Adventure Forums - Broken Sword 3, my first review ever

Ok, so this is truly my first review about any game.

I posted this first on this thread week or two ago

http://forums.adventuregamers.com/showpost.php?p=26210

But my friend suggested that I put it also where it belongs, to the Reader Reviews.

(It's edited a little bit from the original one.)

First of all, my gameplay time was about 10h 30min.
It took me 15 days to complete this game, and the reason why so many days is that I had so much other things on my mind during the christmas holidays.

Story: It was the best of this game, I enjoyed every minute of it. Truly a worthy Broken Sword sequel. Many locations, and lots of cinematic sudden stuff, just perfect.

Spoiler:
When I was at the gate in Prague, I didn't go through the gate, until the game forced me to go through with the Nico loves Boris scene, it was funny as hell, I laughed my ass off when I saw George's and then Nico's facial impressions during that cutscene. It also made more sense with that cutscene when after it George made fun of Nico kissing Boris several times

Graphics: The character 3d models were just beautiful, I really enjoyed the cartoonlike expressions in Nico's and George's face during different scenes.

Spoiler:
One thing comes especially to mind, the Egypt cutscene when our heroes have arrived to the site, Nico goes sneaking behind the rocks and looks up behind the last rock, just fun cartoon style, I liked it a lot.

I played the game with 1024x768 resolution without any FSAA etc. and most of the time the game looked good, the walls in Prague cellars where especially beautiful, looked like bumpmapped. The opening FMV cutscene was really promising, so was the other FMV cutscene. It's great that the quality level was so high in those. The thing that bothered me was the lack of detail in many places like Vernon's apparment, there could've been a bit more stuff in there, but I guess it takes more time to do lots of non usable little background items in 3d than in 2d. But most of all, I have to say this, the Nico 3d model was a perfect ten. Beautiful, hot and sexy. But not too much, just perfect.

Controls: First of all, I didn't use a gamepad, I played the game with the default keyboard settings.
I didn't like the fact that the controls where camera relative, like the running action sequence. It took me many many many times to make it right, because the character started running in odd directions instead of the direction he was intended to be going. I "PRACTISED PRACTISED PRACTISED" like Trep suggested, but in the end I still didn't like them enough. But I guess they were ok enough in the end.

Spoiler:
Hmm, and about the stealth, it really wasn't even near pure stealth, how come Nico could RUN around in Prague inside the castle without the guards noticing her? That was a little bit weird...

There wasn't "a lot" to do, four action buttons and some highlighted stars to do some action with, felt a bit easy in that way. The ledge hanging/jumping etc. made me think of Tomb Raider, but it was nothing as frustrating like in those games, it was easy and very nicely put in the game. There was some magical barriers about some stuff that were small, but couldn't be walked over, I remember some items in the theater that were like that.

Puzzles: Ahh the crate puzzles, at first they were ok, the first crate thingie was really pure logic. In the end they were just a little bit irritating, like the last one

Spoiler:
How come George has time to push multiple crates around for along time, when he is in a hurry to stop the Grand Master? Why didn't he go around the wall, instead of climbing it? Or was the hill surrounded by fences or something

I really enjoyed the puzzles in St.Stefan hq. Especially the bottle stuff. In overall the game was a bit easy, I usually get stuck in almost every adventuregame, but BS3 was like a movie, no really tough situations at all and the story kept on going, well I have to say that I wasn't bored anywhere, except maybe on some crate puzzles (which were all quite easy but frustrating Sokoban style crate pushing form A to B to C to back to A or B) I also wondered a bit why all the crates and rocks were the same huge size? They must've weight like 400 kg and also it was a bit disappointing that the crates always moved the same amount. And if a same kind of crate was not straight in line, suddenly those boxes couldn't be moved at all.

Spoiler:
I really hated the stupid bug about the Bible/clock puzzle. I really thought that George was stupid or something, because he said he knew the Bible, and wrote the correct answer to the notepad, but then suddenly he had to go check the Bible before he knew it... aww, that was just disappointing.

Sounds and music: The music was unbelievably beautiful, from the intro cutscene to the end, it really enhanced the game, just like Howard Shore's music made the Lotr movies a lot stronger. All hail Rolf Saxon, a great voice talent, I really like hearing him speak, he is George Stobbart. the new Nico also does her part well, although I would've liked a real french woman to speak her part, it would've been a lot more authentic that way. Many of the cast were ok, but the chef in Prague was really irritating, it reminded me 100% about Mike Myers Fat Bastard character in the Austin Powers movies. :( And why were all the bad henchmen speaking like englishmen, I think Susarro should've had a more international or perhaps french soldiers in his service.

It was a bad decision to not let people skip stuff, it really isn't fun to see the same long sequence many times in a row.

The camera movement was great, in many scenes it made the sequences look more like in a movie.

First I was a little bit disappointed in the ending for a few fractions of a second, but

Spoiler:
George said "Hmm, well I guess this is the end then..." and immediately a rock song exploded from the speakers, a big grin came to my face... a classical cliché movie ending, but it made me smile. I really like this sort of stuff, at least it fits perfectly to Broken Sword 3

In overall, I'd give 78-83/100

A good game, the ending gives me hope of a fourth game someday. :)

I had a feeling through out the game that it was made more to consoles than to pc, can't really specify what the feelings were, but It just felt like that.

I really could've killed to have my name on the end credits, it was fun to see so many familiar names in there.