Broken Sword 4: The Angel of Death (2006)

Far from the first two masterpieces, the third and fourth episodes of Broken Sword suffered some damages from the 3D period. But they're still good, just about. This one adjust some faults of the 3 : no more boring puzzles with cubes, the difficulty of the enigmas is really fine. You can also die and try again without thinking of saving, I love that. The characters are a success, very funny. Mixed feelings : a bit short game, not a lot of locations and countries. The dialogues are between the very good and the very bad... very unequal ! The scenario is fine too, but I prefer the entire story of The Sleeping Dragon by far. Now the bad : controls are some kind of poor. Yes, sure I prefer the mouse controls, but the pathfinding and the actions that don't answer often make me on my nerves. Above all, the cutscenes are, my God, really bad. Desynchronized speeches, failed effects, clumsy cracks, Z movie action scenes... The game is full of awkward moments. Nver forgetting the Broken Sword touch : worst ending ever, ten seconds cutscene with credits and a song (beautiful but unrelated). Sadly a forgettable adventure game, indeed with the Revolution Software experience. But I guess these guys must focus on their 2D savoir-faire.

The 4th installment of the Broken Sword series. Too bad it was only released on PC because console gamers really miss out on this one. The humor and basic story line is the same as in the first 3 releases, but this time they overworked the somewhat broken controls of part 3 and made them much better. The character movement is still dependant on the camera angle (which still isn't a great idea, imo) but I got the feeling that the camera doesn't change directions so often anymore, which really is a relief. You also have the option to "point and click" and George will execute your command to the best of his abilities. He can climb ledges or jump over small gaps with a simple mouse click now, no need to press action buttons anymore. It's a great game and if you liked the first 3 games (or maybe only the first 2?) you will love this one.

Broken Sword 4 is one of those games that is so bad that I keep thinking about it in my head, over and over again. What went wrong with this game? I'm a fan of the first three Broken Sword games. A lot of people don't like Broken Sword 3, but I enjoyed it and was hoping to like this one as well, but almost nothing about the game worked for me. This has one of the most fragmented and inexplicable plots in adventure games. It seems like Revolution ran out of time and money to keep making the game and had hurry up and ship whatever they could muster. The latter half of the game feels like a plot outline that's missing the connective tissue, with important characters just showing up with no explanation or reason. They are just there to push the game towards one of the most abrupt and unsatisfying endings I've ever seen. As many other reviewers have said, the interface is also terrible. For some reason pointing and clicking has never been more frustrating, with the need to search for tiny hotspots, abrupt camera changes making it confusing to move George around, and its even difficult to walk into other rooms because of how the engine works. As far as the characters, it was nice to play as George again, with the same voice actor returning. Nico sounds nothing like the previous three Nicos, and feels off the whole game. Unlike many, I liked the new character of Anna Maria, but she just feels underwritten, and I wish they had given her more interetesting stuff to do or say. Overall, if you are a fan of the series I would suggest going in with low expectations. Maybe you'll enjoy it more than I do. If you aren't a fan of the series, don't play this game.

This version works better than the one on steam. The game can look quite beautiful at times, though it's quite a bit uglier than BS3, despite having better character models. The animation, in particular, clearly suffered in this game, and you can literally see the budget running out as you go through the game. There's quite a bit of inconsistency in the puzzles: some objects can only be interacted with after you've done some other, often unrelated tasks. This means that you never know if an object is just scenary or if it's interactible. It's a particular bad variety of pixel hunting. The story is enjoyable, even if we've seen similar plot points before. It's certainly worse than 1 and 3 and 5, but maybe better than 2?

The controls in this game will drive you nuts. It is also a resource hog. Some people won't like the 3d nature. However, I don't mind the 3d aspect. It does detract from the charm, but I think it makes the world have more immersion. A lot of things would have not been possible with a 2d hand drawn and animated game. I thought the story was okay, and it was well worth picking up on sale. I'm a fan of the series so I enjoyed the game.