Next up we have The Three Musketeers. Based on the novel of the same name by Alexandre Dumas, you play as d'Artagnan, a young musketeer wanna-be who intends to enter the Musketeers via a letter to the Monsieur De Treville, Captain of the Company of Musketeers, written by his father, who knows De Treville well. Unfortunately, d'Artagnan is ambushed along the road to Paris and his letter and other belongings are stolen from him.

The game begins with this, and for the most part mirrors the events of the novel. Narrative-wise, the story is linear, but as you play, you can wander around at your leisure before triggering events that progress the story by speaking with various personages.

You navigate the towns and countryside by point-and-clicking your way, though the eight-way travel would have been easier with the use of directional keys. To speak with someone, you have to click on them, and you can only progress through the conversation by clicking on the respective dialogue balloons; clicking anywhere else won't work, which can be annoying.

Occasionally, you'll be granted the option to choose what your response will be to a situation or question. As honor is an important consideration in this world, how you choose to respond to events is of importance. Sometimes it isn't clear how your response will affect events, meaning, presumably, that only later will the result become clear. Other times, what you say will lead directly into a duel.

Duels are common and plentiful in The Three Musketeers, and they play out in a very sedate way. You and your opponent will fight with almost no action required from you at all. You or your opponent will occasionally take damage as a result of a thrust made entirely by the computer. Your only input comes when you observe your opponent suddenly sweating, which indicates a loss of focus on their part. Clicking on the opponent at that point causes d'Artagnan to thrust, taking away a huge amount of hit points from the enemy. Eventually the duel is over, and you can loot the corpse of whatever it was carrying.

Inventory acts much as it does in most games. Click on an item to get its attributes and current monetary worth. There is also a trio of personal traits to view: Attack, Defence, and Honour. Each item has some effect on these stats, and it's up to you to decide which trait to emphasize with each item. Attack and Defence are obvious; Honour affects which side quests you're allowed to tackle, and the greater your rating, the more respectfully other characters will treat you.

There is more to The Three Musketeers, like the tennis mini-game, but in the end, if you keep playing at all, it's likely to find out what happens next in the story. There is a definite flavor retained from the original work, and those who are unfamiliar with it might find enough in the game to consider reading the novel, while those who have read Dumas' masterwork might be either annoyed or amused by the way its story plays out in the context of the game. Regardless, it's worth checking out. Pick up the demo here on Big Download for both Mac and PC.