Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon

"Definately sleeping ..."

When the first game of the Broken Sword series came out it immediatly became a classic. The game was refreshing , clever and among my favorites. Due to his big succes both in the pc and PS1 a sequel was soon afrer releashed wich was not as exceptional as his predecessor , but nevertheless it was prety good. Long have the fans of Broken Sword and adventure games generally , awaited a third part of the series and voila! - here it is : Broken Sword : the sleeping dragon. When I got my hands on the game I couldn't wait to play it , but unfortunately BS3 didn't live up to my expectations.

STORY : 6/10
I'm being a bit harsh here but the previous games leave no choice. The developers probably felt like they had to re-invent the romance between the two main characters of the game ( George and Nico ) and you start the game being worlds appart , following different stories that apparently link together. The whole story is baced on coincidence ( you may call it fate but it's not that convincing ) and although you have a faint link to the story from the first game things don't get that interesting. It's obvious almost from the start who is the villan and your main goal after a while is trying to get back with nico ( like in the "smoking mirror") . The term of the " Sleeping dragon" refers to the power lines that suposedely cross the earth and although it's a subject with somewhat realistic references it's not that interesting afterall. While in the first game we had true historic events and places interact with the story of the neo-Templars and in the second game the South American culture and gods , here we have something more vague and a story with not much realistic roots in order to make it more appealing.There are of course good ellements , through the course of events you try to solve a murder case and of course you bump onto ancient riddles but the whole package in the end is not what a BS fan would expect.

GAMEPLAY , PUZZLES/RIDDLES : 5/10
In terms of gnenric gameplay BS3 plays almost like any classic adventure you,ve played.You interact with your world by looking , talking and using various objects/people and by picking up items and puting them in your inventory for later use. The game is not a classic point and click adventure and you use directional buttond to move. The things you interact with get highlighted when you get close to them and while this can get frustrating , it mostly works pretty well. The main problem is the puzzles themselves , 50% of them is smply pushing/pulling a crate in order to use it to jump on a ledge or something. There are a couple of good riddles and some good inventory-based puzzles but generelly all you do is pushing crates and pushing crates is not my idea of an adventure.Also many of the other puzzles are just too easy. I have played some "action/adventures" but this is the first " labor - adventure " i've seen. Gameplay in general is the biggest let-down of the game since it's mostly boring ( I'm talking about the crate-moving thing again ) and you can't have a good adventure without good puzzles/riddles.

GRAPHICS: 8/10
Graphics are good , not the best out there but for a 3-D adventure they are pertty good. The characters are beautifully made (especially Nico) and the backgrounds are descent - looking and colourfull. The camera angles are sometimes confusing but usually they are just fine. On the other hand I don't really see anything better in the 3-D enviroment than a good looking 2-D but the developers seemed to think that the graphic department needed upgrading . It's a shame that they paid as much attention to the story and the puzzles because that's the strong point of an adventure and not the graphics.

SOUND: 7/10
Sound is good but nothing special. The area affects are convincing and some scores are good , others not that good. The voice acting is so and so , while the main characters sound very good many of the other voices are done horribly but that's something we've come to accept generally in games.

OVERALL: 6/10
You may say that a 6 is not the average score form the above , but when I play an adventure I mainly look for a good story and some clever puzzles and in that department BS3 hasn't done that good. I was expecting something a lot better that this but I'm afraid the dragon is still sleeping. Let'a hope that in the future he will be wawken.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 05/25/04