This is the first Laruaville which has the "modern" feel of the Laruaville series: puzzle-M3 boards which can be solved in a few minutes if you plan your moves out, lots of gadgets to manipulate as a part of the puzzle solving process, and plenty of assorted minigames. I think there were 90 or maybe 91 levels, wasn't quite sure when I finished the game. The now-standard options of relaxed, limited moves, and timed modes to play in. Game mode can be changed at any time, and the moves counter has the "modern" Laruaville feel of being pretty tight (50-60 moves for the majority of levels). The timer has always been short in these games; doesn't seem like you ever get more than 3 minutes per level.
The sort-of-pirate theme and story of reconstructing a town on an island in order to build a ship so the ghosts can sail to some other confines isn't bad; I've definitely seen worse storylines in the series.
A mix of minigames has been brought in: solitaire, spot the difference, and hidden object scenes to replace what seemed like never-ending mahjong puzzles every 3 levels. Unfortunately, you don't get extra coins for playing the minigames this time, so they're just there for extra content.
On the other hand, it's probably a good thing that you don't get an incentive to play all the content, because I found the game buggy. The HOS are all bugged where the "list" doesn't show at all, and you literally have to guess at what to click upon and/or use the hint button until the level finishes. The bonus sparkles do appear in the town every so often, but they're invisible until you close the game and reopen it. Or, you can randomly click in the town and if you happen to stumble on some invisible sparkles, will get the coins. These aren't game-breaking bugs, but I originally played Laruaville 5 at another site, and it was fine there, so it's disappointing the Steam version hasn't been the same experience.
Some of the puzzles weren't that well designed, where it's more a matter of luck with getting bombs in the right place at the right time. The mechanics were still obviously being experimented with at this point in the series, and I really missed the rockets. The bombs don't move around with matches either, which I'm glad they went back to the moving bombs for all the rest of the games afterwards. But otherwise, not a bad installment if you like the way the newer Laruaville games play and fun to revisit if you haven't played the back catalog in a while.
Someone commented elsewhere they couldn't make a new player, but I didn't have that problem doing it from the main screen.
