Review of Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - The Director's Cut by Antrax

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.