Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse

The Good
•Broken Sword is back, and better than ever ! This new installment feels like it has been made with all the love in the world for the graphic adventure genre and stays true and loyal to the series, encompassing everything the 90´s golden era of adventure gaming did right

•Point & Click (I´ve got nothing against Console Tank Controls and BS3 & 4, but adventure games were made to be played with a mouse)

•George Stobbart is back once again with his characteristic dark-witty humor, arguably one of the most loved protagonists of the genre after Guybrush Threepwood (oh, and so does the GOAT)

•Breathtaking 2D visuals (screenshots don´t do this game justice)

•Clever, well designed puzzles of all kind that play their part inside the context of the game

•Awesome mystery-solving/historically-referenced plot (trademark to the series), it never gets boring nor uninsteresting, the pace and overall rhythm in which the history is laid out in front of the player until the climax of the grand finale is excellent

•Character design is great, as is the script and dialogs

•Excellent Voice Acting for all characters (I played the English Version)

•Gametime duration around 10hs+ (just right for a game of this genre)

•Included Hint System for those that don´t have time to be stuck in videogames

The Bad
•The plot lacks an strong antagonist, is a shame that this character is the least developed one of the entire cast

•I missed some more inventory puzzles

•The minimal use of music, is something about the BS Series that always struck with me, music is a powerful resource for setting and reinforcing the "tone" of a game, but BS games do not make use of it in the way that I think would be optimal, many screens are dead-silent for no reason; tiny fragments of music are played ONLY when an important event/action occurs. I realize is an artistic/game designing decision, but I think that some appropiate background tunes would have given the game a more powerful and believable ambiance, sucking the player into its lore even more

The Bottom Line
When I launched Broken Sword - The Serpent Curse (BS5 from here on) and viewed that first hand-drawn 2D-animated introduction, I couldn´t help but shed a tear through my eyes, having been an MS-DOS era junkie and played the adventure genre classics of LucasArts and Sierra alike (as well as the original Shadow of The Templars game), the game felt like a tunnel to the past, nostalgia came dripping down my brain, and the game got me hooked from there on...

BS5 is a game that pays homage to those times, after a incredibly successful Kickstarter campaign, Revolution had the possibility to bring back the series to his roots, and they delivered !!

BS5 is a traditional point & click adventure game, in which the player resolves puzzles to progress in the plot. In BS5, there are many puzzles to solve, from a myriad varieties, the puzzles integrate well with the story and are never out of context or illogical, and are fun to solve, they range in difficulty but neither of them is impossible or frustrating (if you get stuck there´s a Hint System with spoiler levels to get you going)

BS5 sports a vast array of all types of characters and conversations, the classic style of dialogs of the series can be heard in every voice, and is interesting to hear and enjoy the personality of each character coming through

BS5 is a gorgeous game, there are many locations the player will visit around the world, and every set is wonderfully and beautifully hand-drawn with attention to detail being top notch, sometimes i stopped playing just to admire my surroundings and behold the sheer magnificence of artistry the locations have, I´m confident to say that this is one of the most breathtaking 2D visuals of any game I´ve played, and is in this aspect where the victory of 2D vs 3D comes apparent and tangible. The characters look great but not at the level of the backgrounds, and the animations are O.K

The core of every adventure game is it's plot and how it plays inside in itself, and BS5 delivers in this department, with a twisted religious/moral/end of the world plot, I must admit it had me from the first moment, the game starts with a classic Agatha Christie/Sherlock Holmes murder-solving situation that develops steadily and with awesome pace/rhythm into a Cult Face-off for the destiny of the world. It gives the player tiny bits of information and pulls up the curtain to show what lies behind slowly and suspensefully; It leaves you wanting to know more with every step. This is probably what I enjoyed the most about the game...unveiling the plot, BS5 is like a good book, but playable.

I´ll recommend the game to every adventure game junkie and of course, Broken Sword fans...