Broken Sword 5 – the Serpent’s Curse

Genre: Graphic Adventure

Players: 1

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Review:

The Broken Sword series of Graphic Adventure games have been around since 1996, and for the series’ fifth installment, it tried something different and jumped on the then-popular trend of releasing the game in episodic installments, with the first installment releasing on PC in 2013, with the sequel coming to PC in 2014, along with PlayStation Vita and mobile ports of both episodes. The full game was released together on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2015, with a release on Nintendo Switch in 2018.

Broken Sword 5 follows series protagonists George Stobbart and Nicole “Nico” Collard as they investigate a murder in an art gallery tied to a religious painting with a reputation for being evil. While the game sees the return of numerous characters from the series’ history, this is a fairly self-contained story, and while newcomers may not have the context of the history between these characters, the game does a decent enough job giving players an idea of that history early in their conversations. Furthermore, this is one of a few exceptions within the series that isn’t about the Knights Templar, meaning the overarching plot of earlier games doesn’t play a major part here.

The gameplay is pretty standard fare for Graphic Adventures – search the area for items to pick up, clues to inspect, and people to talk to, and use items you’ve found in the right places to solve puzzles. Broken Sword 5 streamlines this a little by making the items in your menu selectable conversation topics represented by icons when you’re in a conversation with a character, which is nice. On the other hand, some puzzles require talking to the same person repeatedly, or asking repeatedly about the same thing, and it’s not always clear that you’re meant to do this, and that can be frustrating.

However, for the most part, the puzzles here are sensible, and not terribly difficult to figure out, with a fairly linear story and relatively contained locations that keep things focused… though diehard fans of the genre may see this as too easy.

When it comes to the presentation, after the Broken Sword series’ third and fourth games eschewed the series’ usual 2D visuals for 3D, the series’ fifth game aimed to be somewhat a return to form, with detailed, colorful 2D backgrounds with a slightly cartoony art style, although the game still uses 3D cel-shaded character models, which looks nice. This is supplemented by some pretty good voice acting all-around for the characters.

Overall, Broken Sword 5 is a pretty good entry into the Graphic Adventure genre. It isn’t a standout game, and has a few rough edges, but this is still a game that genre fans should like, and players who are newer to this genre may find to be a decent entry point into the genre, even despite being the fifth game in its series.

tl;dr – Broken Sword 5 is a Graphic Adventure that follows series protagonists George Stobbart and Nicole “Nico” Collard as they investigate a murder in an art gallery tied to a religious painting with a reputation for being evil. This is a generally well-made and accessible entry in the genre, and while it isn’t without its flaws, this is overall a solid Graphic Adventure.

Grade: B

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