Recent reviews by Emrys91

Years before Dan Brown's Da Vinci's Code made headlines for its religious subject, there was another story that had a similar setting even starting in Paris and ending in Scotland.This gem was Broken Sword: The shadow of the templars a point and click adventure game released 1996 and re-released in 2010 for the PC with more content as Director's Cut.

First I'll talk about the main game and after I will talk about the director's cut.The game begins in Paris where our main character George Stobbart is enjoying his vacations.Just as he drinks his coffee and enjoying the Parisian autumn two people enter the Caffe: a man with a briefcase who stops to order a coffee and after a short time a clown with a musical instrument.The clown takes the mans briefcase and leaves his instrument which is revealed to be a bomb which goes off and that's how the game begins.The whole story is about George's quest to find the costume killer, and as the plot advances we find out the whole story arc is about the conflict between Templars and Assassins and the templars called here Neo-Templars are the bad guys(sounds familiar? :) ).Besides Paris, other places you get to visit are Scotland(twice), Spain and Siria, each with its own feel and colorful characters which make this a game a joy to play even after you finished it once.The game has hand-drawn animations which look gorgeous, the voice acting is solid and the music works very well with the whole game.

The original game has from me a 10/10 rating, I find no issue with it, its a great adventure game with great characters and a good story.

Now about the director's cut, after the success of the first game the game got 4 more sequels: Broken Sword The Smoking Mirror, Broken Sword The Sleeping Dragon, Broken Sword The Angel of Death and recently Broken Sword The Serpents Curse.Between Broken Sword 4 and 5, the first 2 games The Shadow of the Templars and The Smoking Mirror where re-released with more content and improvements.The director's cut of Broken Sword starts with Nicole Collard, not with George a day before the bombing of the caffe and is essentially a prologue setting up the main story.The new content is some levels with Nico where we find more about her past.As the main game starts the first problem appears:the sound quality,the new recordings really stand out against the old ones from the main game,and also some of the character designs look worse than the main game which is weird one good example is when the character visits a hotel in Paris and there is one character reading a newspaper in a armchair, for some reason his outline was removed he looks like a black mass of animation.Also, they changed the interface and added dialogue pics at the top corner of the screen with the faces of the characters with which you hold a conversation.

rating for the director's cut: 8/10 the new content is good, but the technical problems really drag down the score, they could have remastered it better, luckily they remastered the second game perfectly and the problems here are not present.

There are some games that take already established concepts and create something new and exciting.Such a game is King Arthur the Role-playing Wargame(short title i know), a game where you play as King Arthur on your mission to unite and conquer all of Britain under your banner.

The game's main innovation is this combination of Total War strategy gameplay and RPG gameplay: You build your armies and go on mass effect like quests, recruit heroes which can level up and use items.Heroes here similar to heroes from the might and magic series and also each has unique stats which when assigned to a territory can improve income or military stats.The game features a great morality system where the choices you make during gameplay unlock special units, perks and spells, and also influence the whole story. You can choose between Christianity or The old religion and Righteous or Tyrant, you cannot unlock all bonuses or be two of the same kind, ex you cannot be both tyrant or righteous and also you cannot be Christian or pagan at the same time.The system works like this, during quests you can choose some answers which add points to either religion or morality.

As you choose pagan or Christian the main quests differ and are unique for each but are similar towards the end of the game.The story of the game starts after Arthur pulled the sword out of the stone and is already king,the main story being the aftermath of sword retrieval,the race of the Sidhe called also the faery folk are a race of human like creatures from another dimension and the whole story revolves around them.As a Christian player the main story arc revolves around closing the portals to their world and killing them all after (lol) and as a pagan player you find out there are 2 types of Sidhe,the peacefull Seelie and their older more tyrant cousins the Unseelie,which for a pagan player are units in the morality charter towards the end of the game:Seelie for the righteous and the Unseelie for the tyrants.The Christian side has more units but some like the marksmen (crossbow) are useless,their spells focus on antimagic and stat improvement buffs making this gameplay feel like the paladin in Warcraft with heals and buffs, on the other side the pagans have a lot of spells like lightning bolts,meteors and other destructive spells which make the pagan side more fun and also easier to play,there is one spell called Curse of Shadows which is a cheap overpowered AOE,which can decimate weaker units in seconds also there are pagan units called changelings which are people abducted by the side and brainwashed into obedient soldiers,they are named after seasons: Springborn, Summerbreed, Autumnborn, Winterbreed .

Besides the morality units there are main "neutral" units like cavalry, longbows, axe wielders,e tc which can be upgraded, you also can get unique units from some quests like Saxon knights or welsh archers.Speaking of quests, you get them at the beginning of turns or after certain quests chains and there are also secondary quests which are essentially battles where you get an item if you win.

Heroes also are influenced by religion and you can have pagan or Christian heroes, some are famous characters from Arthurian lore like The green knight, Lancelot, Percival,Gawain and some lesser known heroes like Sir Luncan or Brandias.
The graphics are gorgeous, but the game is not well optimized, I can barely get 30 fps and have a strong PC and I'm not the only one with this problem.Although the game looks good when fighting the characters just wave their weapons at eachother and after a while one character dies, it feels unnatural, the designs of the heroes and characters are unique and very stylish.

Sadly the heroes have no voice acting and there is no direct interaction with them,or between them,also there are no siege mechanics and as such even when fighting an enemy on a building , the battle still takes place in a field,only when fighting an army in a stronghold( main base) you get like a siege but there are no closed doors so you just storm the place.Diplomacy is introduced only in the dlc, you can make some allies early game but they just give you the permission to walk in their territory, in the end you still have to conquer most of the territories.

The music is great, it has a unique feel and its different for the map screen and for the battle screen.
The game has a huge replay value and also it has 4 DLC's Knights and Vassals, Legendary Artifacts, The Druids and The Saxons which add more hours to play.

The good: Morality System, Graphics, Quests, story
The bad: no diplomacy(the main game has no diplomacy), no siege mechanic, bad optimization

Final rating :8/10

In the last few years the knights templar for gamers became synonymous with the Illuminati with their representation in the Assassins creed universe.....already going off track here. When I first saw the screenshots for the game back in 2011 like many i thought it is an AC rip-off or "the poor mans AC" as i heard some say and did not even bother much until last year when i got it during summer sales.

The first templar takes place after the 3rd Crusade(1189–1192), its a 3rd person action-adventure game and features co-op.You can play as 3 main characters which are interchangeable.The game begins with Celian d'Arestide(the main character) and Roland de Saint-Omer starting their quest for the (you won't believe it) THE HOLY GRAIL !!!11 , cheesy as it sounds the story is actually very complex and has nice twists towards the end and you meet more characters during your journey .

Now lets talk about the first thing you experience, the graphics, while the game is not a triple A it still looks good with beautiful colors and textures, and while the character models look ok, there is no motion capture and it feels sometimes stiff.The soundtrack is nothing special, but the voice acting is quite good.

The gameplay is where the game shines, the game has an excellent combat mechanic,as you level up you can learn new moves or improvements of already learned moves , each character has its own unique style Celian - Sword and Shield, Roland TwoHander and the 3rd main character Marie d'Ibelin has a rogue style gameplay with her weapons being daggers, although it seems like an rpg feature its not, there are no skill trees and in the end you can have all skills and upgrades.You can upgrade your equipment, but this is also simplified, you can use an armor or an weapon set only when you have the full set, you find pieces of these sets hidden in the levels also they aren't many and give some stat improvements but they cannot be combined.Also besides combat you have puzzles which add some flavour to the game and in some levels you can use cannons which also adds to the game.

In the end although the game is simpler than other AAA games , its good story and decent combat will keep you interested as you find out the secret of the holy grail and who is the first templar :)

The good:
Combat
Puzzles
Story

The bad:
rpg features

Final Rating 7/10