One of the most popular PC games of the mid 90s Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars which received 4 sequels all on PC and Mac computers now has a new version called “Broken Sword Reforged: Shadow of the Templars”. It is a completely remastered version of the 1996 classic. Is it worth your time or is it truly a broken sword? Let’s find out.
Without getting into too many spoilers I will explain what the first chapter of the Broken Sword saga is all about. It stars an American tourist named George Stobbart. He flies to Paris for a much needed vacation. While he is sitting at an outdoor cafe enjoying the atmosphere and sipping on his coffee a maniac wearing a clown suit blows up the restaurant. George like a B movie action star jumps out of the crime scene without any injuries. One French cop at that same cafe wasn’t so lucky. He dies in the line of duty. A bald French detective with his partner comes to the scene interrogating our hero. Then George meets a French photographer who has a passion for French history and archeology. They become friends and eventually find out the killer is connected with a mob or cult that is searching for rare ancient artifacts. Long story short in a split second our average American tourist in France ends up becoming Indiana Jones.
The gameplay in Broken Sword is pretty simple. You control a cursor and push buttons at various parts of backgrounds to make your hero walk around, investigate, pick up items, or talk to many of the colorful cast of characters. There are lots of backtracking involved with the game so you definitely need to pay close attention to what the characters have to say or even what they are doing in the background. There are instances where you have speak to a character several times to get any clues or essential items in the game. This is a very old school point and click game but fear not gamers who are scared of a challenge. If you get stuck at a certain part you can pause the game and get hints to what you need to do to move ahead. This is one quality of life feature the original PC version lacked. Also if you take a long break with the game and start your save file months later you can recap the story to remember what you need to do. I think this feature is super convenient. I totally wish more long games these days have a feature like that. I lost count how many times I replayed an RPG a couple months later and forget what I needed to do to make any progress.
The visuals in this new version has received a major facelift. Thankfully Revolution decided to keep all the visuals 2D. It now looks like a old Disney cartoon movie. All the washed out colors from the original 1996 PC releases has been redone. The characters, backgrounds, everything now looks better than it ever did. It is now much easier on the eyes to play the original Broken Sword. If you for some reason do prefer the old drab Windows 95 look you can always switch it to that by clicking the right stick The music and sounds are pretty much nothing to write home about. Its exactly the same as the PC original. One thing that deserves a lot of praise is the incredible voice acting. It is literally Disney movie quality stuff! Every single character has a personality even the minor ones. Lots of humorous dialog complete with over exaggerated European accents that put Destro and Baroness’ to shame. For a game that is literally some sort of serious business Indiana Jones treasure hunting detective story this one has some of the funniest lines I’ve heard in any video game. This is an experience that I will not spoil for anyone especially if they aren’t familiar with the Broken Sword series.
So do I recommend this game? If you are like me who has little to no experience with the old school point and click adventure genre you are definitely in for a treat. It is absolutely perfect for beginners since you can get hints on how you can get past parts you have been stuck at for awhile. I have read that the goat scene in the original Broken Sword is one of the hardest video game puzzles of all time but after a half hour of fiddling around for any clues or hidden items I was able to successfully solve that puzzle. If I can do it that means you can too. I am far from a video game pro and that should tell you something. I would even recommend this for the people who are into the Ace Attorney series, Professor Layton, or Famicom Detective Club. Even though this game is very western compared to the more modern adventure games I’ve mentioned you have to remember that this sort of game all started on western PC side of the spectrum so if you are curious about this genre’s roots than I can’t recommend Broken Sword Reforged enough!
Broken Sword Reforged is now on available digitally on all modern platforms.
*A review code was used for the purpose of this review.
David Medina is a hardcore gamer and Japanese import collector owning dozens of systems and games from Famicom to Nintendo Switch. He has an active YouTube channel called "The Karnov Jr Show" and posts retro gaming content there weekly showing off collections, random store tours, and gameplay clips.