It's like MYST...ermm...NOT
First off, let me tell you a little bit about the background story. You take the role of the bespectacled Professor Samuel Hunt, who has been commissioned by the British Museum to head to the picturesque Spanish Village of Toledo on the hunt for a lost sword. Of course it’s not as simple as that and after chatting with many of the locals, there are some dark family secrets revealed and mystifying letters unraveled that ultimately threaten to disrupt the Professor’s mission.As far as a point and click adventure goes, the interface in Agon: Lost Sword of Toledo couldn’t be simpler. At the top right of the screen is a menu button allowing you to save your progress, an ‘inventory tab’ allowing you to open up your bag and view any items you’ve picked up on your travels and finally a ‘files’ tab where you can read through any letter you’ve collected or browse through conversations you’ve had with the locals.
Interaction involves moving the cursor over characters to converse with them or pixel-hunting around a location until you see a magnifying glass symbol. There’s also an interaction symbol which indicates that you may be able to do things such as unlock a door or drag something from your inventory to combine it with the object.
Like some of the classic adventure games, such as Myst, the static pre-rendered backgrounds are lifeless, but the action is brought to life by the 3D character animations.
You move the Professor round from the first person perspective and can rotate 360 degrees to look around the environment. Moving forward is simply carried out by clicking on an arrow to move in that direction. It’s a formula that has worked well enough in the past, but it’s fairly restrictive as you need to follow set paths around the town and it doesn’t allow you to explore an area as much as you’d like. It’s also an extremely slow way to move around the environment, made worse by the fact that you need to wait for loading screens when you enter houses or if you pass from one section to another. However, if you’ve enjoyed the likes of Myst or The Last Express in the past, it’s nothing that should irritate you too much.
The problem with Agon: Lost Sword of Toledo is that it combines this snail-paced approach to moving around the locations with reams of lengthy character dialogue. You spend most of your time just listening to background information about characters and their pointless ramblings, but the combination of the two makes for a really dull gaming experience.
The voice acting is professional enough, with the upper-crust English accent of the Professor being played with great aplomb, but he speaks so slowly at times there were moments when I just wanted to put my foot through the screen and give him a kick up the arse.
