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Adventure Gamers Reader reviews, read what other adventure gamers think of Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - The Director’s Cut.

Average Reader Rating for Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - The Director’s Cut


Average based on 24 ratings

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Stars - 40

Rating by fauryn posted on Oct 20, 2013 | edit | delete


Stars - 20

Rating by troninho posted on Sep 7, 2013 | edit | delete


Stars - 25

Rating by smulan posted on Jul 22, 2013 | edit | delete


Stars - 50

Rating by jannar85 posted on Jul 11, 2013 | edit | delete


A classic's directors cut


I’ve played this countless times! Both the original game and this director’s cut. Even more Broken Sword was a huge plus for me, I didn’t mind getting more information of Nico underways.

It’s still a gem today that offers an awesome story, cool puzzles and intriguing characters. You’ll fall in love with them. It makes you want to go back. It made me fall in love with Paris.

It never gets boring, and if you should be stuck, they have provided a nice hint system. Played on Wii, PC, Android and iOS. And yes, I own the games on all those platforms Wink

This was one of the few games that introduced me to adventure games ages ago, and it’s still close to my heart. Go on, I invite you to this fantastic experience.


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Time Played: Over 20 hours

Stars - 25

Rating by Antrax posted on Jul 3, 2013 | edit | delete


Mediocre


I’ve never played the original. The Director’s Cut features pretty graphics and what could be an interesting plot, but the journey there is haphazard and quite exhausting.

The plot aspires to be Jane Jensen quality, with the protagonist following a trail to unravel secrets lost in history. However, the comparison only holds on the surface level. Most of the historical details lack depth. There are some random facts strewn about, but links between them aren’t always explained and at times seem quite loose. The trail itself is fairly ridiculous, including huge leaps and very free association, ending up more like one of the “national treasure” movies than anything remotely convincing. What’s worse, it’s all delivered to you on a platter - there’s a character that just explains everything you come across. In other words, don’t expect a “Serpent Rouge” here.

Beyond the presumptuous plot, there’s the issue of the writing. Technically the game is very well-written. There are very few embarrassing lines and there are a couple of well-written chuckles. However, there’s an issue with the content. The game uses some terrible contrivances to ensure you can’t get stuck. They range from “I knew I couldn’t leave yet” when you try to exit a location, to simply removing the hotspot for leaving (so you’re not sure if you’re meant to stay there or just can’t find the exit) and end with things like having someone polish silverware for two straight days, or drink coffee for an entire week, just to keep you out of locations. I usually don’t worry about this, but this game went to such absurd length toward forcing you to use adventure game logic, it just broke the suspension of disbelief.
The final issue with the plot is that there’s no real ending. You end up defeating the bad guys but never learn what they were actually on about, all of your historical discoveries have no bearing on anything in the end, and what’s worst, Nico’s plot is simply unfinished. She finds something out, then the game shifts to George and you never see her again. It looks as though they simply forgot about that part of the game.

Gameplay is extremely linear, much beyond what is reasonable. At times you have to walk George by the hand until he realizes what you’ve known for the past several minutes. This makes for some infuriating moments, like the section with the juggler, where the game actively confuses you using misleading signposts. It’s not a good puzzle if you abuse your own poor mechanics, game. Just so we’re clear.

Puzzles are, for most part, very easy. This is mostly due to the overly linear nature of the game - it often locks you up in one locale so you’re forced to think of trying things that wouldn’t occur to you if you could wander freely about the game world.
Puzzles are mostly inventory, with some really tiring “exhaust the dialogue” moments, where you have to talk to someone forever, then look at something, then talk to them again, then look, then talk, all the while knowing exactly what you’d like to do. Pretty tiring.
When puzzles are not easy, it’s usually because they’re unfair. For example, try to force the wrong door open and George just shrugs stupidly, not giving any indication that you’re on the right track. Why force this one and not that one? Plot convenience. However, there’s no way for the player to know that, so the “puzzle” is quite arbitrary.
The game also features what has to be one of the worst chess-based puzzles in gaming history. I could write an entire essay about how poorly thought out that puzzle was, but I don’t want to “spoil” it.
To offset the unfair puzzles, the game offers a gradual contextual hint system. Often the first hint just tells you “oh, don’t worry about it, you should be looking elsewhere” which is enough to save most of the frustration.

Voice acting is also hit and miss. The casting for Nico makes her sound 40+ when she’s clearly supposed to be younger, but beyond that both main characters are voiced well. The problem starts with the over-the-top accents for non-French characters. I think it was supposed to be a joke, but I may be wrong, as the Arabic in the game is way off, for instance, so it could just be ignorance.

All in all, I can’t really recommend this game. It’s not completely broken so it’s not a waste of time, but it often felt like busy-work. Some of the dialogue was amusing, but not to a point where it’s worth going through seven hours of trying to browbeat George into doing the right thing.


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Time Played: 5-10 hours
Difficulty: Very Easy

Stars - 40

Rating by olomaster posted on Mar 18, 2013 | edit | delete


Stars - 50

Rating by -ma- posted on Jul 18, 2012 | edit | delete


Stars - 50

Rating by Stuart posted on Jul 2, 2012 | edit | delete


Stars - 50

Rating by Infernostew posted on Jul 1, 2012 | edit | delete


Stars - 45

Rating by Jaremaing posted on Jun 18, 2012 | edit | delete


I never played the original, but I have the feeling I should


This was an amazing game from start to finish, but I felt like something was missing. Probably because there is. I talked to a friend in college, and he told me all the things they cut out. Now, new content is good. I’m not denying that. But the portions of this game where you control George are much more interesting than Nico, and the higher quality animation and sound during the new segments clashes horribly with the old segments. Now, if Revolution wanted to ADD Nico’s segments without REPLACING any of George’s stuff, that would be great.

Now, the hotspots and hint systems kind of make this game a breeze (I used maybe one hint, for there was no pixel hunting). This may be seen as hand holding (which it is) or dumbing down the experience (which it does), but it’s kind of a good thing. It makes it easier to hook people in to the experience that have never played an adventure game before.

The rating is so high because the experience was still great without all George’s stuff. I would probably rate it lower if I had nostalgia for the original, but since I haven’t, I"m basing this review off of the incredible experience I had my first time through. I got it through Steam, but I will probably pick up the original from gog to see what I’ve missed.


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Time Played: 10-20 hours

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