In Broken Sword 1: Shadow of the Templars (a “point & click” graphical adventure game), an American tourist named George Stobart teamed up with French journalist Nicole (Nico) and saved the day from some deranged followers of an order that believed themselves to be the modern-day incarnation of the Knights Templar. It was enormously successful, and naturally needed a sequel…

Overview

Set shortly after the end of the first game, Broken Sword 2: The Smoking Mirror sees Nico kidknapped and, after a short cut scene, George about to be burned alive and / or eaten by a giant spider. You get thrown into the action immediately, which is great – no “setting the scene for a few hours before you actually get to do anything interesting” here! (The plot continues with Mayan mysteries aplenty... well it makes a change from those Templars!)

First Impressions

It all looks like the original only more so, and the opening cut scene was definitely more impressive than the original. The opening half and hour of playing time promised much, and happily it wasn’t giving false hope…

Interface

The interface has been improved since the first game. It’s still essentially the same in that the mouse cursor changes to an action when you’re over an object that can be examined or manipulated. The inventory now appears on the bottom instead of the top of the screen, which is now permanently inhabited by the load / save / options menu etc. This means the inventory items are not visible to select in conversations unless they are relevant, which saves a bit of time. You can of course try objects on characters in the game. There are a lot more inventory items in this than in the first game too – lack of them was one of the complaints I had about the original. Only subtle changes to the interface then, but well thought-out changes. It works very well, and if you’ve played the original it will seem like second nature already. (Of course it’s possible that, like me, you keep pressing Escape when you don’t need to… [sigh[… old habits die hard…)

Another nice touch is the fact that this time, you swap between controlling George and Nico for different sections, adding a bit more variety to the game. (Also if you try to get Nico to do something stupid, her reply will often by – “No – that’s the sort of thing George would do”!)

Difficulty

The puzzles seem better balanced than in the first game. They’re still challenging, of course, but seem more logical throughout and don’t rely on happening to be able to read the designer’s mind (or at least a walkthrough) to know exactly how to complete them. One puzzle near the end of the game (involving a Mayan machine) was, I thought, brilliant – but has been described elsewhere as “one of the most frustrating puzzles in adventure game history”!! So it takes all sorts, I guess…

There’s also less pixel-hunting to be done, which is obviously a good thing!

The most difficult thing in the game is trying to understand what George sees in Nico – she’s almost as annoying as Lois Lane…

Aesthetics

The graphics in the first game were good, but the backgrounds seem even more detailed and the animations more complex, resulting in an extremely good-looking game. (3D freaks will still be perturbed by its 2D nature, but they can always play the third game in the series…) As mentioned earlier, the cut scenes are definitely superior quality, too.

The sound effects are appropriate and the music is much improved, with over 2 hours of original music by Barrington Pheloung. (Apparently he is Britain’s premier composer – I’m not keen on modern classical composers as a whole, but the music in this game is good enough to make me think about searching out some of his compositions.) The voice acting is extremely good, and the humour works far better in this game than the first, being consistently funny throughout the game.

Will You Still Be Playing it in 6 Months’ Time?

I don’t think it will take you the full 6 months to complete if you’re the sort that plays one game exclusively (if it captures your interest of course) until you finish it, but it’ll take you a fair time to complete, and you’ll have a very enjoyable time doing so. The plot is maybe not quite as complex as the first game but is still very interesting and involving.

Is it Worth the Money?

Absolutely. Being available on budget from Sold Out Software means that it could cost as little as £3.33 (their titles are £4.99 each with buy 2 get one free, and free UK shipping). Tremendous value for money.

Minimum Recommended System Specs

Pentium Processor, Windows 95 / 98 / Me (works fine on XP too!)

4x CD-ROM Drive

16Mb RAM

2Mb DirectX 5.0 compatible SVGA Graphics Card

DirectX compatible sound card

Mouse & Keyboard (duh)
66Mb free HDD space (recommend 260Mb)

Compatability

It’s fully XP compatible though it doesn’t actually claim to be.

If you’re having problems with it saying it can’t find the CD-ROM and you have two drives (i.e. one CD-ROM and one DVD-ROM), try it in the other drive. This will normally work. (With the first game it also was necessary to for me to alter the setup.ini file, but not with this one.)

Problems

There were a couple of small problems in the game, it crashed once (walking towards the crates at the back of the antique dealers’ place in France – save when you go in there just in case!), and there was one point where if you did the right things but in the wrong order, you couldn’t get any further. (Near the end of the game… I’m not going to go into too much detail, but fix the lift at the bottom of the pyramid before walking over to the left and talking to the guards.)


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Final Ratings

Graphics: - 88% - detailed backgrounds, complex animation, some of the best 2D graphics I’ve ever seen.

Sound: - % - 91% - great voice acting and very atmospheric music.

Playability: - % - 89% - the interface is easy to use and the slight alterations made from the first game are improvements.

Longevity: - 77% - you’ll probably actually complete this quicker than the first game, but that’s because the puzzles are more reasonable so I’m not knocking it for that!

Replay Value: - 68% - because it’s a lot of fun and quite funny, you may go back to this eventually. It suffers from the same problem all graphical adventures do – once you’ve completed it… that’s it really.

Value For Money: - 86% - an excellent adventure game

Overall Rating: - 85% - a great game, might well have been 5 stars if not for the problems I encountered and the slightly short time to complete it.



Related Links

Broken Sword


The Monkey Island Archives (MI1-3)
Escape from Monkey Island (MI4)

Grim Fandango

Bladerunner

Discworld: Noir


Law & Order 2: Double or Nothing


See also: Top 100 Games of All Time (part 2)

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My Top Ten Commercial Graphical Adventure Games


Recommended: Yes