Circle of Blood

The Good
Broken Sword is one of those games that can be compared to the games of Lucasarts. Sure Broken Sword shares many similarites with say, the Monkey Island games, but what makes it different is the control system. The game uses the same control method that was used in "Beneath A Steel Sky only better. The characters in the game are well animated, in fact they give Disney a run for their money!. The music is well used in the game, it is even composed by Barrington Pheloung (who did the music for the popular UK TV series "Inspecter Morse")

The Bad
Some of the puzzles are a bit hard and can take quite a while to figure out. Other than that there's really not much to say about what makes this game bad.

The Bottom Line
A Brilliant game that needs to be in any gamers collection, adventure game fans will enjoy this a lot.

The Good
There is something to enjoy in almost every aspect of "broken sword". Graphics first... they're just amazing for the time, and still very find by today's standarts. Professionally animated characters evolve on beautifully drawn backgrounds. Sounds... Well, the game featured full voice acting. And incredibly long dialogs, so it's pretty amazing they managed to put all this digitized speech on just two CDs. Music is also nice, though there are not so many moments when it can be heard. Gameplay... The puzzles were of a fine level of difficulty. Nothing dreadfully illogical. Of course, it has a couple of challenging moments, but I think reasonably patient folks will not have to get the help of a walkthrough more than once or twice. And this will probably be during the few puzzles that require timing. Story... the story is involving and draws you back to the game. Lasting appeal... Well, once you've solved the game, you'll probably not come back, but the whole experience is decently long, so it's pretty good value for money.

The Bad
The graphics when you are in Paris are magnificent... but sometimes, when you're in other countries, they're slightly inferior (especially in Ireland) The voice acting is sometimes a little questionnable. The story is sometimes hard to understand, especially towards the end... it's not always easy to relate the clues you find to the conclusion your character is drawing.

The Bottom Line
This adventure game must not be ashamed when it is compared to Lucasarts masterpieces : they're on the same glorious level ! While the humour is far from being as wacky as, say, "monkey island", it's still very funny, because your character can't stop using light irony (at least light enough so it doesn't get irritating). Solving the mystery of the temple knights is really a thrilling adventure I recommend to everyone.

The Good
When i played the Broken Sword demo (Circle of Blood in america) i felt that this game had something in special... Some time passed and i made of my own a copy of that game, joining George Stobbart in his adventures was a great pleasure, really great animations with an adult-cartoon feel, great atmospheric music and tons of ironic humor by our 'american hero' Stobbart. We will travel to a lot of locations (something i always liked in a game) and meet some charismatic characters, some of them will help you and some of them are just waiting for the moment to bring you down, very neat in overall.

The Bad
I really felt annoyed by the bloody disc swapping system, when you had to travel from a location to another one that 'insert disc' screen showed up, maybe having divided the game in two parts (CD1 and CD2) would have been more comfortable. There is a little inconvenient i found, maybe there is too much content in the dialogues and that can become boring in some situations.

The Bottom Line
If you like games like Gabriel Knight or other mystery/investigation games you should try Broken Sword, a masterpiece.