Review of Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars by emric
for me, more mediocre than brilliant, but still a solid example of the genre
This well-loved title is very very much in the vein of an Indiana Jones adventure. I sometimes considered it a blatant stylistic rip-off, but was eventually content to consider it as quite well conceived in it’s own right. it is also very well structured and paced and the puzzles are well designed.
The artwork is rather good. For me, the comic style characters clashed a bit with the rest of the backgrounds, so i would’ve preferred a more complimentary graphic style for the character designs. but i admit they were able to achieve greater animated expressions this way—especially in the cutscenes.
I did however have quite a big problem with the main character, George. The voice acting for him was awful! completely overacted! About halfway through the game I couldn’t take it anymore and I turned all the voices off. After that I enjoyed the game much more! Although some locations had no music and so it got a bit quiet.
The writing certainly suited a retro adventure gaming experience without voice acting. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were added later for a subsequent release (but i could be wrong).
Also the character design for George was kinda weak. He looked completely dorky in his light blue jeans and stupid light green jacket. Maybe this was considered trendy back in 1996 when the game was released…I can’t remember.
I was also frequently annoyed by the tense of the writing. For example if you click on a door George would say “The door was locked” instead of “The door is locked” as if he was looking back on the whole experience, and it kinda takes you out of the moment.
In adventure gaming, I prefer not being able to die. Broken Sword had a few instances where you could die and I felt they were completely unnecessary. It certainly didn’t heighten the sense of danger—it was just frustrating.
So I wouldn’t call this game a personal favourite, but i won’t deny that it’s a solid classic adventure experience and I’ll go on to play the next one sometime soon. Hopefully they got a better voice director (or actor).
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Time Played: 10-20 hours
