Too often you find that games you loved when you were younger don’t age quite as well as you’d think years later.

Sometimes it’s a control issue, which is where remakes come in and play their part. Sometimes it’s the writing and the acting. Or the visual style. Even the gameplay flow itself.

Here’s the thing about Broken Sword – Shadow of the Templars: Reforged. This game feels as sharp, stunning, entertaining, witty, and enjoyable as the day it released. Somehow, it feels both timeless while also incredibly respectful of its heritage.

I remember back to 1995 when the game first released. A big part of Broken Sword’s appeal was the art style which helped it stand out from the crowd. It was a little bit Lucasarts with the vibrant color palette and animated cut scenes but there was also the peril and non-verb interface of a Sierra title. Revolution carved their own path with compelling leads, an epic adventure that spans the globe and the closest anyone has got to Indiana Jones without being the man in a hat.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that the game, its content and story have held up incredibly well nearly 30 years on. I still laughed raucously at many of the lines, I fell in love with George’s simple but smart sense of humour, and even though I knew what was coming, I still loved every twist and turn in the adventure.

It’s the mark of a great story, a good game, and one that everyone should make time to play whether they’re coming back to the series or visiting for the first time.

The thing I found most interesting about Reforged is that Revolution still kept the game fairly traditional to what it once was. If you look at the Monkey Island remakes, for example, they were more tailored designed for consoles with a UI that’s more controller friendly, especially where you can quickly snap between interaction points and easily switch between action.

Reforged works well on PlayStation, but you are still moving a slower pointer around the screen, waiting to hover over an interactive element which sends a slight vibration to your DualSense. Then you can either interact with or look at element on screen, whether it seems to be a discrete trash can or a shiny object at the centre of the screen.

Broken Sword rewards investigation, looking closely at your surroundings, talking to everyone and anyone you meet, even jugglers, and making connections with items in your inventory. Fortunately, the story and mystery is compelling enough, you’ll want to check out every back-alley, corridor and church, from Paris to Ireland, even Spain.

In Broken Sword, you play as George Stobbart, an American Tourist in Paris who is sat at a coffee shop when a clown walks in with an accordion and blows the place sky-high. That’s enough to get George invested, but things go much deeper still when George stumbles upon Nico, an investigative reporter who tells him about a string of murders.

George and Nico work together as the game progresses, sharing their learnings, meeting new people, travelling the world, and eventually reaching the grand, epic conclusion.

Reforged is an incredibly faithful recreation of the original game. Which means, intriguingly, the Director’s Cut content that featured in the likes of the GBA and Wii version of the game has been cut entirely. So the optional Nico content that opened up that verison of the game? It’s gone.

This might split some people down the middle as they might have played that version of the game first and that may be where their memories came from. It also means that in the latest version of the game, the playable Nico scenes are no longer considered a core part of the experience. It certainly paints an interesting picture for the future and what the true definitive version of the game is.

Oh and by the way, you can still buy the Director’s Cut version of the game so if you really want to remind yourself of those scenes, it’s a fiver on Steam.

But here’s the other intriguing thing about Reforged – there’s also new content in here too. It’s on a different scale, more about touching up what was already there, like adding in animals, adding new details to the environment and re-recording some lines. But it’s a true remaster in the sense of the visual style has been completely updated and upscaled into 4K and enhanced audio.

Reforged is beautiful. It reminds me of how striking the original game was for me when it launched back in 1996, having a similar impact on me in the way it stood out from other games. Revolution have done an incredible job with this remaster, really updating the character models, the environments, the cutscenes in a way that makes the game stand the test of time for another twenty years.

Plus if you’re feeling particularly nostalgic, as with all these retro titles, you can flick back between the classic Broken Sword art and the Reforged style. It’s eye-opening at points.

And the content of the game, as said, is timeless. There’s some wonderful lines in here and the story is a true classic detective mystery with suspense and action. For consoles, I would have made the UI a little easier to manouerve and reactive to a controller, so Reforged is still a game best played with a mouse. But this is still one of the best point and click adventure games ever made and has held up much better than many other games some hold in a higher regard.

Verdict

Broken Sword – Shadow of the Templars Reforged is one of the best examples of a remaster done right. It is faithful with stunning visuals and content that’s aged like fine wine, but also updated wonderfully for 2024 and the next twenty years to come. With some further additions to the UI to make it more friendly and appropriate on consoles, this would have made our PS5 experience better. But perhaps this is one you should be playing as intended anyway, mouse in hand, on PC. 

Pros

---

Broken Sword – Shadow of the Templars Reforged is out now on PC, PS, Switch and Xbox

Played on PlayStation 5

Code Kindly Provided by Revolution Software for review purposes