Tizoc
Member
My first exposure to the Broken Sword series was getting the 2nd game on PC many years ago (I think I still own that boxed copy...), I had heard of the series around that time I think but never got to play the first game.
During my current PnC Adventure Sabbatical, I finally got around to experiencing the original game, thanks to GOG offering it (Steam users can get the original games alongside the Director's Cut) and despite some issues I have with it, I found it an overall great and fun game.
First let me list the stuff I didn't like, so here are the CONS
1- Movement feels slow: George mainly walks around in much of the screens, if you don't know the proper actions to take in order to progress you'd prob. waste minutes just walking around until you managed to trigger a progression flag (looking at you Lobinue[sp] Baphomet dialog triggger!)
2- While the game has excellent dialog, sometimes you'll get stuck and not know what to do in certain points in the game unless you interacted with specific objects which could give an idea of what to do next, such as the vent-like gate next to the bar in Ireland.
3- End game was the weakest part of the game to me, but this isn't a major issue since the journey up til then is pretty good.
4- ALWAYS SAVE WHENEVER YOU CAN. Being an old game there of course wasn't auto save, and if you trigger a death scene you can reload your last save so if you hadn't saved in a while, get ready for some backtracking
That's about it off the top of my head, so now, onto the PROS
1- The visuals are superb: The colors, the art and design the screens and buildings and backgrounds and surroundings, all of them are fantastic. Revolution Software went all out with designing the game and the entire look of the game is timeless to me.
2- The voice acting and characters are fantastic. While there were some odd accents on a few characters in Paris, the general voice acting is ace.
Rolf Saxon gives a PERFECT performance as George, who is having the time of his life just going around trying to solve the mystery of the explosion that nearly took his life, and tricking doctors and museum guards alike along the way to do so.
3- The overall gameplay is actually pretty simple; there aren't many puzzles, and while there are death scenes, the game's main gameplay simply relies on you interacting with objects and characters until you can find a trigger that lets you progress. Granted there might be times where you'll be lost but hey nothing the usual 'click and try every unlikely combination of items til you get somewhere' never fails.
4- One neat thing I noticed is that you will usually have about half a dozen or so items on you through out the game and I found I wanted to talk about everything and every item I had with each character just to hear their reactions and enjoy the voice acting.
Also George wanting to Buzz every person he meets never gets old
5- The game's animated scenes may be hit or miss for some but I overall found them pretty charming. George also gets some interesting reaction faces in certain points too
6- Ultar is awesome. If you're playing the og game through Steam, consider screenshotting his dialog, some good stuff in there.
7- Ireland was prob. my fav. part of the game, I really enjoyed talking with the people there.
So yeah in closing, the game I feel aged well, you just want to take your time a bit and just stomach the slowness of it and you're bound to enjoy it. I'll be playing BS2 soon so I can re-experience that game, and while I don't plan on playing the Director's Cut anytime soon, i may just play it someday just to critique it.
This game gets the Agent Cooper Thumbs Up of Approval
Also
Boo!
