Game Title: Broken Sword – Shadow of the Templars: Reforged
Platform: Windows / Steam
Release Date: 19th September 2024
Developer: Revolution Software Ltd
Review copy supplied by publisher

What’s Broken Sword – Shadow of the Templars: Reforged about?

You are George Stobart, An American visiting Paris, France and witness an explosion in a cafe that has blown you to your feet narrowly escaping the blast yourself. You come through and decide to take it upon yourself to figure out the reason for the explosion and bring the perpetrator’s to justice. Broken Sword – Shadow of the Templars: Reforged is a remaster of the same title that was released originally in 1996. It is a point and click adventure game that has you solving puzzles and riddles in the game that spans around several countries and locations like France, Ireland, Syria and the middle east. You partner up with a girl from France called Nico who is a journalist whom is looking for that major story to boost her dwindling career.

Between the both of you and the many other people you come across on your adventure, you must solve many mysteries, pick up clues and tackle obstacles and even outsmart a goat! The re-forged edition has been re-painted, re-imagined, re-animated and is a vast improvement over it’s old 1996 build. You can also toggle between the new graphical enhancements and the old build quality on the fly with a built-in toggle like below.

The title now renders in 4k quality and looks gorgeous, specially the great city backdrops and the various locations you visit in your playthrough and remarkable considering the 1996 build rendered at 480p!. The audio of the narrative has been improved also bringing it to a crisp sounding experience. Hearing birds and traffic in the background is so cool, and audio from other characters on screen too depending on distance and scenario. Some gameplay can be viewed in our Youtube Channel Page or you can view in the embedded video below.

What’s the combat and controls like?

Being a point and click adventure game, Broken Sword – Shadow of the Templars: Reforged controls are pretty basic and usually consist of a examine, inventory and action button, as i used controller on steam, these were bound to X and A respectively. You would see a prompt on-screen when there was something you could interact with and if needed, examine it further. You could use Y to open a inventory to access a list of items that you have lifted up or been given, you could then drag these items on to the screen to use them on various locations or points in the game. A small prompt box would also appear when you needed to perform an action or talk to a specific character or ask questions about that person also liike in the game screenshot below.

How does the game look graphically?

Considering this is a re-master of a game made in 1996, the graphical leap is massive and it shows given it now outputs at 4k from a mere 480p in 1996. The animations have been re-done and the backdrops have been either re-painted or re-done. The details in these type of point n click games can be real important too when you need to see an object on screen so the new 4k visuals help. The cut scenes in the game have been vastly improved also with new expressions added to characters to add immersion.

Conclusion

Broken Sword – Shadow of the Templars: Reforged is a great game and was a hoot to play through trying to work out puzzles and little niche requirements to get to the next sequence, keeping me interested. The improvements are night and day with the old version but that wouldn’t be too hard with over 20+ year gap between the builds. If you enjoy a puzzle game and an adventurous story then Broken Sword – Shadow of the Templars: Reforged is definitely for you. It’s a fantastic update on the original and i hope to see some new broken sword going forward because unfortunately the one thing that’s bad about it, is the fact when you complete it, there not much replay value and makes you wanting more..