Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars: Reforged

Still a masterpiece to this day. I'm not neutral tho. I played this game very early with my mom so I can't be neutral,but it's nice to go back to simple games like that. The art is pretty,there's a lot of humor,the story's fun. Also,believe it or not but being french,I saw how realistic yet exagerrated the parisians were lmao. I'd recommend.

After playing Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars again for the first time since it came out on GBA, it's now dawning on me that it was a deeply flawed game even at the time--I just didn't see it. This remaster just puts a fresh coat of paint on a subpar game, but don't be fooled; you'd be better off playing any other point-and-click game. I will say, that coat of paint looks really pretty. The characters are well-animated, the backgrounds look very high quality. I do wish there was a little more to it all, they're still pretty bland. There is no personality to any of the settings, it all kind of looks the same. Adding animations in the background, not just idle animations for the characters, would have gone a long way. Games like The Banner Saga have been able to breathe life into a static background, it's a shame something like that wasn't done here. It would also have been cool to see George's outfit evolve over time. After all the stuff he goes through, you'd think he'd have bruises or dirt on his clothes. Speaking of George, what an unlikeable character. From his first interactions with the French people, he just seems like a xenophobic misanthrope. Maybe that's the point, but then whatever character development happens for him makes no sense. We don't know how long his trip has been, and we've only really seen surface interactions with the other characters. Him blurting out that he loves Nico at some point is baffling--you JUST met. I've seen others talk about the audio quality being poor, especially for voice acting, but I'm not sure I heard it. However, I did hear the extremely cartoony French accents and odd writing choices. I guess that should be expected of a game with such stereotypical characters. The music is fine, but nothing to write home about. The gameplay is fine, for the most part. It's classic point-and-click, combining items, the works. I found some of the solutions to the puzzles were unintuitive. Sometimes the game wants to click something or combine items you didn't really think would be compatible. This is especially annoying in the few instances where the wrong action results in a death. The hint system was okay, but sometimes it was unhelpful. At the end of the day, Broken Sword - Shadow of the Templars just isn't all that fun. It looks pretty, and the ability to swap back and forth seamlessly between the remastered visuals and the original is such a cool feature. However, I have no interest in spending any more time with these characters or in the setting. There are dozens of point-and-click in the last 20 years that play so much better (look at all the Wadjet Eye games, for instance). In comparison, Broken Sword is bland and boring. The nostalgia factor wasn't enough to keep me interested. Either dig out your old copy (it was released on SO MANY platforms) or pick anything else in the sea of point-and-click adventure games.