Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse

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.