Well, you have been warned. They added nothing new, same stuff all over again and the ending was literally a slap in the face.

As for the sequels, there is actually a sequel released parallel with the main game on Nintendo DS called The Fallen King. You start right after the first game and Prince travels alone. He is soon joined by a mage, but this time the mage is not just Quick Load with breasts. Every new area adds new types of obstacles and the mage gets new abilities; lifting boulders, something like a grappling hook, shield for the Prince... You need to control both of them to pass obstacles and in fights. The game is low budget title, touch controls are often clumsy and it lacks polish, but at least they had some good ideas.

Broken Sword 2: The Smoking Mirror (1996) (Linux)

It falls below first one, but it's still decent point&click adventure. I miss a bit that great sense of humour and perfect dialogues of the BS1. I've also found some of puzzles a bit annoying and illogical, but it is always very subjective. I still liked the story, the atmosphere of great adventure. I liked that it's possible to die here (there was no deadly mistakes in BS1) and I liked that the game still awards curiosity by interesting comments and dialogues when you're trying everything-on-everything approach (as a poor gamer I often use brute force strategy, to be honest;). That's so much better than "I can't do this" you hear thousand of times in different p&cs.

List of all games completed in 2018.

I love the BS series. I'm currently playing Broken Sword 3 for a second time and think it's very much underrated and if you're a fan of the first 2 you it owe it to yourself to play it.

I'm going to probably give Broken Sword 4 a go next. Mine is a hard copy though and needs patching to get it to work.

5 moves back to 2d and is similar in graphical style to the first 2 games

Devil May Cry 4 SE (Xbox One)

The last one I needed to play to finish the full series. It gets full marks for its graphical style and sharp graphics, something I like over the current modern trend of overdone post processing effects. Also the story made a bit more sense than the first three games.

The gameplay started well and I was enjoying it up to about halfway. But then, as part of the story you switch characters and then back track your way through the entire game in reverse order, fighting the exact same bosses. It feels like the devs were running out of time and given an ultimatum - get the game shipped or else. So they just used what they had, but backwards. Then for the end game they at least did something different right? No they didn't, you actually fight through all the bosses again.

Add in the usual Japanese style boss fights...you know the type where you're kicking ass like an ass kicking machine and fully deplete the bosses health bar. At which point you win the fight right? No, actually you go to a cutscene where the boss is fully recovered again, stops and has a chat, smacks YOUR ass down and escapes. Every single boss fight. It gets old.

In the end I can't say that I really liked it. At least the first three games I liked the combat and had fun, but number 4 became a game that I was playing just to finish. Despite all the negative critics, my favorite game was the black sheep, the DmC reboot by Ninja Theory. But the first three games were still good as well. I hope they get the coming 5th part back on form.

At least I didn't need to buy it to play, since I got another month of game pass for $1.

Gorogoa

My only game completed this year. It only took 2 hours of my life, but was very diverting, which is exactly what I need right now.

Thanks. As I've got all of them from one of GOG Bundles, I'm going to play them all. To be honest, I didn't expected much from BS3-5. Thanks for giving me some hope ;)

You should also take a look at Imperial Glory.

Ori and the Blind Forest

Hallowed are the Ori. Awesome game with stunning visuals. Sometimes they were got in way of what is going on but nothing I couldn't stand. Controls are quite tight and I rarely had problem with them.
I played it on normal as I heard it is quite tough and while I think I would be able to do it on hard, I am satisfied with my choice as I never got too frustrated with it, not even with obstacles and enemies that I disliked.
It took me 8 hours 20 minutes of pure gameplay (the game has in-game counter) to beat the story and complete the game at some 85% and 9 hours 32 minutes to complete the game 100%.


My complete list.

I've completed all 5 Broken Sword games and I think 5 is an excellent game, and whilst 3 and 4 probably are the weakest in the series, they are both still well worth playing.

It's difficult for me to objectively compare the installments as I've played them over such a wide spread of time. However, if I had to put them in best to worst order it would be - 1, 5, 2, 4, 3.

Anyway, hope you have fun playing the rest of the series.

Thanks!
And considering aforementioned order - a bit sad considering that I'm just starting with 3, but, hey, when you're at the rock bottom it may be only better and better over time ;)

Hard West

I had a lot of fun with this one. I really enjoy turn based tactical combat, and this one had some good scenarios. Story was pretty enjoyable and I liked how you could choose to branch into different scenarios over the course of the game, as opposed to having to go strictly linear.

Expansion was good, with fun elements, but I didn't like how they changed the game systems with not a lot of explanation, more restrictions, and no description of what the cards' effects were.

Overall though, a solid purchase IMO, and a game I may revisit on hardest difficulty setting at a later time (I played on normal).

Finished Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, a solid shooter with sections that can be (at least partially) done with stealth. If you liked New Order, there's no way you won't like this one. A great game.

Full list here.

Hydrophobia Prophecy (PC)

This is a very ambitious indie game from 2011. The game is great from a technical perspective. Developers made a brand new game engine with impressive water physics I never seen in a video game before. The graphics are also great, cover system is well made, the player character is as acrobatic as Prince of Persia and can swim, dive, climb, jump... and you eventually also gain some physics based water powers (it's not magic, but nanobots).

https://i.imgur.com/jfCr5ii.png

But, while they obviously had great programmers, unfortunately it is quite obvious they failed as game designers. All the elements I listed went underused. The whole water physics engine is simply a gimmick, it looks fantastic, but water is not a threat at all. The game is set in a large floating city that is under attack and sinking. This was a fantastic opportunity to make an intense and thrilling game like the 1972 movie Poseidon Adventure, or something like Deep Blue Sea, where you are constantly running away from rising water, fixing machinery to pump water from flooded rooms, climbing, simply trying to survive. But instead you spend too much time shooting bad guys. The story is an interesting idea, it deals with population flood and Malthusian extremists, but is poorly developed and the main villain is straight out of a cartoon.

The game is OK overall, but it is such a shame, because it had so much potential to be much more. It just lacked a bigger budget and a lead designer with ideas. Unfortunately it sold poorly and developers went bankrupt.

Resident Evil Revelations 2 (Xbox One)

I actually played this on my PS4 (before I sold it, the PS4 that is). I liked the game, better than all Resi games in fact, except possibly Resi 4- though I have not played all of them. I decided to do a quick second play on Xbox since it's part of Game Pass and I got yet another month for $1.

So it's third person survival horror that can be played solo or 2 person co-op. You always have two characters that work together and in single player you need to switch between them to solve some of the simple progression puzzles. What surprised me this time was that I got a totally different ending. Different end boss sequences, different ending cutscenes. After doing some research it turns out my first play through was the bad ending and the one I got this time was the good ending. The decision point comes near the end of episode 3 and seriously, it was just plain luck which choice I made- there is no indication at all at the time as to which choice will eventually lead to the good ending. In fact there's no real indication that you're even making a choice!

The first episode is free, so there is no harm in trying before committing to purchasing the full game and it's WAY better than Resi 6...but everything is better than Resi 6.