Against my better judgment, I got myself a Steam Deck recently. It's been hard to justify the purchase of a handheld computer when I'm already spending most of my days in front of a deskheld computer, but the prospect of cozying up in bed with a good game was too appealing.

Ended up downloading just about every game that had the "great on deck" mark and was below or around 1GB, and after trying out a few of them, Broken Sword was the one to really deliver on that aforementioned premise. Adventure games are already pretty laid back, but it just hits different when you're sinking into pillows instead of slouching in your office chair.

It helps that Broken Sword was also a somewhat nostalgic revisit. I played the original version as a kid and much like many other people, had to drop the game at the goat puzzle. No clue how to do it, no internet to tell me how to do it. Was almost looking forward to thwarting it now with my impossible large smart adult brain, only to find out that they nerfed it in the Director's Cut! It's basically impossible to not solve it.

Looking this up has made me realize that for most fans, the Director's Cut is anything but the definitive version of the game. It removes a fair bit of dialogue and interactions, including the handful of death scenes, but it also adds some arguably nice modern features that make the whole experience a bit more streamlined. There's no pixel hunting thanks to highlighted points of interest, there's a journal that serves as a recap for anyone who might've been lost, and there's a fairly gentle hint system that tries to guide you to the solution without outright giving it away.

The most contentious addition among them all is the new intro. Unlike the original, where you only play as George, DC adds a big intro section where you control Nico. After long enough time away from the original, I can't say it gave me any grief about the game's pacing or new puzzles. If anything it was nice to see more Nico, and while the story additions are not very significant, they made a good job of easing you into the conspiracy that Nico and George got themselves into.

With that in mind, maybe I would similarly dislike this version if I had more attachment to the original, but without it, this game still plays like a conventual, but damn good point-and-click adventure game.

As the director points out, while this game might seem fairly standard these days, the choice of theme was relatively original for 1996. Fiction revolving around various Knights Templar conspiracies or hidden treasures didn't truly take off until the early 00s, and it didn't take long for the topic to seem stale and cliché less than 10 years after that.

The premise is not the only thing that aged poorly here, but I'll get to that in a bit. For now, what matters is that even discounting the premise, there's still an exciting thriller beneath it. Throughout the game, you're never too far from flying to a new country, uncovering a new Templar secret, or solving a convoluted medieval contraption designed to protect ancient macguffins. It has that perfect thriller pace where as soon as you find one answer, two more pop up.

The only downfall, I think, is that there is never really a sense that either Nico or George are in any real danger, and this is not an issue of removing death scenes. At the start of the game there is a hint of threat as you learn that someone has been stalking Nico and even broke into her apartment, but it seems to be a nod to the fans more than anything, since it foreshadows one of the antagonists in BS3 without having any future implications in BS1. It's not a massive detriment overall, but it does feel like you're meant to feel unsafe, yet it's more of a relaxed globe-trotting journey than an investigation into a cult, fraught with danger and deception.

At least it's a really fun globe-trotting journey though. Humor is one of the highlights for Broken Sword, and it really comes through in the characters you meet. I never caught myself thinking that these people are only here to spout plot relevant information at me, and even the most comedic characters don't feel like they exist solely to be a joke either. Outside of some goons, all of them are busy with their own lives and have something going on. It's hard to pick a favorite, but I loved the museum guard who never got proper education, has next to no knowledge of anything in the museum (or how important it is), but seems to harbor an ambition of getting an education in his late years to become a proper historian.

The game also constantly snipes you with some witty lines of dialogue. There's obvious classics here like:

George Stobbart: Let's just say I'm working in the interests of truth and justice.

Todryk: Ah, Thank God, I thought you were the police.

But while not all of them are bangers, it's consistent enough that chatting with characters is usually a joy. I especially appreciate the way Broken Sword plays around the long held tradition of stuffing your pockets with random crap in adventure games. I asked so many people "what does this mean to you" when showing them stuff I just picked up off the ground somewhere. Some of these questions even sort of turn into running jokes. For example, there's only really one interaction you have with the hand buzzer, but George will keep trying to ask people for a handshake, only to get shut down over and over.

Going back to things that aged poorly though, it will not take long to realize that this game was made in the 90s, and made by people who aren't from any of the countries that are featured in the game. For starters, pretty much every accent you will hear in the game (and there are loads) are British VAs pretending to be French, Syrian, Spanish, or Irish.

The Syrian part is by far the most egregious and show that developers couldn't be less familiar with the country. It's not remotely mean spirited, but there's plenty of ignorance on display when you fly into the country and it's some sort of take on Agrabah, rather than 1990s Syria. There's even a guy selling kebabs who can only say "you buy kebab!" while the guy the next screen over does the same thing but for carpets. It's no wonder that the lead dev had some regrets over this and ended up adjusting a few things in the recent remake. There's also a really gross non-consentual kiss near the very end which fortunately got cut as well. Not only is it pointless given what happens in the finale, but it just sours the already unlikely relationship between George and Nico.

The majority of the game doesn't run into these issues, but I do wish it was easier to recommend. The remake seems to be the way to go, but it also has some questionable attempts to improve the audio quality of original recordings, and used GenAI to interpolate between key animation frames with additional tweaking from artists to make sure hands and heads look right. It wouldn't exist otherwise since Revolution is quite a small studio without a lot of money, but it doesn't make me feel any better about that.

As such, the best version will sort of depend on what kind of things you care about or willing to overlook. If you can do that, this game is absolutely worth a play and I'm quite excited that there's 4 more games in this series, with a BS6 already on the way.