The story plot is engaging, although not particularly innovative. However, just like the Gabriel Knight series, you play as two different characters, who in most of the game are in different places investigating different stuff. There are some very repetitive puzzles, such as moving boxes to the right position so you can climb and advance to the next location. You get to go to many different locations, with many of them being in France, which is a plus for adventure games.

Voice acting is decent. To be honest, I like the voice of George, but not Nico. The keyboard control reminds me of the Prince of Persia Series in the 90's. However, you don't have to worry about jumping all those cliffs and gaps without falling off. One thing good about this game is that once you are near the edge, you can choose the option "Jump", and the character will automatically jump across fine. Nevertheless, there are numerous times when you have to run away from a danger or do a certain action quickly, or else you die. For those who are into more traditional adventure games, this may not be very appealing. You'll be given chances to replay the sequence right before you die, but it can still get annoying if you couldn't get it right for many times.

Finally, the ending is rather mediocre. Very abrupt and anticlimatic. It's almost as if the writers have a longer story in mind, but have to cut the story at the later stage of development b/c of budget or time constraint. Other than that, the story plot was great, and the length of the game sorta reminds me of the length of Gabriel Knight 3, another great game.

Disappointing but Good

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: July 11, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I absolutely loved the first two games in the series, but in comparison, Sleeping Dragon is a huge step down.

For those unfamiliar with the first two games, Broken Sword is about an American man and French female encountering conspiracies involving secret societies that trace themselves back to the middle-ages (e.g. the Templars). The storylines are intelligent and exciting with roots in interesting historical facts and modern speculation, and the lead characters have well-developed personalities and witty dialogue. Overall, I consider this series better than Gabriel Knight, although this last installment is weaker than any of the Gabriel Knights.

The 3D graphics are nice, but I would have preferred more of an animated movie approach like the first two games, and a lot of what made the series special is missing. There is far less character interaction, which was one of the great strengths of the first two games. For example, in the first two games, if you presented any inventory item to most of the characters, they would have a specific, often hilarious, response to most of the items. Now George just makes some stock comment like "I decided not to" or "That did not seem appropriate". Also, while the new interface is easy to use, it also limits your choices of what actions to take. This results in the puzzles being far easier with the interface now often giving away what you need to do.

The puzzles in this third game are less interesting. The gameplay is more linear. The puzzles often consist of moving boxes around in order to climb to a specific spot, sneaking past guards with perfect timing, or pressing a button when the matching icon suddenly pops up on the screen in order to survive a timed puzzle (or else you get killed and you go through the whole long scene all over again with no option to skip dialogue). And there is a lot less interesting historical information or detective work involving tracking down info. The only scene which comes close to the first two games is the first time you spend in Glastonbury.

Still, Broken Sword holds up extremely well compared to the increasingly lame adventure game genre we are stuck with since Sierra and Lucas Arts have now abandoned the series which made them great in the first place.

The ending of the game fails to resolve everything within this lastest installment (e.g. why Petra claims to have met Nico before and hates her so much), let alone questions left over from the first two games (e.g. the comic relief tourists -- is the husband a CIA agent or not?). Which give me hope there will be a fourth game, although the series has always been referred to as a planned trilogy.

Ok game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: July 26, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I would consider this more of a platform game than an Adventure game. The character interaction is great, and the graphics and locations are cool, but my biggest problem has been with the timed projects that need to be completed. I don't know if I just need a better graphics card, or what but I had a really hard time getting my characters to move where I wanted them to. With the timed events this becomes a serious problem. Other than that it is overall a good game.

Great Tech Support!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: January 02, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Gave my daughter this game for Xmas, she loves it. She's been glued to the computer. But the day after Xmas our computer crashed while she was playing it. As a result the game started to uninstall itself. We foolishly aborted the uninstall, so after we got the computer running again the game wouldn't play nor could we get it to uninstall completely. We should have just let it totally uninstall, then reinstalled it. So, I wasn't optimistic about getting tech support to help, esp since the product wasnt defective. Tech support is in Canada (yeah!!) and they were WONDERFUL -- walked me through how to uninstall it completely. Stayed on the line with me until it had been removed. Then it was simple to just reinstall it. After having only terrible experiences with tech support from other software company, this company is like a breath of fresh air!! Nice to know exceptional tech support still exists somewhere.

Broken Sword goes 3-D

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: June 12, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game has excellent visuals, a decent story, and good play control if you have a game controller because playing this game on the PC without one is very difficult. Aside from the 3-D graphics and different control style it is still a graphic adventure game like the first two Broken Sword games which makes it good if you are a fan of those or similar games.

Disappointing

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: June 28, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I love this genre of games and this game sounded like it had a lot of promise. It has turned into the most disappointing game I have ever played. In my opinion, it is a follow-the-directions kind of game. There are few, if any, puzzles. There are many scenes in which you die and then have to repeat the whole scene over and over and over again in order to move on. I actually purchased a game controller because one scene could not be accomplished via the keyboard. Well, the game controller didn't help much either. This game volleys back and forth between boring and frustrating. Not a good combination. Save your money. Don't buy it.

A frustrating paradox

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: April 10, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I looked forward to this game and wanted desperately to be able to give it a good review, partly just to reward the publishers for having the guts to publish a story-based game (as opposed to yet another first-person shooter featuring mute Neanderthals with guns). But as other reviewers have said, the interface is so clumsy it short-circuits the game completely. I'm not good at the hand-eye stuff, and this game has some sequences that require lightning reflexes -- coupled with an interface so unbelievably awkward and anti-intuitive that it's almost another bad guy trying to make you fail. And it's all the more frustrating because the story, the characters, the acting, the writing are all so good that I really want to go on with the game, to find out what happens. How could they do the story so well and the interface so badly?

Well, I hear Benoit Sokal (of Syberia fame) is working on another game. Guess we'll just have to wait for that.

F U N

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: February 20, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I would have given a 5 star rating for "overall" but there were a couple of random gameplay bugs - not everyone will experience these bugs.

The sound, graphics, and story were excellent. The adventure was fun. Can't wait to play the next one.

Pipe and slippers.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: January 03, 2004
Author: Amazon User

If you haven't played any broken sword games before then I would advise you to check out all the reviews first. This is a very neat game but it's like reading a long novel or sitting through all lord of the rings movies back to back. This game requires a lot of thinking and problem solving with not a great deal of action going on at times. Don't get me wrong the graphics are great and the voice acting and sound are top notch. It's just different from the tomb raiders or metal gear solids of today. If you want something different and want to use your brain more than your thumbs then this is well worth checking out. All the original voices are back from the first two games and the story is well told and executed to keep you interested. Problems must be solved in a particular order though and you don't get much freedom to solve them in your own way. But don't let that put you off, as most games of this type seem to suffer from the same problem. I did however miss the 2D format from the first games and the point and click interface has now been replaced by a Resident evil type control system. So overall a good game just remember to get out the pipe and slippers before playing!

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