What is Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars/Circle of Blood?

Circle of Blood promised a lot — good story, good animation — all in a traditional graphical adventure-type game. Promises, promises.

Despite offering a minimal installation of 18MB, the game refused to work without the maximum installation plus most extensions turned off. Virgin made no effort to tailor the skimpy manual to Mac users; every page makes reference to the right-hand mouse button. And universal Mac commands, such as Command-Q for Quit, don’t work, yet the Escape key controls the preferences.

Still, maybe the installation problems would be worth it. The introduction looked pretty great, and its music soared.

But....

The game played smoothly, the interview-and-inventory interface was familiar, if tired and, as the game progressed, it was clear that the plot was ambitious, intricate, and far more sophisticated than those in most adventure games. Yet, as we embarked on the adventure, we felt like Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight. Although the game takes place in Paris, most of the French characters speak with a Russian-Cockney accent. All the characters are stereotypes, from the chauvinistic French cop to the effeminate hotel concierge. And our hero, George Stobbart, made this American cringe. Sporting blow-dried blond hair, George makes Lassie look like Einstein. Even when we tried to play him close to the vest, à la Philip Marlowe, he would inevitably blurt out something moronic, such as, “Actually, I really did see the suspicious clown that you guys are trying to cover up....”

Circle of Blood is an ambitiously plotted adventure game with well-made graphics and for some, this will be more than enough. However, atrocious voice acting, a dumb protagonist, and a truly terrible installer makes this game less than a bloody good time.

Weisman, Robyn. (September 1997). Circle of Blood. MacAddict. (pg. 75).

Download Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars/Circle of Blood for Mac

Architecture

68K + PPC (FAT)

System Requirements

From Mac OS 7.0 up to Mac OS 9.2

Compatibility notes

Minimum Requirements

• MC68040 processor
• 16 MB RAM
• 18 MB hard disk available
• 8-bit color display
• 2X CD-ROM drive
• System 7.0

Emulating this? It could probably run under: Basilisk II