1996’s
Broken
Sword: Shadow of the Templars was one of the games
that made me fall in love with the adventure game genre. Its rich
storyline, amusing and interesting characters, lovely music and beautiful
hand-drawn animation and backgrounds created a memorable gaming experience.

The game tells the story
of George Stobbart, an American attorney vacationing in Paris. After
nearly dying in a café bombing, he becomes drawn into a tangled
web of intrigue, conspiracy and murder. The Knights Templar and their
times figure into the story in a way that is sure to please history
buffs.

Happily, the game has
now found its way onto my favorite hand-held adventure portable, the
Nintendo DS.

To
be precise, it’s called Broken Sword: Shadow of
the Templars / The Director’s Cut and the last
part is more than just a marketing ploy. In addition to being modified
for the DS, it also ships with some terrific new content.

First, let’s look
at the port. It’s largely the original game you remember. The
same art, animations, dialog, story, and puzzles.

The main action takes place
on the touch (lower) screen, and the stylus stands in very nicely
for the mouse. The interface is quite similar to the PC version. Dragging
your stylus along the touch screen reveals interactive hotspots with
intuitive icons (gear for action, lips for talking, magnifying glass
for closer look, etc.).

The top part of the screen
is used for depicting talking heads during conversations, and some
nice backgrounds.

So
what’s new? Actually, that’s a nice surprise. An entirely
new opening chapter, featuring series regular Nico the plucky reporter,
has been added to the game. It’s not just a short prelude, either;
it’s got some substance. It fits in well with the rest of the
story and includes some fun puzzle solving.

The music and animations
sound and look great just as they always did.

Other changes have been
made to the original part of the game. For one thing, all of the times
the main character can die have been removed. This change will please
those who don’t enjoy anything that smacks of “action”
sequences in adventures, but I actually missed them a little bit.
They weren’t particularly difficult in the original, and they
added some nice dramatic tension.

Also there are several
new puzzles in the game which add a bit of adventure “crunch.”

The
new version of the game only has two real drawbacks. First, there’s
no voice work at all, and that’s disappointing, as the series
is known for excellent work in this area. Second, as good as the game
looks, you can’t really get the full effect of the beautiful
visuals in the game the way you could on a nice big computer screen.

Still, it’s awfully
fun to rediscover such a classic game. Pick it up and I think you
will soon be drawn into its rich plot, fun characters and puzzles,
and great art and sound.

I always look forward
to any project that Charles Cecil and his team at Revolution Software
are working on. I’d love to see a new game from Revolution built
for the DS. A new Broken Sword, perhaps? Or how about a sequel to
the underappreciated In
Cold Blood? Or, even better: a sequel to Beneath
a Steel Sky?

This
review is copyright Ray Ivey and Just Adventure and
may not be republished elsewhere without the express written consent
of the author. Republication of said review must also contain a link
back to Just Adventure.