Broken Sword 2: Remastered (2010)

These games are great!!!... intelligent, great story.. good characters... not just an insulting pixel hunt... Buy them all as GOG gets them!!!!

Nico isn't a very consistent character, through the game all her voice acting sounds forced and pretentious. She's supposed to be a french journalist but frequently uses more exotic english words than George. For instance she has no problem finding the words for "railway sleeper", but in the same scene is completely puzzled by the word "lbs" printed on a scale, I don't buy it. They should have just let George be the only playable character instead. Anyway, all in all a decent adventure with a few dumb and far fetched puzzles. The animated portraits aren't very good with their poor range of badly portrayed emotions (and why does George look more like Justin Bieber than himself?). A pretty negative sounding review this, but the rest of the game is well made, and it's worth a play-through if you liked the first game.

The story, the jokes are working, just like in it's predecessor, but the logic of some game elements feel forced (why can't I use the coal to hit the marker why do I need the cat's ball?) . Shadow of the Templar's gameplay felt more fluid - I rarely had to use hints. Here I feel some mechanics are not in place - when I know what is the solution of a puzzle still I cannot reach it, because the game want me to do too many extra steps (E.g. In the case of Conchita, even though I agreed with her that we have common enemies I have to go back and forth between places and talk to her again and again to get that detonator from her. It really just felt that the creators wanted to elongate the game more with these extra steps.) And that is a pity, because these silly little things pull me out of the game's world which I totally adore and I'd like to stay in it. Because the detective work is still very exciting.

I liked the first Broken Sword and Broken Sword II is a great sequel. What sets this apart from other adventures is its maturity (not so much through violence but through a mature use of language and the way it deals with sex and violence). The artstyle is also very pretty and fits the atmosphere. The game stays fresh and challenging and always gives you logical puzzles and no nonsense solutions. If you liked the first one, you will like this one as well.

Somehow I missed Broken Sword 2 in the 90's. Now, when I had a chance to play this game, I weren't disappointed: the game is, simply put, very good. The story, writing and even speech acting are solid work. The graphics and music are good. The interface is simple and hassle-free. Puzzles are logical and fun (although from time to time they have too much pixel-hunting). If you like good old point-and-click -adventure games, Broken Sword 2 isn't a game to miss. You'll certainly enjoy it.