Reader reviews for Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror page 3

There are three clashing graphic styles used throughout the game. The character portraits don’t look like the character sprites don’t look anything like the characters during the cut-scenes.
Characters are again over the top, and the ethnic stereotypes are out of control. Indians are portrayed as being subhuman, like some sort of apes. It’s just not funny.

The writing is off - it’s not funny and it’s fairly boring. There’s nothing of the first game’s wit.

Gameplay itself is also problematic. Many sequences just make absolutely no sense. You find yourself in some screen with no idea how you got there or what you should be doing, your only clue being the fact there’s no hotspot to leave so there must be something to accomplish. One example is after the boat sequence, George finds himself in the jungle, and as the player you just have no clue what he’s supposed to be doing. After you figure it out you find out that you need to help Nico, something the character knows but the player isn’t brought in on the picture.
Puzzles are stupid and often illogical. An example from early on: you need to keep elevator doors from closing. Here’s what doesn’t work:
- Smearing lipstick on the sensor
- Smearing coal on the sensor
- Using any object to physically stop the doors from closing
- Asking Nico to stand there and block the sensor
- Stacking anything to block the sensor
Instead, there’s one particular item George agrees to block the sensor with. It’s worse than portrayed because the reason for blocking the sensor is silly to begin with - that whole exercise could’ve been solved in a more reasonable way.
Similar conundrums exist throughout the game. You don’t know what you should be doing, and you don’t understand why George won’t just do what you want him to. He just shrugs and gives no logical reason why he won’t climb into the cave or why he won’t talk to that man.

The game also suffers several bugs that cause it to crash / get stuck, and the autosave feature (“continue” on the main menu) doesn’t work well, so save often.
The best thing about this game is that even with the padding they threw in (the jungle sequence comes to mind - why on earth wouldn’t he step over a bush?), it still takes only five hours if you insist on avoiding the hint system. So that’s something I guess.