Broken Sword 4: The Angel of Death (2006)

This game takes everything that's good about the Broken Sword series and ignores 90% of it. The characters and environments are somehow worse than the respectable ones in BS3, the locations are rather mundane and boring, the plot is bland and relies heavily on a completely unexplained substance that might as well be called "magic powder", and worst of all, the puzzles suck- most of them consist of either annoying pixel hunts or complete guessing, with absolutely no hint as to what you're supposed to be doing and an inventory of around 20 items, most of which are useless. The puzzles that do make sense are usually too easy and ultimately unsatisfying. The game's strengths are the voice acting and a few characters that are actually likeable (Archie, I'm looking at you), but the dialogue has been severely trimmed down compared to previous games and isn't as well written. A plus is that the stealth portions of the game now rely mostly on puzzles rather than running around with bad controls (and the parts with running are pretty easy), and the infamous box puzzles from Broken Sword 3 are used very sparingly here. Unfortunately, they've been replaced with a hacking minigame that is used way too much. While more interesting than the boxes, it has its problems. The hardest hacking puzzle is part of a two-part timed puzzle, and if you run out of time during the second part, you have to do the hacking all over again. Other hacking puzzles require use of a double-sided mirror icon, which you are never told about and which looks so similar to the regular mirror icon that you might not even realize it exists. The controls are broken- often the inventory won't appear or the game will refuse to acknowledge that you're clicking on things. One cutscene ends with you stuck in a pedestal and I'm still not sure how I managed to eventually get free. There are stairs that you can go up but not down- better not save up there or you'll have to start the entire game over! Unforgivable.

While the third episode has boring puzzles and camera control but a good story that manages to keep you going, this one has more interesting puzzles (a part from the hacking puzzles that i think they are out of place) and a better controls. You can use both keyboard and mouse and you can rebind keyboard buttons (you can bind the movement keys to WASD for example), so the various review that criticize the player's movement i think they are a little biased. The problem lies in the story, it manages to keep you interested for a little but then it becomes boring and uninspired. I would give three stars, but even here you can skip dialogues so 2 stars.

The puzzles feels way too random and have some obscure requirements. In a good game I never use walkthroughs and always get "in sync" with what the devs were thinking at the time. But after several tries over many years to get through this came (I quit because of boredom or frustration), I caved in and just finished this game with a walkthrough. I was very surprised and frustrated by many of the solutions. The controls are awful, I don't understand how it got so bad. The graphics are of it's time, but the areas you explore still feel so empty and shallow. I think it's a combination of not enough decoration and the unresponsive UI as you hover over things. Give me some input when I hover over things, let George comment on things that are unrelated! Give the scene some history! Then again, that requires puzzles that makes sense, so it's obvious all of that is unrelated so it doesn't become clutter/time sinks... The story is what it is, but it is Broken Sword with all the characters you'd expect. Do you love Broken Sword? Play this, but have a walkthrough close by to get past obstacles that might make you quit or spend hours on with an unsatisfying solution.

I've played this game one time. I hate it. I love Broken Sword 1 and 2, but this... this was the last game I ever bought at retail price of $60 on launch. It was released in january 2007 so that's almost 16 years of me not buying games at launch price ever again. This game costs $1.19 on sale. This is by far one of the biggest let downs in my entire life. Don't buy this game, it sucks.

How far the mighty has fallen... Count me among the few people who actually enjoyed the third Broken Sword. I was hoping this one would be at least as good, but unfortunately it's pretty much a mess from the getgo. With a pretty terrible plot and initial puzzles, it fails to draw you in and doesn't feel at all like a proper adventure game.