Review of Broken Sword: The Angel of Death by {rating_author}

The first two Broken Sword games were incredible.  The art was great, and the games had this really awesome feel to them.  They were two of my favorite games of all time.  Broken sword 3 was so different from the original two, that it wasn’t easy to reconcile them all as one series.  The great voice acting by Rolf Saxon, the globe trotting, and the humorous tone JUST did tie everything together.  The controls and the style of puzzle solving was drastically different, but you got used to it after a while.  I was skeptical of this game after playing it for a few moments.  It was kind of fun, but the controls took a long time to get used to.  Even longer than BS3.  It had the look of BS3, but behaved more like the original two in many ways. If the art was more stylized and they worked out a few of the issues that I will discuss in a minute, it would probably be right up there in the same caliber as BS1 and BS2.  The humor was really good.  Similar to the original, and the game had a really intriguing mystery feel to it.  I liked that the game was point and click, and I liked that they tried to keep more of the action elements from BS3.  It made for some bizarre controls at moments, but it worked ok.  Especially the ability to run [holding control] and continually walk by holding down the left mouse button. 

Now, for those issues that I didn’t like.  The game was a little bit glitchy.  There were two puzzles that were really hard to solve, because the character would just keep walking into an object instead of engaging with it.  The game would get stuck like that.  I eventually figured out that I could pull up the task manager, then maximize the game again, and it would stop.  There were also a few puzzles, that I had difficulty with, because I clicked on the object and nothing happened.  I then wrongly assumed that the elements were not interactive.  Then there were the camera angles.  I appreciate the cinematic style game play, but in a point and click it can be really difficult to solve puzzles when you can’t see all of the objects.  There were many times where you would have to sneak past guards, but since you couldn’t control the camera angle, and the angles could sometimes be awkward for game play, you couldn’t see where you were sneaking.  My final two complaints.  One being a complaint with the series.  Why do Nico and George have to break up in-between each Broken Sword game?!  Is it supposed to reintroduce the mystery or romance somehow?  At least this game had one of the most creative ways to beat that dead horse.  I’ll try not to spoil it though.  Finally, there was the issue of the beginning and the end.  The beginning of the game started by implying that Moses engaged in human sacrifice.  The end of the game reinforced this pretty offensive theme.  Then it kind of ended abruptly.  I sort of felt like I was missing something at the end. 

To sum this game up, it was a fun and interesting interpretation of a point and click game, it had more of the original humor, the original voice for George, fun puzzles, fun minigames, and it felt more like the original Broken Sword games than BS3.  There were some glitches and some kinks here and there, but it was a really good game over all.  It left me eager to play BS5. 

Read the review »

Time Played: 10-20 hours
Difficulty: Just Right