This Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars Reforged review is played and testen on Xbox Series X. The game is also available for PC (Steam) and PS4/PS5
Remaster of a Masterpiece
“Paris in the fall. The last months of the year, and the end of the millennium. The city holds many memories for me: of cafés, of music, of love… and of death.”
Many, many years ago Revolutions Software created what is, in my eyes, a masterpiece. The opening dialogue of this game has stayed with me for years. Even now I still remembered most part of it. Even the voice uttering these words brought back memories. The second I started this game, I got thrown back to the past. To be more exact to 1996, the year the original of this game was released.
This game, just like the original, is a point-and-click game and is one of the poster-childs of it’s genre. You are George Stobbard, an Amarican tourist visiting Paris. As you are sitting on the street across a small café, when the café gets blown to smitthereens. You decide to dust off your clothes and check if there are any survivors. What follows is a great story, where you investigate and try to unravel a conspiracy. No good story can go without a perfect enemy. In this story it is a secret cult. Your investigation will take you all across the world. From Paris to various locations in Europe and even the Middle East.
History in so many ways
After the initial release of this game in 1996, the Broken Sword series fostered 4 more games.The last one being released in 2014 (Broken Sword 5: The Serpent’s Curse). Some of them were just as good as the first game in the series. Some of them….well, not so good. Nonetheless the Broken Sword series was loved and cherished by many fans. Fast forward to 2024. Revolutions Software releases Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars for the third time. Yes, you read that right, for the third time. In 2012 a Director’s Cut off the game was released. The Reforged edition however is not based on that release, but on the original of 1996. Let’s see if it can hold its own against modern day games.
The story of the game revolved around George Stobbard who witnesses a brutal bombing of a café by a guy dressed in a clowns suit. Shortly after the bombing George meets a journalist named Nicole Collard. She was supposed to meet with the victim of the bombing. As it turns out, she is investigating a series of murders by the same culprit. Somehow George decides to get involved in the investigation which leads him to the rest of Paris, Ireland, Spain and Syria among others. During the travels George and Nicole discover the Templars are involved. The rest of the story and plot you’ll have to find out for yourselves. I’m not going to spoil that for you.
Point and Click Gameplay
Broken Sword Shadows of the Templars Reforged is a typical adventure game. It has been developed in a point-n-click style that really works really well. Unlike many other point-n-click games you play in third-person-perspective. To me that’s an added bonus. I like to be able to see my own character in these type of games. You have to use a pretty standard interface to move your character around and to interact with items. Several of which you can collect in your inventory and even combine to solve puzzles.
Speaking of puzzles, there are plenty in this game. Sometimes it is as simple as finding certain objects which you can hardly miss during your gameplay. Sometimes you have to combine certain items and give them to another character. On some occasions you’d have to use your combined item on your environment, progressing the story.
Conversation happens through dialogue trees. Kudos to the developers to have the dialogue fully voiced in this game. And Revolutions Software didn’t take any shortcuts by processing the old recordings. No, they recorded all lines once more so they sound crisp and clear. They eve added some old footage of new dialogue which was never released.
Graphical Options
The graphics in this game are worthy of another round of applause. Yes, they remade/remastered the game and added new bright and beautiful graphics. But they also included the original graphics. You can switch those two styles on the fly. Which really gives you an idea of how much work actually has been put into this new version of what is a pretty old game.
Besides new graphics the devs also cleaned up some graphics-mistakes from the old game. There is for instance a drain pipe which George thinks about using as an escape route. In the original game this drain pipe was nowhere near long enough to use for an escape route. In this game that has been touched up. There are several more examples of the devs improving on the old graphics.
Play as you like
You as a player can decide on how difficult you want the game to be. Use no hints, or get fed numerous hints whenever you get stuck. It’s all up to you. You can start off with a generic hint system. That is, if you want help every 30 seconds you can reveal a hint that’ll push you in the right direction. This system has one big downside to it. There’s no real sense of accomplishment. You don’t actually have to think. So I turned off most of what I could from the hint system, but that is up to your own preference.
If you do want hints and are fed up with clicking around the screen and getting desparate, the devs give you plenty of options. To bypass that feeling of just clicking all over the screen till you have exhausted all options Revolution Software came up with a solution. The game will grey out all items and spots that you have exhausted. Additionally, if you stand still long enough the game will provide you with a spot shooting out sparkles. This is obviously the area which you should examine. A step further is that the game even adds a blue circle and arrow to point out hot-spots.
I choose death
Something that is very unusual in point-n-click games is actually a key part of this game. Our main character can actually die! Hardly any game prior to the original did this. Does it mean you reach a full game over? No thankfully, if you do happen to die, you can start from your last save point and try again.
Check out more Xbox reviews on Retrolik.net.
Broken Sword Shadows of the Templars Reforged is an excellent game that can hold its own against modern games. Fully voiced and gameplay with crisp new graphics complete the experience. Bonus points for adding both the upscaled version as the original one. If you fancy point-n-click games there is but one option. Click that Buy'-button. You won’t regret it.
The good
- Excellent new graphics.
- Old graphics thrown in as an added bonus.
- Voice-acting is top notch.
- Best in class point-n-click gameplay
- A good sense of humour
The bad
- None
