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Broken Sword 5 - the Serpent's Curse: Episode 2

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Broken Sword 5 - the Serpent's Curse: Episode 2

The first half of Broken Sword 5 was a disappointment.

For one it was missing the action, adventure, and globetrotting antics of a Broken Sword game. Instead we got a tepid murder mystery and a not-so thrilling case of insurance fraud.

This second episode certainly points us in the right direction on that count. We get conspiracies and curses. We get religious intrigue and crazy zealots. We go to Catalonia, a monastery in the mountains, and some crumbling ruins in Iraq.

But the unfocused, poorly plotted storytelling of the first episode never comes back on course. Broken Sword 5's narrative is, through and through, a muddled mess.

The tone is inconsistent, the Gnostic lore that underpins the plot isn't as interesting as Revolution thinks it is, and it all comes together for a complete dud of an ending. It's better than fighting a dragon in Broken Sword 3, but not by much.

Get your goat

At times it feels like Revolution is more interested in making winking callbacks to old Broken Sword games than a story that makes sense. Shadow of the Templars is my favourite game ever, and even I could have done without two goat puzzles.

Other than the always sharp chemistry between George and Nico, the narrative is uneven and uninteresting. At times you wouldn't be blamed for mistaking it for Broken Sword fan fiction.

What's more the two halves are barely related to one another. The first game's villain has about four seconds of screen time, and the murder that propelled the intro episode is quickly swept under the rug.

You could theoretically play one without the other without missing much plot (spoiler alert: someone stole a painting because it's secretly a treasure map), but I'm not sure it's worth bothering.

Tempered

Episode 2 focuses on puzzles instead of conversation and investigation, and by killing off the map you're shuttled from location to location as the plot requires it.

The difficulty has been ramped up a little. Which wouldn't be so bad, except experimentation isn't encouraged when George ambles so slowly. You'll find yourself digging into the hints section just to hurry things along.

The solutions are still silly and tenuous too. Before you made a fake moustache to dance with a drunk woman and made a police officer need a wee. Now you use a cockroach to fix a cable car and play Ave Maria on an oil drum for god know's why.

Also the puzzles repeatedly rely on a knowledge of the game's simplistic take on Gnostic lore. Swivelling statues to look at trees and playing with green and blue light get repetitive, fast.

It turns out that the standout puzzles are more traditional conundrums. There's a clever cipher challenge I enjoyed solving, and a slightly obtuse symbol task that really rewards some lateral thinking.

Irreparable

After dropping £15 on the Broken Sword 5 Kickstarter I was tragically disappointed by the slow pace and dull plot of Episode 1. Episode 2 does fix some of those problems with action, high stakes, and more exotic locations. But it never quite comes together.

The puzzles are still silly, the plotting is nonsensical, and the tone is all over the place. Save your cash, go replay the first two Broken Sword games, and just kid yourself that it ended after the first two instalments like Terminator did.

Broken Sword 5 - the Serpent's Curse: Episode 2

The Serpent's Curse: Episode 2 fixes some of the problems of Episode 1, but retains the goofy puzzles, heavy handed references, and shockingly poor plotting
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Mark Brown
Mark Brown
Mark Brown is editor at large of Pocket Gamer