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Broken Sword Duo Revisited
 This review is a topical update of the two Quandary reviews written by Gordon Aplin:- Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars dated November 1996 and Broken Sword 2: The Smoking Mirror dated October 1997. It would be superfluous for me to write an in depth evaluation of these two games. Instead, I highly recommend reading these two Quandary reviews.
Game titles can be confusing. The identical USA published version of BS-1 is entitled Circle of Blood although it is one of the most cheerful and bloodless computer Quest/Adventure games ever released.
I missed these games when they were first released and indeed it was only due to the abovementioned reviews that I ordered them from USA and just recently finished playing them. Were those fairly glowing reviews justified then, and more to the point now at the start of the new millennium? The short answer to both is a resounding YES ... and to spare.
Copyright © Len Green 2000.
All rights reserved.
First and possibly foremost, how do these games run, both on older computers and particularly on newer ones? Again, the brief answers are excellently on all counts. The listed system requirements for both games are quite humble by today's standards. Unfortunately however 'older' games designed primarily for DOS &/or Windows 3.x (and sometimes even Windows'95) frequently give severe technical troubles when playing on today's high-end computers ... often producing massive frustrations. Not so the two Broken Swords! I have an 'ancient' 4½ year old Pentium (100 MHz, 16 MB) which has never been upgraded and a new 'state of the art', and have played each game extensively on both. I encountered no troubles with either game on either computer. This is a great achievement in itself considering the installation problems and crashes I have experienced on my new computer with several other older games ... and for that matter even with some of the very latest games which are supposed to be designed specifically for up-market computers.
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