Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon

Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon brings back the beloved duo of heroes George Stobbart and Nico Collard in the fourth installment of the classic adventure series. Compared to previous entries, it abandons purely hand-drawn 2D graphics in favor of a three-dimensional environment and a freely controllable camera, but retains the traditional adventure framework — exploring locations, collecting and combining items in an inventory, conversations with characters featuring numerous dialogue branches, and solving puzzles built on logic and observation of the surroundings.

The story links an ancient Mayan prophecy about the end of the world with a modern conspiracy plot full of secret societies, and the player travels with the duo of protagonists across several world locations, from Prague to Central America. On Xbox, the adventure's controls were adapted to the gamepad, which, for a genre traditionally tied to mouse and clicking, required some getting used to and brought minor action sequences, sneaking, and simple combat — though the result remained playable on console, if not always as elegant as mouse control. The music and voiced dialogue carry the characteristic humor and lightness for which the Broken Sword series was always known, even though the tone of the fourth installment shifted at times toward more serious and darker territory.

Reviews were mixed — part of the critical reception welcomed the return of the beloved characters and the honest adventure puzzles, while other reviewers criticized the more awkward 3D controls, a less intuitive camera system, a lower pace, and simplified puzzles compared to the previous, purely two-dimensional entries in the series. Nevertheless, The Sleeping Dragon remains an important testament to the fact that the classic point-and-click adventure could find its way onto consoles and adapt to gamepad controls, and fans of the series still rate it today as a dignified, if not flawless, continuation of the beloved brand, especially thanks to the returning duo of main heroes and their chemistry.

Why play it: Fans of the series will be delighted by the return of the beloved duo of heroes and their chemistry, though the more awkward 3D controls and simplified puzzles make Sleeping Dragon only a dignified, not flawless, continuation.