Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse

aka: Baphomets Fluch 5: Der Sündenfall, Broken Sword 5: A Maldição da Serpente, Broken Sword 5: Klątwa Węża, Broken Sword 5: La Maldición de la Serpiente, Broken Sword 5: La Maledizione del Serpente, Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse - Season Pass, Broken Sword: Uroboros no Noroi, Les Chevaliers de Baphomet 5: La Malédiction du Serpent
Moby ID: 62586
Windows Specs
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$24.99 new on Steam

Description

Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse is a classical point & click adventure. It abandons 3D graphics and direct control which were used in the two predecessors and returns to the style of the first two games. The only major technical differences are a higher resolution and that the characters are modelled instead of drawn. Like every Broken Sword game the plot is inspired by historical events: everything centers around the painting La Maledicció. George Stobbart and Nicole Collard witness as a masked man steals La Maledicció and kills the gallery owner. Both have their motivations to solve the crime - George works for the painting's insurer, Nico is a reporter and the police are incompetent - and so they unravel a conspiracy which is somehow connected to the Gnostic Gospels.

The game uses an intelligent mouse cursor: a right click on a hotspot results in looking at the item and a left click triggers an item-specific action. Of course this is the main ingredient of the puzzles: collecting items and using them on other items in order to solve problems. On some occasions there are also logic puzzles from a zoomed-in view on an object, e.g. connecting cables of an engine in order to repair the car's horn. Another important part of the game are conversations with the various characters, some of them known from previous instalments. During the course of the game the controlled character switches between George and Nico. A help function supports players who are stuck.

The original release only included the first half of the game and the second half was patched in later. The first half is set in Paris with two trips to London. The Vita version was released as a bundle (listed here) and also with the first episode separately (listed along the Android/iOS version).

Retail PlayStation 4 releases include an 8-page color prologue comic in place of the manual.

Spellings

  • Сломанный Меч 5: Проклятие Змея - Russian spelling
  • ブロークン・ソード ウロボロスの呪い - Japanese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

5,382 People (190 developers, 5,192 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 74% (based on 35 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.2 out of 5 (based on 38 ratings with 2 reviews)

Ahhh, that old warm feeling of adventure...

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...

Windows · by Mastran (564) · 2015

Yeah, well .....

The Good
This is a good quality, well made, adventure game that references the previous games in the series and does so quite well.

The game controls are solid, the artwork is good, the voice acting is good, the story is good, the music is good, and there's an in-game hint system so you'll not get stuck. It's all good.

However this is the part of the review where I say what I liked and while words like 'good' and 'nice' are positives I have to say that for me there's nothing here that is stand-out or exceptional

The Bad
There's not a lot I disliked about this game, what displeased me is what wasn't there. Where was the wit, the sparkle, the humour, the creativity and above all where were the fiendish and gratuitous puzzles?

From a game of the Broken Sword series I expected lots of gloriously clever puzzles which had no purpose other than to tax my brains and give me that 'Yes! Cracked it!" moment. This game didn't give me that, it felt as though the game was made to play like an episode from a formulaic TV series rather than follow in the puzzling footsteps of it's predecessors. Here's an example;
George and Nicole are trapped inside a building - this happens a couple of times in the game and I'm not giving the location away here 'coz I don't want to spoil the game for anyone. How do they escape?.
There are items in the inventory and hot spots in the room. I tried everything and got nowhere, I was stuck. Eventually, playing as George, I solved another puzzle whereupon Nicole announced that she'd found the way out and the door opened.
Just like that! No tricky mental gymnastics, no mental dexterity required. There was no door puzzle to be solved!
At that point in the game it felt like designers had ducked an opportunity to be creative, I felt let down and a bit cheated.

In many places the game plays in such a linear, logical and 'steady' way I felt I was dealing with an interactive novel rather than the immersive adventure game I expected.

Even though it's dealing with the battle between the forces of good and evil where the fate of the world is at stake for me it lacked drama and excitement, (come to think of it I don’t recall the music or the voice acting contributing to the atmosphere of peril in the final scenes so although they are good I'll mark them down accordingly).

The Bottom Line
I remember is playing the original game in the series twenty years ago. It had wit, humour, and unexpected events from the start, remember it begins with a clown bombing a cafe and stealing a briefcase? This game starts in a similar way, a painting is stolen and the gallery owner is shot.
Whereas the start of the original game is memorable "Why the clown outfit?" "Who was killed and why?", "What was in the briefcase?" etc. the start of this game is quite routine and lacks the spark of creativity that hooked me on the original game all those years ago.
It's done well but it's just not memorable which kinda sums up the whole game..

Make no mistake, this is a good game and I did enjoy it, but ultimately the problem for me is that the game lacks atmosphere and soul, that "je ne sais quoi" that makes a game fun to play and it doesn't leave me wanting more of the same.

Windows · by piltdown_man (232926) · 2016

Trivia

Funding

The game was financed by crowdfunding. Revolution Software asked for $400,000 and received $771,560. The campaign successfully ended on September 22, 2012.

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Patrick Bregger.

Nintendo Switch added by mars_rulez. Xbox One, PS Vita, PlayStation 4 added by Sciere.

Additional contributors: MAT, jaXen, Barbarian_bros, Rik Hideto, Kennyannydenny.

Game added January 14, 2014. Last modified March 27, 2024.