Broken Sword: Director's Cut

I was drawn to this game by a reviewer who compared it to some of my favorite LucasArts games, so I decided to give it a try. I really enjoyed it and will work my way through the other games in the series. I'm not a player who wants to fumble along for a really long time just to say I totally solved it, so I did use the hints from time to time. A game with progress hints built in is really nice, as was the notebook when I needed to consult past clues or get a number sequence right. There were little hints of adult humor that flashed past in the dialog, nothing that would keep me from letting my kids play it, but enough to make it fun. Congrats to the devs and many thanks to GOG for making this one available. It looks as though the original version is available among the additional files, if people are attached to the original. I wasn't, having never played this game before. Also, I stumbled onto the Broken Sword 2.5 game in the games listings here and looked it up. That will be fun to try out sometime. Oh, and this game gets my "Best Use of a Toilet Brush" award. Classic!

I still have this some where on CD, when games came in giant cardboard boxes and the game was called Circle of Blood. I can basically play the game on auto pilot because I can remember all the puzzles. I am not thrilled with this director's cut. FYI I'm currently in Ireland right now durring this play through. The stuff with Nico is fine, I guess, but it has absolutely no bearing on the story of the game. It feels tacked on which it absolutely is. Unfortunately that's not the biggest issue with this game. The animation is broken in places namely talking animations. George still has his animations for the most part but every single other character is frozen in place when you interact with them. I don't know if that's on purpose and the trade off was the new character pictures that are put in the top corners but if that's the case why leave George's animation? Pre drawn cutscenes are either not working in places or edited, dialogue seems changed or the blood is removed for some reason eg. Lockmourne car. That's not even to mention the audio weirdness. The new stuff is a distractingly differnent mix from the original voice lines. Some of the old lines aren't even mixed properly in the same conversation in ways I do not remember them ever being like. There are numerous places where the music swells to the point where I cannot hear what the characters are saying. Lastly, I don't know if there's a fail state anymore. Again, I've only gotten as far Ireland in this play through and maybe I'm dumb and missed it in this game but I swear that there was one, possilby two, places in the game where George would've been killed. One for sure I know is at the hotel involving the Flap and Guido. In this director's cut, the game would not let me progress until I solved the puzzle instead of letting me fail like I did years ago. Circle of Blood was a great point and click game that I remember fondly. Broken Sword feels like George Lucas came in and updated it.

I loved the original Broken Sword game, so I was happy that I got it for free during a giveaway. The Directors cut have some ups and down. The ups: - I have enjoyed Nico's story - highlighting the interactable areas - some people don't like but it's a great thing that happened in adventure games, and I'm glad it's here too! No more pixel hunting yay! - You can't die. This might lose us some cutscenes but at least we don't have to go way back if we forgot to save the game. - It's Broken Sword! The cons: - some cutscenes were cut and/or edited to be shorter which was unneccesary in my opinion. - (SPOILER) no blood in cutscenes...? Knives changed for guns in the last cutscene??? They were much better as they were originally. You can shoot a dude but you can't throw a knife in his neck? - Sometimes the sound quality change is jarring when it changes between the old and new dialogues. Overall, I enjoyed it, but I really miss the original cutscenes. :(

Not so long after the premiere of Broken Sword: Director's Cut we have a bonus: original version of the game!!! Now everyone who was sceptical and refuse buying the "new" version, can now have both games! My review is plain and simple: 5 stars for GOG.com!

Broken Sword was one of my favourite adventure game series growing up as a child. The Director's Cut doesn't disappoint. I think this version of the game was designed for Wii, though, and it shows. The newish cartoon style and animations look a little out of place, like someone just pasted these things over certain parts of the game. The original sound effects and voices are of lower volume than the new ones, which is rather annoying. Some of the cutscenes in the game have been modified (especially the end). Oke, so that's the bad things out the way. The good thing is that you get the original game with it, so if you don't like this new edition, you can play that instead. Another good thing is that you can play Nico (always a good thing, as she is my fave BS character), which you couldn't do in the original. The new edition also follows what Nico got up to whilst George was busy glob-trotting for clues. The back story provided is very detailed and makes sense when slotted into the remainder of the story. In other words, they didn't do an Austin Powers by not thinking of the storyline ahead of writing. All in all, and enjoyable experience and it's always nice to play as Nico. Not quite as good as the original, though.