Download Touche - The Adventures of the 5th Musketeer

Welcome to 18th century France, you are Geoffroi and you want to be... a musketeer! That is to say, you are already a musketeer, but you wish to be one of the greatest musketeers ever; which is of coarse no problem for a dashing strong man like yourself... ehm, right.

The story

You start off in the French city of Rouen armed with nothing but your sharp wit (and a sword and dagger just in case your wit isn’t as sharp as it should be). You have just set foot in the sleeping city as you hear a man crying for help. Being a mighty musketeer you rush (read: hobble) to the aid of the dying man. The poor soul identifies himself as William du Peuple and explains to you that he was on his way to Paris with his will as he was intercepted by bandits who, after mortally wounding him, stole his will. And so your adventure begins to recover the stolen will and bring it to Paris… needless to say the story does go deeper than just that.

The characters

You play Geoffroi, best described as a darker French version of Guybrush Threepwood. While often not the smartest man in a crowd, you do make up for that with your sarcasm. Accompanying you is Henry, your semi-loyal manservant who follows you in the hope that there might be some food on the way to your goal. Being a small, grubby and above all annoying man Henry is there mostly for comical value rather than provide actual help. The people you’ll meet on your voyage through the whole of France are mostly arrogant and seem to derive great pleasure from hindering you in your quest.

Technical Aspects

The graphics are okay, the backgrounds are usually bright and colorful except at night. The characters are difficult to describe since they appear to be a mix between realism and something else. Sadly, many characters are clones of each other. All shopkeepers and commoners will look alike and their animation isn’t very good either.

The sound does its job well and the music is quite good. Other than that, nothing can really be said about it. It doesn’t stand out as particularly good or bad. It isn’t annoying, but it isn’t exactly amazing either.

The interface can be a bit sluggish at times since you have to right click and hold on an object you wish to interact with. After right clicking, a menu appears in which you can choose how you wish to interact with the selected object. Sometimes this can be a bit of a nuisance since mouse-control seems to be a bit sluggish too.

Main Strengths

‘Touché’ is a nice adventure game with some wacky situations, which require even wackier solutions; an example of this would be when you throw a melon in a river in order to distract a group of guards so that you can enter a tavern. The humor does its job well and sometimes even manages to come close to the humor found in Lucasarts games (though not entirely since the humor is unique in that it is more like that found in Discworld-books). The humor featured in the game is mostly sarcasm and Henry’s constant begging for food and berating your actions.

Main Flaws

The game play, while not exactly bad, isn’t very thrilling either. At first you are left without a clear sense of direction and the plot fails to capture the players’ imagination. Other than the initially weak start (note that I said ‘start’ since the plot does get better as the game progresses) the only other flaw is that the game tends to copy characters and backgrounds. Each tavern will look like the one in Rouen, as will each innkeeper, that and the animations tend to be on the weak side.

The Bottom Line:

Aside from the seemingly similar character (wannabe), it would be wrong to say ‘Touché’ is a clone of Monkey Island. The humor and overall game is too different to say that. Often the game will feel more like an RPG than an adventure game. Overall, I suggest you give this game a try since it is a seriously underappreciated game... just disregard the reoccurring graphics and slow plot and I think you will like it!

 In order for this game to run in DOSBox, the game must be placed in C:\Touche