Review of Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror by emric

It feels exactly the same. the same gaming engine, same quality and style of graphics & cutscenes, same voice acting, same style of story and same tone to the writing. Just a new adventure for George and Nico.

I can’t quite remember if you ever get to play as Nico in BS1, but in BS2 you play her half the time and George the other half. And I thought this was a big improvement to the whole undertaking. I found that it kept the pace moving along nicely.

The adventure was structured a little differently. This time it was a bit more linear. So instead of having so many places to go and explore at once, more often it was like having a small scene that you complete and then move onto the next one. I preferred this pacing.

What this game did extremely well was getting puzzle difficulty just right! I had to try a few things at times and exercise my brain, but it was never so hard that i got frustrated and had to consult a walk-thru. also the puzzles themselves were logical enough and never too bizarre or obscure, which is a trap i feel many adventure games fall into.

Although BS2 used the same past-tense grammatical style and had the same voice-actors as BS1 (both of which i found extremely annoying in BS1) for some reason they didn’t bother me this time around. Maybe I just got used to it or maybe my experience of this game was coloured by the fact that the game i played just before it (Dead Reefs) was so horrible, that I greatly enjoyed returning to a familiar environment and interface.

The inventory system works well and i like the little animated method employed when your mouse drops down to reveal the inventory bar. music was fine without being a standout. the story was made of commonly used adventure constructs—not very original, but still a light-hearted and fun experience.