Circle of Blood, released in Europe as Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars, puts players in the role of the vacationing American George Stobbart, who finds himself at the center of a mystery after surviving a bomb blast outside a Parisian café. With screens designed by the renowned Don Bluth Studios, this animated film-like adventure features a soundtrack by composer Barrington Pheloung, who produced the music for the feature film Nostradamus, and a capable cast of voice actors engaging in humorous and smart dialogue.
Utilizing a "smart-cursor" click-and-point interface, players collect objects and inventory items, deal with dozens of NPCs (friendly and antagonistic), search out clues and hints, accumulate phone numbers and conduct interviews as they try to unravel the plot involving a sinister manuscript associated with the medieval Knights Templar. In true Indiana Jones style, George's adventure will take him to the sewers of Paris, museums, exotic ruins, and more as he becomes embroiled in a quest to save the world from megalomaniacs who want to use the manuscript for nefarious purposes.
Circle of Blood is the first part in the Broken Sword series. It is a third-person point-and-click adventure entirely in 2D. The player controls George Stobbart, an American tourist spending his autumn vacation in Paris. He barely escapes a bombing of a café and decides to investigate the clues left behind by the killer. This eventually leads him to a mystery dating back to the legend of the Knights Templar.
The game is entirely in 2D and gameplay is in typical point-and-click fashion. The player moves the character around using the mouse, examines the environment, talks to other people and collect items stored in an inventory. These items need to be used or combined with other items to solve puzzles. George gets help from Nicole Collard, a French journalist.
The story has been divided into eleven chapters and takes place in locations such as Paris, Ireland, Syria, Spain and Scotland.
Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars is a cartoon style adventure game. At the very opening of the game you will be sitting down for a cup of coffee at a French café when it is all of a sudden blown up. This explosion ends up killing the overly mysterious Monsieur Plantard. Then your character George is attempting to track down whom ever had done this which takes you from the sewers of Paris all the way too Scotland. Throughout your travels you will begin to learn about the Knights Templar and their treasure. During your travels you will have encounters with many people who will help or attempt to stop your adventure, even attempting to kill you.
When it comes to game play the game is very simple interactively. You will use your cursor that will change its shape to represent the action that you want to do. The action will display when your cursor goes over a spot that will allow an action. A mouth will appear when you are able to talk with someone, a hand will appear when you have the ability to pick the item up, and a gear will appear when you are able to use an item. Even if an item doesn't appear you will be able to right click your mouse, which will then allow you to look before you decide if you want to take the intended action.
The conversations that you will participate in throughout the entire game can be very interesting and actually get to the point of information. The conversation aspect allows you to get an extra personal feel of your character. The game has been very well scripted allowing the game to become very put together. In some instances you won't have much control of how the conversation goes, but this is normally when the plot takes you to another step in the story. When these conversations begin the mode will change and then your inventory will show at the top part of the screen. There will then be a display of the people and items that you have learnt about appearing on the bottom of your screen. This will allow you to pick one of the items to select it for the topic in the conversation. Your character will ask questions by myself that are related to your topic of selection and once everything has been asked you'll be required to exit the conversation mode.
There are many areas throughout the game that you will travel through which can be very interesting and some quite smelly. The game has a wide range of locations and every single one is more unique then the next. Some of these places you will get to go through and experience are sewers, costume shops, the police station, Hotel Ubu, and many more. Each of these places is just as interesting as the previous. There is so much going on throughout each of the locations you travel through that the game can get overwhelming with information. If it weren't for the inventory there would be no possible way to keep track.
The visual appeal of the game does have a lot of animation done to every aspect of the graphical design. The game has been done very similar to how a cartoon would be designed but you have more control over. Everything about the game has amazing detail and is definitely colorful. The characters look like cartoon characters you'd watch on television. The entire game has been animated and been taken to the next step in the gaming world. With everything being so well done graphically the music would have had to be done just as well. There is music throughout the game, but with the amount of conversation that takes place it isn't too noticeable. Of course everything about the design of this game fits nicely together. There has been lots of thought put to the overall completion of Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars.
Throughout the entire game you will be solving many puzzles while you are traveling around. You wouldn't expect a puzzle solving adventure game to be as well done as this one. The game hasn't been designed to be too difficult, but just hard enough to make it a little challenging. The entire game has over sixty different people that you will be speaking to, each having just as unique of a story as the previous one. With the vast locations to be traveling through, ranging over seventy places, the game is endless with possibilities. Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars is definitely a game designed for the gamers who love adventure games that have been taken to the next level. This game is by far the most fascinating adventure game you will ever experience.
How to run this game on modern Windows PC?
People who downloaded Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars have also downloaded:
Broken Sword 2: The Smoking Mirror, Broken Sword 3: The Sleeping Dragon, Broken Sword 2.5: The Return of the Templars, Black Mirror, The, Secrets of the Ark: A Broken Sword Game, 7th Guest, The, Black Mirror II: Reigning Evil, Discworld 2: Mortality Bytes
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