As much as I liked the first two games of the series, I can't deny the fact that The Sleeping Dragon was a huge disappointment. It's like in everything the developers have taken a step or two backwards. I believe Charles Cecils idea was to bring classic adventure games to the present day and make them more appealing for gamers who find p&c- games too hard. Didn't work.
So what he did, he ripped mouse-driven controls off, and replaced them with crappy keyboard only-controls. Combine that with switching camera-angels and 3D environments and you have a mess on your hands. Ok, in the end the controls work almost decently, but still my poor keyboard took too many angry punches from me. And not because of the puzzles.
Talking about the puzzles. They do still exist, but in many places they've been altered to look more "exiting" and "dynamic". So now you have to push square boxes all the time to cross something like a meter-high obstacle. Without exception these puzzles are really, really easy, and I got really pissed when it took more time to push the boxes in place than to solve the problem.
In 3D-world some puzzles are of course about jumping. Same problem as with the boxes, the puzzle is easy, but getting to the destination takes forever. Jumping and climbing is clumsy, completely automated and painfully slow. You walk forward, push a button, watch a clumsy animation and repeat for X-times.
In the beginning the storyline is good, but as time goes on it falls to the kind of unnatural end of the world-thing that I don't personally like very much. In the end I was like "Meh, that's just sad".
For the fans of the series BS3 is worth playing, but I wouldn't recommend this to anyone else. If you are looking for a good 3D puzzle-point&click-adventure, play Gabriel Knight 3.
