PC-style adventure comes to GBA. Whether you’re a fan of the original game or new to the series, see how Broken Sword stacks up.
I was pretty excited when I first heard that Broken Sword was coming to GBA. I had never played the original, but I do have a spot in my heart for older point-and-click adventures like Maniac Mansion and Shadowgate. Broken Sword is different from both, but I think that it still loosely falls into that same style of game play.
The biggest difference between Broken Sword and either of those games is the interactions with characters you meet throughout the game. When you begin to speak with a character, an icon menu will appear, allowing you to ask the person about a variety of subjects. You can ask them about another character, about the history of the area you’re in or about objects in your inventory. In Broken Sword, character interactions are every bit as important as using items.
The game really focuses on the story more than anything. It’s a mystery. You set out to find a madman that blew up a café and eventually stumble upon a worldwide conspiracy rooted in the descendants of the Knights Templar. The story is interesting and ties in a lot of history, but because of the GBA’s limitations it is all being delivered through text. Because of this, I really suggest that anyone looking at picking up Broken Sword approach it with the attitude of reading an interactive book. This way, the story doesn’t seem quite so overwhelming.
Bringing Broken Sword to the GBA must have been quite an undertaking. All of the characters and backgrounds were drawn by hand. Originally, the story was delivered through a set of talented voice actors. This means that every background and frame of animation had to be compressed to fit on a Game Boy Advance cartridge and that the script had to be written out not only in English, but also in Spanish, French, Dutch, and Italian.
Overall, it has turned out well, but the transition has resulted in a noticeable loss in personality. The details in the backgrounds are often covered up with grainy artifacts, and the characters’ facial expressions are completely lost. The same can be said for the conversion of the story from voiced actors to text. There are bright spots of humor here and there, but I am curious to find a copy of the original PC game to hear how the lines were delivered.
What has been a remarkable transition is the control scheme. The buttons have all been mapped out intuitively to allow you to get all the info you need quickly. B allows you to examine, and A allows you to interact with the object or person there. L brings up an item menu, and R cycles through all the interactive “hot-spots” in the backgrounds so you don’t have to constantly walk up to everything tapping the B button to see if there’s anything of interest.
With all the time that has been spent on this game, it’s unfortunate to note that it was released with a major bug that caused myself and a good number of other players to restart the game half-way through. The issue is slightly compounded by the fact that the path that causes the bug is the same one that the official walkthrough has you take. The developers are aware of the situation, so hopefully future copies of the game will have this error fixed up.
In the end, Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars is an interesting adventure that has a more intellectual style and sense of humor than other games of its kind. There’s nothing spectacular about it, but it’s a solid game that has made the transition to GBA as well as can be expected.