Adventure Gamers - Forums

Yes, BS4 was much more of a traditional adventure than BS3, but I thought BS3 was a much better game.
The writing, the puzzles, the story, the characterizations, the interface (pixel hunting in a scrolling 3D environment, oi) were all a mess in BS4. Even before I knew that Revolution had handed off the production to Sumo, I could tell that this was not a pure Revolution game. George is always a bit of a prankster, but he’s never nasty. In BS4, he takes on an ends justifies the means attitude that I thought was appalling. The chain of puzzles at the end was definitely Broken Swordy, except I didn’t think they were very good.
Seriously one of my least favorite adventure games, just a notch above A New Beginning.

Okay, a notch and a half.

I thought George was funny in BS4, I remember laughing a lot, especially when compared to the grim and all too serious BS3 which tried to be many things all at once (reminds me of Fahrenheit now that I played it). But I’d like to replay BS3 some day just to check how I feel about it after all those years. But not before they release an update or a remaster (preferably in 2D) which will allow to skip the atrocious crate puzzles.

There were a few too many box puzzles, but they weren’t very difficult. I recall there also being a frustrating stealth sequence, outside of some sort of HQ building. Since I played it on a console, the stealth didn’t seem out of place, but it wasn’t exactly Metal Gear Solid in terms of execution. Otherwise, it was a very fine game. Besides, I’ll take a good box puzzle over all the pandering tripe that passes for puzzles in so many adventure games these days.
To your point about the villains: Yes, I think Susarro is my favorite in the whole series.
This is the only game of the first three that I’ve only played once, so my memory of it isn’t great as far as the little details go, but I’ve got really good memories of playing this game with my little sister, and we still reference it from time to time.

The only part of the ending I remember is that the boss fight is a huge dragon that comes out of huge crack in the earth. I thought that was pretty climactic. Are you referring to what comes after, which I’ve forgotten, or am I misremembering?

So I’m sorry to say that the last 20% of BS5 is not living up to the first 80%. Everything after the room where you decipher the Tabulais so contrived and heavy handed. A) It’s like the writers said ‘you know what this game is missing? Moralizing! Let’s moralize and preach to our audience!’ and B) They get carried away with the whole god killing thing. This isn’t a JRPG, and the way the characters talk about the supernatural beggars belief. I mean, oh, I’m just going to go to this place and raise Lucifer and kill Jehova, simple as making cereal and milk for breakfast! is just stupid. And using big time biblical names willy-nilly to add weight is contrived and just trying too hard. Shame, it was all so good until now.

For some reason I was okay with the supernatural twist at the end of BS3, but this just strikes me as stupid.

And that whole determinism conversation. I get what they were going for, classic Tarantino action movie philosophizing in the darndest of places, but it fell flat for me.

Oh, and while I’m complaining about the game, man, George walks SO slow in EVERY situation.

Yeah, I enjoyed learning about the Gnostics, too. It’s the way everything turns out so literal that bothers me. And the ‘dream’ on the plane.

I don’t remember the anti-climactic ending of BS3 then, so I guess that confirms your opinion! Still, one of my favorite games, The Curse of Monkey Island (aka 3), has one of the most notoriously rushed endings in gaming history, so clearly that’s not a deciding factor in my overall enjoyment of a game.

Jdawg445 - 24 August 2021 02:45 PM

kill god bc of “freedom” reason???

How can you kill a god? What a grand and intoxicating innocence.

Jdawg445 - 24 August 2021 02:45 PM

Baron_Blubba - 24 August 2021 11:52 AM

Yeah, I enjoyed learning about the Gnostics, too. It’s the way everything turns out so literal that bothers me. And the ‘dream’ on the plane.

I don’t remember the anti-climactic ending of BS3 then, so I guess that confirms your opinion! Still, one of my favorite games, The Curse of Monkey Island (aka 3), has one of the most notoriously rushed endings in gaming history, so clearly that’s not a deciding factor in my overall enjoyment of a game.

Yeah the closing cutscene to broken sword three is not terrible by any means, but just felt like any old ending to a game, not an ending that was supposed to be wrapping up the whole series. So it was a bit anti-climatic. Still love the game as a whole.

I dont mind the very by the numbers ending to broken sword 5, what i mind is the fact, the villain has no real agency or motivation for his actions. I thought the murder/art scam of episode 1 was handled far better as a whole, than the have to kill god bc of “freedom” reason???

BS3 and BS4 endings appeared to be a bit rushed. Also, they seemed to jump on the console game bandwagon. BS2 the remaster actually got great reviews, while the original BS2 got tepid reviews. I liked the ending of BS5 due to Nico and George getting back together.

In real life that ending would qualify as getting back together. In fiction games/movies/literature life, it is juuuust ambiguous enough that the writers can do what they want in BS6, and make another ‘Oh Nico! Fancy meeting you here’ scene. They seem to like those scenes, whether it’s for Inspector Moo (I know), Duane and Pearl, or the flower lady. I don’t mind, it’s just a Broken Sword thing, like light sabers in Star Wars.

Anyway, I finished this game a few days ago. The last 20% was so bad that it almost retroactively kills the enjoyment of the first parts of the game. As I’ve kvetched about many times before, man, I’m just so not into it when games use biblical references and ‘real life’ gods to add weight to their stories, and BS5 uses Jehova and Lucifer *so* heavily and **so** literally that it beggars belief. I suppose they wanted to keep the game grounded in the real world rather than make up some fantasy gods to do battle, but the idea that the main bad guy was actually summoning the ‘biggest gods’ to do battle with each other (or some similar nonsense) just came across as extra nonsensical. The game doesn’t try to play the fireworks show at the end off ambiguously either, where all the bright lights and big noises *might* be an awakened god but also just as well *might* be something completely different (ala Raiders of the Lost Ark). Nope, it’s just Lucifer vs Jehova, simple as Ryu vs Ken or Liu Kang vs Shang Tsung.
The puzzles weren’t particularly good in that ending portion of the game, either. Blah.
I’m still hoping, of course, that there will be a BS6, and would probably buy it day one if the reviews were even just decent.
And for all my complaining, BS5 is still leagues beyond BS4 and a huge step in the right direction toward recovering the franchise.

PS: I really didn’t like the way Nico was used in this one either.