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.
I had this for the N64 years ago, and am pleased to find that the PC version is nearly as good, though it's a bit harder to pull off moves like barrel rolls without the convenient closely-spaced buttons of a controller. If you're expecting something along the lines of X-Wing or TIE Fighter, you might be disappointed- this game is largely ground-based rather than in outer space, there's no intrigue or inspecting containers or taking apart capital ships pieces by piece- you just blow stuff up real good, and occasionally protect your Rebel allies from enemy fighters. That said, blowing stuff up is actually a lot of fun! This game has a lot of good points- a decent variety of craft to choose from, bonus unlockable levels and vehicles, hidden upgrades to your shields and weapons to be collected, and a range of environments and objectives that manages to stay interesting and exciting. Getting gold medals on all missions is a difficult but fair challenge, the game has decent voice acting (though some lines are used a bit too often), and the graphics were very good in their day- spectacular in terms of the N64, and certainly enough to keep the game enjoyable even today. So what are the bad points? The worst one is the draw distance, which is far shorter than it should be, to the point where tripping an AT-AT walker will lead to it vanishing in fog when the camera zooms out slightly in the short cutscene that's triggered. It's annoying not seeing things until you're almost on top of them, and this isn't a problem I remember in the N64 version. Second, there's a bug where the default camera doesn't lock onto your craft and it will zoom out infinitely- easily fixed by switching camera angles as soon as the missions starts, but a pain if you don't realize what's going on. Lastly... well, there are RIGHT ANGLES in the freaking Death Star trench, but I guess we can chalk that one up to an alternate history version of events, sort of like Rebel Assault. ;)
I'm giving this three stars because I kind of see how it could be enjoyable to someone who played it back when it came out, or who has more patience for figuring out its convoluted controls- the concept is nice, but the execution is cumbersome, slow and confusing. I gave it a fair try to see if I could get into it, but it's just too complex, too abstract, and too boring and slow. This game is in dire need of a series of in-game tutorials, but instead it has C-3PO say a few words and then throw you into the game with no idea what you're doing. There apparently is a tutorial in the manual, but it's a bit much to take in, and I really wish they'd followed the philosophy of "show, don't tell". So to sum it up: maybe good, but I didn't feel like putting in the long, long hours needed to learn how to play- after a couple hours trying in vain to figure out how to properly deploy ambassadors and spies and ships and failing to achieve any desired results, I threw in the towel. I will say that I didn't encounter any of the graphical bugs that people have been mentioning, though.
I'm a fan of RTS games, and I was looking forward to this despite the prequel campaigns. To my surprise, I couldn't even force myself to finish it. The game is straight-up boring. All the factions are nearly identical aside from a few minor faction-specific bonus upgrades, and it gets very old very fast seeing the exact same unit with a different skin. This repetition also strains suspension of disbelief when you switch from, say, Wookiees to droid soldiers, yet are still having to build farms to feed them. The graphics haven't aged well and look rather ugly, though I'm sure they were fine for their time. The environments are all very similar, mostly grassy plains with lots of trees (some of which, inexplicably, are Earth species like oak or pine), and most planets are indistinguishable. The plot is bare-bones "attack this base and destroy it" fare, and every mission feels about as exciting as watching paint dry. Worst of all, the entire game is utterly glacial- you'll be spending most of the time waiting for your units to sloooooowly shamble from one area to another, even on the fastest setting, and every building takes an eternity to destroy, even with an army of fully upgraded artillery. Compounding this is the terrible pathfinding, which results in your units constantly backtracking and running in circles as they trip over each other, sometimes stopping dead, sometimes going the opposite direction or getting stuck behind trees- even ranged units that have a clear line of fire will often wander around, confused and lost, if ordered to attack a building a few feet away. If the game weren't boring enough already, the music was so loud that it drowned out everything else, even on the lowest possible setting, so I had to turn it off completely and fight in silence. I'm sure it was a solid game back in its day, but nothing special even back then. Ignore the nostalgia-blinded reviews, this one isn't worth the money.
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.
Phantasmagoria is certainly a historically important game- one of the first FMV games, one of the first really big games spanning multiple CDs, one of the first to feature adult themes and explicit gore. But that doesn't make it a good game. The graphics are ugly and terribly fake, not blending at all with the live action parts. The characters inexplicably never change their clothes even though days pass. The acting is bad, really, REALLY bad, to the point where it's almost so bad it's good. The plot is convoluted yet cliche at the same time. The gameplay is a mess, and it's the sort of game where you wander back and forth hoping to trigger something rather than actually working towards a goal. The entire game seems to go out of its way to portray the main character as a very weak, helpless victim, powerless against her possessed husband and any other dangers she encounters- while this might be a way of building suspense, depending on your point of view, I found it frustrating and slightly offensive, and it gave the whole game an uncomfortable aura. I guess that could be considered a plus for some, but for me, it wasn't. So what's good about it? Aside from the entertainingly bad acting (I'm thinking of the lady in the gnome hat in particular), there's a reason this game is known for gore. While most of the game's gore is surprisingly tame, the death scenes at the very end are mind-blowingly graphic and merciless, far worse than even the majority of horror movies at the time, or possibly even today. It's actually very jarring and uncomfortable to go through the entire game with this character, only to be suddenly and brutally reminded that she's, well, made of meat. That sudden shock is probably the most effective thing in the game (and, given the game's time limit in the end, you're likely to see it several times), but not worth struggling through the rest of the story to experience. Better to just find it on YouTube if you want to see what made the game famous.
Count me among the folks who never played this when it came out and find it boring, unscary and generally a mess. The plot is barely existent and poorly explored, with only brief, badly-acted FMV clips here and there to explain what's going on. Navigating the mansion is slow and tedious, and while it's spooky in an Addams Family kind of way, this is by no means a horror game, unless your idea of horror is a kids' Halloween special. Maybe it holds a special place in the hearts of some gamers, but speaking as someone who isn't blinded by nostalgia, it hasn't aged well. At all. I'm giving it two stars rather than one because a lot of the puzzles, once you realize this is more of a puzzle game than an adventure or horror game, can be enjoyable and are fair for the most part. I'm an old-school gamer and have patience for stuff like the maze or the cake puzzle, things that probably wouldn't fly in a modern game but are fun for those who appreciate them. However, I draw the line at sadistically difficult, unfair crap like the infamous soup cans puzzle or, worst of all, the absolutely impossible microscope puzzle. These two make the game uncompletable without a walkthrough and, like much of this game, are better left in the past.
