Broken Sword 5 - The Serpent's Curse. An Xbox One Review

I remember playing Broken Sword in the 90’s on the PlayStation when I was in my teens and getting stuck for prolonged periods. Whilst probably because of my impatience rather than the difficulty it seemed like it treaded a fine line between giving me that eureka moment and giving me undiluted frustration. 20 years on in technology and my hairline, does Broken Sword still continue to annoy or is it more a more joyful experience?


Although a best-selling franchise Broken Sword 5 was funded by Kickstarter. Renowned for its artwork and storylines, Broken Sword 5 returns with the same playable characters as usual, an American insurance broker named George, and Nico, a French journalist. Set in Paris to begin with, they are witnesses to a painting robbery and murder. We are then tasked with solving the crimes, which take us on an adventure through Europe, encountering conspiracies and moral dilemmas.

Returning to its 2D roots, Broken Sword has lush hand drawn environments which are vibrant and colourful, the graphics are perfectly suitable at this point in time, especially as many indie developers are pushing pixelated graphics on the Xbox One. The controls are acceptable and the cursor moves fairly swiftfully whilst using a joypad. You have a button to interact with items and an inventory where the items you collect can be chosen to interact with an item on screen, combined with other items, or examined. The inventory would be my first gripe about the game, it is a little sluggish to choose your item and use it. Far from gamebreaking however.

What I enjoyed with my time with Broken Sword 5 was the dialogue. The voice acting is very good, and doesn’t take itself too seriously. It is quite camp and at times quite funny. Even when you try to use an incorrect item it doesn’t belittle you and can force you to raise a smile. You don’t have to listen to it all though, the game is subtitled so you can read the dialogue and skip it which is welcome. Where the game starts to falter unfortunately is the bread and butter of the game; the puzzles. Whilst I don’t think it would be as big a problem on pcs it does become a problem on consoles. Sometimes items are difficult to see on a big screen and as the cursor is moved slower than it would be with a mouse, you can miss objects you need to check. A larger cursor would have maybe extinguished this problem. What ticked me off the most though was when you immediately think you have the solution to a problem, but get told it is incorrect. So you check everything else in the scene, talk to everyone in the scene and still can’t find the answer, then finally go back and check the first thing you thought of and it is actually the correct answer; but the game wouldn’t let you choose it until you have talked to people. This pissed me off somewhat.


Other times the solution is so far-fetched it takes you a long time to get there. Maybe it was me but some of the assumptions I made with regards to object use were wrong, and items I didn’t think of using was actually the correct answer to the problem but I only found out through trial and error. Some are very lacking in common sense. I didn’t actually mind this so much, and got used to it the further in the game I got. Some of the solutions are quite quirky and fun and added to the enjoyment, in a winking, knowing way.

If you get stuck then I have good news for you, the hint system is exceptional. Whilst it detracts completely from the enjoyment, the hints are basically the answers to the problems. Seeing as we now have the internet I’m not sure such a good hint system is needed, but it’s there if you want to use it, or don’t like the game and want to blow through it.
There are a few missable achievements but thankfully you have a plentiful supply of manual saves so I’d suggest using them so you can mop up the missables. I had to reload a save an hour earlier because I’d missed something which wasn’t so bad. All in all it took me about 15 hours to complete and get all the achievements using 20 hints. Although about half of the hints were to see what the hints actually were rather than being stuck, and some of the times I got stuck but it was actually obvious what was needed and I wished I hadn’t used a hint.


Who will enjoy this game then? Point and click afficianados? Tick. Gamerscore whores? Tick. Adventure buffs? Tick. Anyone else? I’m not so sure. Point and click remains a genre that doesn’t appeal to everyone. Whilst Telltale Games may have brought point and click adventure games to a wider audience with titles such as The Walking Dead, Broken Sword 5 remains true to the genres roots and so appeals to fans of the franchise and doesn’t do anything to appeal to anyone else.

Whilst perfectly acceptable to get a release on the new generation of systems, seeing as anything indie goes at the moment, (looking at you Goat Simulator), it is still more suited to pcs because of the nature of the game. I guess with the fan base Revolution games knows with Broken Sword they can’t have their cake and eat it having tried 3d previously and it not going down well with fans.

Overall Broken Sword 5 is a fairly relaxed game that can frustrate. (Nothing new there with point and click). Its graphics are decent, the story and voice acting are good, and as a point and click it is good too. It’s just not suited to non-fans of the genre and is better as a pc game. It gets a respectable 62/100 from me. Fans will play it anyway and it does nothing ground-breaking to recommend it. Telltale have reinvented the genre recently on consoles so Broken Sword, whilst appeasing fans, are missing a trick staying with 2d environments at the moment. Maybe Revolution need to branch out and bring their camp characters and writing, and welcome humour, to consoles by making a non-Broken Sword adventure title in order to stay relevant. Harsh perhaps but doable; there are many games recently that have been criticised by fans after reinventing themselves but have made it work, such as Assassin’s Creed and Tomb Raider. Staying with the same formula 20 years on may keep you the same fans, but it doesn’t bring a new one in me.

Nice review. As a big fan of the first two games I imagine I will end up getting this. It's actually quite nice to see them go back to their 2D roots, and from the screens here I think it looks very nice.

George Stobbart is, and always will be a total dick though.

I must confess to spending many hours on the original broken sword games so I may check this out at some point nice review mate.

Good review. Never played the Broken Sword games apart from giving the second games demo a go. It does look quite good.

Good work mate. I enjoyed reading that. The Broken Sword games bring back good memories and I did really enjoy them. I will buy this eventually and hope it invokes the same atmosphere I garnered from the previous games. I didn't enjoy them as much as the Lucasarts pointy clickies but they are good all the same. Like you say though, you have to be prepared for some obtuse puzzles but then I suppose they have to be to make them challenging. Also, yes, George is a bell end!

Nice review fella, this looks like my kind of game, I like a point and click. One to consider once I get bored of ESO and gears

Good work buddy, thanks for stepping up.