Broken Sword 3 - the Sleeping Dragon (2003) (2009)

Lost their way with this game, the pressure to go 3D completely ruined what made the series special. It feels like a broken Sword knockoff, with sterile, blocky environments that are completely lacking in detail, character, and atmosphere.The game looks like it’s permanently stuck in potato mode, which is such a far cry from the beautiful art style of the og 1-2 games—if your coming from remasters its a proper shock. The puzzles are mostly mind-numbing busywork: pushing boxes, climbing, and constantly running back and forth through the same areas. The story is good however and the voice acting is solid, but unfortunately, they’re trapped inside such a poor game that I’d honestly say it’s just not worth playing. Hopefully, one day, we’ll see games 3 and 4 get the treatment they deserve.

The franchise was never great on puzzles, but this one dropped the ball by substituting most of them with so many banal crate shoving rooms, "action" scenes, "platforming" and terrible stealth sequences. Because, of course, 2003, what else was there to do for point & click adventures than to turn into ugly 3D action games with poor controls? Though to be fair, this one doesn't look and play all that badly. Had it had some more actual puzzles, it could've been a solid entry, but, well, it hadn't. The story is all over the place and terribly drawn out, but they managed to make the characters a little more likable. I played it back then and I replayed it now and can see why I didn't remember anything about it ... it's totally forgettable.

The only point-and-click adventure game that successfully transitioned to a controller driven console adventure game. There are times where it feels like the game could've benefited from taking more from Tomb Raider than it did, but it still feels true to the games that came before. The only real downside is that a majority of the puzzles are a noticeable step down from the previous two entries.

Played 1 and 2 when I was in school. This was not what I expected, but also a great deal of fun. I had so much fun sitting down to pass th enet puzzle. To be clear, that is all it is, a series of unconnected puzzles, with a story. I also do like coming back to locations and re-visiting old places from BS1 and BS2. It is not deep, but it is fun.

great game!

Returning to this 20+ years later, more of it works than I expected. George and Nico remain a delight, as do the many weirdos they encounter. They're such a joy to spend time with, even if the character traits they're given in service of early 2000s humour feel clumsy, like Nico's flippant callousness and George's awkward, possessive jealousy. I also could have done without the under baked Chosen One angle for George. He works best as the every man who just happens to be there and doesn't need anything more than that to earn his place. The move to 3D is basically a bust, with a reliance on block puzzles that borders on obsession and too many instances of tedious traversal, but despite low detail polygons being a poor substitute for high detail illustrations, environments are still compelling and have enough of that Broken Sword vibe to carry them through. Shout out to the music too. It's not Barrington Pheloung but it has the same spirit of adventure and ties everything together nicely.