Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars – Reforged Review

Broken Sword is a hell of a series, as anyone who has played it could tell you. Revolution Software made a breakthrough when they cast a bumbling American tourist as the main character of their European adventure game and then had the rest of the cast constantly give them schtick for it. A master stroke. Now, our Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars – Reforged review will be diving head-first into this remaster of a classic point-and-click adventure to see if it’s worth revisiting once more.

What Is Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars – Reforged?

If you don’t already know, Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars is the first entry in the venerable Broken Sword point-and-click adventure series. It tells the tale of George Stobbart, an American tourist visiting Paris who finds himself nearly killed when a bomb goes off in a cafe where he is drinking a coffee. When paired up with a local reporter, Nicole “Nico” Collard, he becomes embroiled in a tense mystery that will take him into the depths of the past on the hunt for the supposed treasure of the Knights Templar.

If you’ve already played a point and click game of the era before, then you probably know what to expect. You drag your mouse cursor over the different environments to interact with objects and characters, pick up items, and then use what you have and know to solve puzzles in the environment. The key difference with this Reforged edition is the fact that you have the option of playing it either in its original, more brutal, state, or you can elect to play an easier version where the superfluous items you interact with disappear once you’re done with them. Beyond that, it’s basically the same game, with some pretty nice graphical updates.

 

So Shiny, so Pretty

Coming into Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars – Reforged from a recent playthrough of the original, the difference is stark and immediately noticeable. They’ve done an excellent job of bringing the visuals up-to-date, making them as crisp and clean as modern animation will allow. Of course, it’s still based on the exact same foundation, so some of the expressions and actions pulled off in the opening cutscene look like they’d fit right in on a Legend of Zelda Phillips CD-i game, but still, it’s very pretty looking, overall.

During the gameplay, the visuals have also been nicely touched up while still retaining the look that made the series as popular as it was. The characters you interact with and the places you visit are more detailed than ever, and with the new animations, you can actually tell what everything is instead of just being able to tell what most stuff was. Also, weirdly, it’s easy to tell what the paintings in Nico’s apartment are supposed to be now, which makes for a nice change.

With Your Riot and Clamour

Unfortunately, that same love and care doesn’t appear to have been given to the audio. As far as I can tell, at least for the English dub, the exact same audio files were used with absolutely no cleaning up. I was genuinely shocked when I started playing and the crackly, fuzzy audio I was used to started over the top of these nice, new, shiny cutscenes. Considering how much effort has been put into making the game look nice, I was sort of hoping they were going to give the same attention to the voice and sound.

According to others I know who have used the other European language versions of the game, this isn’t a universal problem. At least the German dub of the game appears to have newer, much cleaner audio, while the English language version remains at the quality level of pre-internet PC microphones for some reason. I understand that they might not have wanted or been able to re-record the dialogue, but I also find it hard to imagine that nothing could have been done to make this game sound slightly better than it does, which is a major source of disappointment.

 

Unpleasantness Aside, a Fantastic Title

With that one, sadly rather major, complaint out of the way, it’s back to talking about the fact that this game is still excellent, despite its shortcomings. No matter what they might have been able to do to it, this game is still the first Broken Sword title, an adventure game so enjoyable that it sparked a long-lived franchise, as well as the countless goat-based nightmares of adventure games all over the world. It is still that utterly fantastic adventure game underneath the new coat of paint and slightly disappointing sound.

It’s also worth noting that, currently, Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars – Reforged doesn’t include the content from the Director’s Cut release of the original game. That means no scenes with Nico as a playable character, and a bunch of the extra scenes, such as the prologue, aren’t to be found either. While it seems a bit of a shame to have missed out on this extra content, it is also somewhat understandable. The DX version of the game is a fair bit longer, and the extra scenes to change the pacing quite drastically, so overall, this feels like a tighter package. Just wait though, they’ll release those DX scenes as DLC down the line, mark my words.

The Verdict

My old-fogeyish complaints out of the way, Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars – Reforged is a great point-and-click adventure game given a new visual touch-up to make it more playable on 4K TVs and modern hardware. While it misses out on the extra content of the DX version of the game, the tighter pacing makes the game overall more enjoyable for newcomers, and despite missing out on Nico’s scenes, this is still an impressive package. Now, if they’ll just do something about the English dialogue quality, then we can call this a perfect remaster and be done with it.

Developer: Revolution Software

Publisher: Revolution Software

Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, PC

Release Date: 19th September 2024

Gaming Respawn’s copy of Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars – Reforged was provided by the publisher.

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