Wannabe pirate Guybrush Threepwood, and the now zombie pirate LeChuck, return in what has long been considered one of the greatest LucasArts adventure games of all time. Having seemingly defeated the evil ghost pirate LeChuck in his first adventure, Guybrush Threepwood sets his sights on the legendary treasure of Big Whoop. But wait, LeChuck is now back in zombie form and he's out for revenge. Guybrush will have to use his wits, his humor and his insatiable desire for adventure to defeat his nemesis once and for all and truly prove himself the greatest pirate in the Caribbean. Voodoo dolls, spitting contests and amusement parks are just some of the challenges Guybrush must overcome as he meets old friends, fights new enemies and uses every ounce of his mojo to overcome the wrath of LeChuck's revenge.
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On paper, the idea of a big puzzlebox stretching across three islands sounds cool but what that actually means is I’m wandering between places looking for scraps of hints for many of the game’s riddles and oftentimes the solution was at least halfway obscure. Like, I’m playing a classic PnCA and I’m wondering if I have to employ a strategy I used for La-Mulana where I write down everything that seems like a hint.
To make matters worse, there were times playing this game where I was carrying around nearly fifty items and in a game where each item has the potential to be used, opened, given, etc– the amount of variables became overwhelming. It wasn’t long before I was using a hint guide to ease the play for me. I think if the game had more pieces of information to offer the player then I would have had a pretty great time.
Other than that frustration, the only problem I had is that the game is pretty gross. There’s a lotta spit and talk about lice and dandruff and it made me a little uncomfortable. Was Monkey Island 1 this gross? The general atmosphere and storytelling’s pretty good, though. I like these characters and I was excited to see the next chapter of the Guybrush Threepwood story. I liked how the story and atmosphere gets trippy in the last chapter, too.
Like I said the graphics and audio are good, especially the music that weaves into each other as the player moves through various buildings in Woodtick, for example. The pervasive eerie quietness that bugged me about the first game is no longer here with the frequent BGM and sound effects, although made the game pretty eerie anyway by choosing the Adlib soundtrack with its hypnagogic synths.
Despite my issues, I can see that this is a cool game anyway. I regret not being more patient with the game but I also hated looking through an inventory of dozens of items when many should have been discarded or removed from the equation. I’ll play this game again though and will likely soften on it.