Posted on: June 30, 2015
Hanglyman
Verified ownerGames: 444 Reviews: 143
Generally Good Despite The Box Puzzles
I liked the first Broken Sword a lot, but thought the second suffered from being too short and not very exciting or well-developed. The Sleeping Dragon makes up for that in spades with a dramatic, exciting plot with a real sense of danger and urgency, memorable villains (and better-developed characters in general), and well-designed environments. Transitioning to 3D can be a disaster- just look at Gabriel Knight 3, which made the jump long before it should have and as a result looks absolutely awful. Broken Sword 3 transitions more gracefully- while the graphics are a bit dated, they're generally up to the challenge, and many areas are actually quite beautiful. The character models look good and are expressive enough to get the job done. Unfortunately, while the graphics may not have suffered from the change to 3D, the gameplay has. The game contains many scenes involving climbing and jumping, several stealth sections, and, infamously, a few "quick time events" and far, far too many box puzzles. While these additions add some variety to the game, the stealth sections can be annoying, playing like Metal Gear Solid with horrible controls, and the box puzzles are boring filler- you'll spend literally 1/4 of the game shoving around crates. The quick time events serve no purpose other than to force you to replay a few minutes of the game if you weren't expecting to have to press a button at a random moment, and the fact that you can't skip any dialogue makes this even worse. Lastly, although it feels like a real accomplishment when you've defeated all the hardships the game throws at you, the ending is disappointingly short, lasting literally about a minute. Other than these issues, the puzzles are well done, and I found the game very enjoyable despite its flaws. The dialogue is good, the plot is interesting and exciting, and there are even a couple emotional moments that really make you feel for the characters, something that 2 lacked. A solid entry in the series.
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