My home course (25 years old) has this mix. The land was originally swamp-like so I'm told they brought a lot of dirt in for fill, and created several ponds, before they routed the course, and the housing. So I'm guessing it was a choice to do the 5-3 & 5-5 concept and not dictated by the land but it's a good question I might try to find the answers to.
Aside from OB left and right on every hole, the 3's are awfully hard with four over water. The card puts all of them within one club length of each other, so unless the grounds crew or pro shop move them around they all pretty much play the same distance, since there isn't much appreciable wind factor on an average day. So that part stinks.
Of the par 5's, three are true 3-shotters while the other two might be par 4.5's if you hit a great drive, but given all the hazards around the greens the smartest play is likely to lay up, which is boring. We've started to make our 2nd shot landing areas a bit more interesting (pot bunkers at 100 yards out) which is cool, but they really just add to the difficulty since we've added a challenge without easing somewhere else. So, more strategic, more harder.
The par 4's have some variety and there are birdies to be had on nearly all of them, so no fuss there.