A very fitting finale for this series of games. I played the first two Monkey Island games followed by Return to Monkey Island™ pretty much back-to-back. The writing was consistently great all throughout all three of these wonderfully charming games.
The art is very stylized and it was clearly a deliberate choice to make the game look this way. While I personally am not crazy for it, it’s not a terrible look, and I do think that this drastic artstyle is a big help in conveying some of this game’s themes: themes of change, growing older, and the animosity between the old and new generations. I can’t speak for the games that come after Monkey Island™ 2, but at the very least, I feel like the Ron Gilbert titles have worn their themes, messages, and plot elements on their sleeves and Return to Monkey Island™ is no different.
I was pleased to find that a large number of the previous voice actors came back for this one. Sadly, LeChuck had to be recast because the original voice actor for him retired, but the new voice actor still does a fantastic job with him.
Return is a fair bit longer than its predecessors. While the other games took me about six and a half hours each to complete, Return took me about nine and a half to finish. It combines the structures of the first two Monkey Island™ games by railroading you to specific islands at the start before giving you a number of different islands to explore at around the midway point. I’d say it’s mostly well-paced, but this game’s puzzles tend to have a lot of steps to them that you wouldn’t initially realize. I can’t tell you how many times I thought I had a puzzle figured out only to find there’s an extra step or two to the puzzle that requires an item in a different location in order to finish it. Only to find that that item ALSO has a set of steps needed to acquire it. It can be frustrating at times having to backtrack to locations to get something I had no idea I ever needed in the first place, but since you can double click to increase the speed Guybrush walks or the Sea Monkey sails, it’s not nearly as bad as it could be.
I could write up a whole rant on the ending and the fact that people are pretty willfully ignorant about the truth of these games and their themes, but I don’t think that this is the place for it. All in all, Return wraps things up in a mostly tight, yet very satisfying fashion. They leave room for a possible sequel, but in all honesty, this feels like the definitive ending for the franchise and I think it’s the best possible way for this series to conclude. I had a great time with it.
The art is very stylized and it was clearly a deliberate choice to make the game look this way. While I personally am not crazy for it, it’s not a terrible look, and I do think that this drastic artstyle is a big help in conveying some of this game’s themes: themes of change, growing older, and the animosity between the old and new generations. I can’t speak for the games that come after Monkey Island™ 2, but at the very least, I feel like the Ron Gilbert titles have worn their themes, messages, and plot elements on their sleeves and Return to Monkey Island™ is no different.
I was pleased to find that a large number of the previous voice actors came back for this one. Sadly, LeChuck had to be recast because the original voice actor for him retired, but the new voice actor still does a fantastic job with him.
Return is a fair bit longer than its predecessors. While the other games took me about six and a half hours each to complete, Return took me about nine and a half to finish. It combines the structures of the first two Monkey Island™ games by railroading you to specific islands at the start before giving you a number of different islands to explore at around the midway point. I’d say it’s mostly well-paced, but this game’s puzzles tend to have a lot of steps to them that you wouldn’t initially realize. I can’t tell you how many times I thought I had a puzzle figured out only to find there’s an extra step or two to the puzzle that requires an item in a different location in order to finish it. Only to find that that item ALSO has a set of steps needed to acquire it. It can be frustrating at times having to backtrack to locations to get something I had no idea I ever needed in the first place, but since you can double click to increase the speed Guybrush walks or the Sea Monkey sails, it’s not nearly as bad as it could be.
I could write up a whole rant on the ending and the fact that people are pretty willfully ignorant about the truth of these games and their themes, but I don’t think that this is the place for it. All in all, Return wraps things up in a mostly tight, yet very satisfying fashion. They leave room for a possible sequel, but in all honesty, this feels like the definitive ending for the franchise and I think it’s the best possible way for this series to conclude. I had a great time with it.