Broken Sword has always held a special place in my heart, especially because it was Revolution's follow up to my favourite adventure ever, Beneath a Steel Sky. It's great to see Revolution go back over one of their classics and add more to it, and even better to find the result bundled with the original here on GOG. Broken Sword (both versions thereof) feature the mixture of involving setting, well-approached mystery plot and the same subtle but excellent British humour that made BaSS a classic, and the characters' responses and depth of plot make each playthrough worthwhile and rewarding. The game has it all- drama, comedy, history, danger, and even pixies. Moving onto the remastering, and unfortunately the Director's Cut is a bit of a mixed bag. The new sections are nicely written and help to develop Nico's character, and the new puzzles add a bit of variety to what is otherwise a point-and-click through and through (except one puzzle that actually became a lot easier in the DC!), but as previous reviews have pointed out the presentation is a bit of a sore point; the issue here is that 2010 and 1996 don't mix very well. The new scenes have been created with a different voice cast from the rest of the game, and it's obvious. The new sound doesn't suffer from the compression artefacts of the original game's (which hasn't been re-recorded or remastered for the DC) and the result is jarring (you can literally tell what lines they've changed in the DC at times). The artwork is the same - 2010 Nico is smoothly rendered and well-animated in all the places where 1996 George looks blurry and blocky. The new scenes are, on the whole, quite good (if a bit too sparing and too concentrated towards the start). The new plot steals the show away from the excellent original intro, so I'd recommend playing the original first, but seeing the beginning from Nico's point of view is a welcome change and one that sets George's adventure into a bit more context. My one regret is the change in George at the start of his part from someone who's nearly been killed (and rightly wants to know why) to someone who has an innate and somewhat ill-fitting belief that justice *must* be served and *he* MUST be the one to serve it. I'm giving this a 5 stars mainly on the merits of the game itself, rather than the DC (which would get about a 3 or 4 from me), but it's still worth playing through the remastering. (After seeing the original intro, that is.)
