Touché: The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer

Game review

Touché: The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer is an engaging point-and-click adventure game from 1995 that takes players back to 17th century France. In this game, you step into the shoes of Geoffroy Le Brun, aspiring to become the fifth musketeer, embarking on a series of captivating adventures. Players guide Geoffroy across France, solving intricate puzzles, meeting colorful characters, and engaging in sword-fighting duels. The game is known for its witty humor, extensive dialogues, and creative puzzles that draw you into an era filled with romance, intrigue, and heroic deeds. Touché: The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer stands out from other games in its genre with its humorous storytelling and vibrant historical backdrop, creating a unique and memorable gaming experience. The game not only entertains but also educates, offering a window into a historical period that allows players to enjoy themselves while learning about French history and culture.

The first thing you notice is the similarity with Monkey Island in almost every way. The main character looks like Guybrush Threepwood from the second part, the whole beginning at night is reminiscent of the first part by tuning, there are sword fights and of course humor. I can't say that I didn't have fun, because all the humor comes mainly from the dialogues of the main character Gofrey (or something like that) and his servant Henri. Gofrey is a fairly standard heroic character, while his servant is a lazy, gluttonous, smelly, dull and cowardly scumbag who is happy to throw down anything he can, especially his master.

The story is such a standard from the non-traditional environment of Dumas's Three Musketeers. A young musketeer enters the service, promises the dying man that he will find his will and, while searching for the murderers, becomes involved in a conspiracy to take over France by a cardinal. The story is told with ease, but without a single significant twist or tension. The heroes are forever penniless, hungry, and everyone fucks them. The creators stick to reality, until the end they can't resist and throw in a bit of modernity and magic. What got me was the ending where the hero successfully stops the cardinal, after which he learns that the content of the last will is Henri's legacy. And his girl, as a proper gold digger, goes for better. Here, the creators demonstrated a really mischievous sense of humor.

Gameplay is more or less fine, you control everything with one cursor, you just select individual actions with the right button. Combinations are sometimes killer, there is also pixelhunting (who on earth could have noticed the chalk?). The inventory is scrolling, so trying everything on everything when you don't know how to proceed is quite difficult. But it's nothing major. It can be said that it is playable even without instructions, I only watched it a few times.