This review contains spoilers
(This is the 61st game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
Sequel-time is always exciting, and even more so for games that were really enjoyable. With Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, the follow-up to The Secret of Monkey Island, we are in such a situation. This game probably requires no introduction for the majority of you. It released in December 1991 for the Amiga and MS-DOS, was developed and published by LucasArts, was led by Ron Gilbert and uses the SCUMM engine that was used for LucasArts adventure games until the late 90s.
While Monkey Island 2 was a critical success, commercially it fell below expectations. According to Ron Gilbert they sold relatively well, but "Sierra On-Line and King's Quest were still kicking our ass completely". Plus, he wanted to make adventure games for kids after releasing Monkey Island 2. Both of these points combined explain why he left LucasArts less than a year after Monkey Island 2 released to create his own company. Unfortunately, what Ron Gilbert's exit and Monkey Island's good-but-not-good-enough sales meant was that we would not only see no 3rd Monkey Island game until 1997, but that the 3rd game was also not written by its original creator.
I mention this for two reasons. First, 2022's Return to Monkey Island, finally directed and written by Ron Gilbert (and Dave Grossman) again, continues from the ending of this game, not the 4th (which I have never played). Second, this game has an infamous ending, and knowing what I know about the future of the Monkey Island series, I am kind of unsure on how to feel about it.
This is the final game in my challenge in the 1991 play-list. Here is my review for the game.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 8/10
This section is going to be a spoiler-heavy part, so skip this in case you didn't play this game yet and still want to. There are only spoilers for 1 and 2 however, not for 3, 4 and Return to Monkey Island, all of which I haven't played.
Once again, you are Guybrush Threepwood, the clumsy yet determined pirate; a title he has earned for himself in the first Monkey Island game. Now that Guybrush is a pirate and has defeated the evil ghost-pirate LeChuck, he is looking for a new adventure: Finding the treasure called "Big Whoop".
The game starts on Scabb Island, where Guybrush accidentally arrives in search of the lost treasure. I say accidental because the treasure is actually not here. It's not for naught however, as he learns more about the treasure and that there are four map pieces that he needs to acquire in order to find it. To start his search, he needs to get off the island, but that is not possible. While Scabb Island is known for being a lawless island, a man called Largo Lagrande took it upon himself to impose the "Largo Embargo" and to tax all ships arriving and departing with a heavy tax that no pirates in the area could afford. His angry demeanor and, more importantly, his connection to LeChuck as his right hand man in the past, make people scared of him. Everyone but Guybrush of course.
So Guybrush needs to figure out to cleanse Scabb Island from Largo. In the end, he does, but with a cost. He, inadvertently, gives Largo the 'still-alive' beard of LeChuck that he was carrying around to boast about his accomplishments. Largo steals this beard to resurrect LeChuck. So Scabb Island is free of Largo, but Guybrush, as he goes on to explore many other islands in search of the four map pieces, is not free of LeChuck any longer.
The game features many new, but also many returning characters from the original, just like you'd expect from a sequel of a graphical adventure, if you've ever played a different one. This creates both a sense of nostalgia and comfort, but also of a fresh adventure. It helps that the majority of returning characters were funny and quirky in the original, like the "Men of Low Moral Fiber" or Stan the used ship salesman, who opened his own mortuary in this game.
Dialogue is basically the same mix as the original, containing good humor, incredibly dry jokes (in a positive way), a few double entendre's, regular 4th-wall breaking and a contemptuous attitude by most characters towards Guybrush's clumsiness and habit of putting others into precarious positions in order to get himself closer to his goals. Don't get me wrong, Guybrush is a million times more competent than Deponia's Rufus (though both are equally as succesful I suppose), but his charm, pretty much everyone's charm in this world comes from their oddness and naivete. For example, the drycleaner is hard of hearing, the cartographer cannot see without his monocole, the bartender pays you unheard of sums of money upfront only to fire you minutes later without asking for his money back, guard's arrest someone else under your name after they had just arrested you for it minutes earlier etc.
So overall, as endearing as each character is on their own, the game's narrative is nearly entirely as lovely. I say nearly, because there is the ending 'showdown' between LeChuck and Guybrush, and the ending itself to discuss.
First, the showdown: As Guybrush attempts to uncover the treasure from its designated location, a hole opens up and he fall into it. When he comes to, everything is dark, but he locates a light switch. Guybrush finds himself in a room, though not alone. He finds LeChuck himself standing next to him with a voodoo doll. The voodoo doll supposedly will send Guybrush to an endless dimension of pain once LeChuck uses some sort of lightning power to pierce through his voodoo heart. Guybrush does get teleported, but only to the adjacent room. Looks like the doll was made of poor materials. There are 5 such rooms in this ending showdown, and you constantly need to run away from LeChuck, who shows up randomly, and assemble a bunch of items to create your own voodoo doll of him.
This is not a bad idea in itself. The problem arises, or did for me, when I had to find the last piece, which, for the life of me, I couldn't figure out without a guide. There is a room with a broken vending machine. You press the "coin return" and see a coin fly out of the machine and come to a halt at the door. LeChuck enters in a scripted moment to hunch down and grab the coin. At this point, you grab his underwear. Easy. But what you also are apparently supposed to do is give him your handkerchief, so he can blow his nose.
The problem? This is only possible in that room. If LeChuck shows up anywhere else, you can't give him the handkerchief. The bigger problem? There were a lot of times where LeChuck wouldn't show up for minutes (!) at a time, and if he did, he would never enter that one room again for a good 20 minutes. Why? Because it's entirely random where and when he shows up. And if you don't use a guide but did try to use the handkerchief in a different room (out of the 30 items in your inventory at this time), and that didn't work, I don't blame you for not trying it again in that one specific room. I did get it done after a long time, but it was frustrating as hell to get there.
And now, the ending: You assemble the voodoo doll, Guybrush uses it to rip out LeChuck's limbs, and LeChuck, in his final breaths, asks you to take off his mask. It reveals ... Guybrush's brother Chuckie. Apparently, Chuckie was asked of their parents to hunt Guybrush down. A maintenance worker of some sort shows up and tells them that they can't be down there. Scene fades to black, and we get a new scene showing a young Guybrush and a young Chuckie at an amusement park, with their parents scolding Guybrush for running off. As they go off, Chuckie gives a quick stare at the camera and shows a red glow in his eyes. The end. The after-credits scene shows Elaine Marley, Guybrush's love interest, standing over the hole on the surface and wondering whether Guybrush is down there hallucinating again. The actual end.
Wow. Reading opinions on it online, I realized that this was quite an unpopular ending at the time. Having it sit for a day, I'm mostly OK with it, as it allows for your own interpretation and for a lot of discussion without appearing tacked on or fully unreasonable.
So what's the truth here? Is it A) Guybrush is actually still a kid and just imagined the entire stories of 1 and 2? Or B) The "endless dimension of pain" curse that LeChuck was talking about actually manifested itself, and Guybrush will have to endure childhood with Chuckie, who likely bullies him? I am going to try to make a case for both scenarios, knowing full well that both the non-Ron Gilbert and with-Ron Gilbert explanations already exist by now.
Scenario A) There are surprisingly many arguments that can be made for this scenario. Guybrush appears in the first game out of nowhere and declares he wants to be a pirate. One of the requirements to be a pirate? Swordfighting, which apparently are just verbal duels where you try to out-wit your opponent. Another thing: Many characters are returning from the original, even though you explore island far away from Melee Island. Objects too, like the vending machine you destroyed in Monkey Island 1, which appears in the final stage again. The barkeeper won't sell grog to Guybrush without some ID. The "Big Whoop" treasure turns out to just be ... a ticket? To an amusement park perhaps? There are a lot more points I could mention, but to not have this be an essay on the ending, I'll leave it there.
Scenario B) A lot of points that can be made for Scenario B simply include arguing against the likelihood of Scenario A. First, Elaine's after-credits scene makes it seem like she actually exists. She asks if Guybrush is hallucinating again, which makes it likelier that the amusement park scene is not actual reality, but rather a false one created by LeChuck, or simply a dream. Second, the glow in LeChuck's eyes makes it appear, as if LeChuck pulled Guybrush into that universe on purpose. Third, this could have been an elaborate plan by LeChuck throughout the game. There is an earlier scene where Guybrush falls and hallucinates. He sees his parents, then LeChuck, then wakes up shortly after. The final showdown area also has a room where two skeletons lie and supposedly are Guybrush's parents. So has LeChuck been able to track Guybrush's whereabouts throughout the game and manipulate him discretely, to break Guybrush's will and have the curse be a success?
Having the outcome of the story be "it was just a dream" is obviously not the most satisfying, so I understand how players would find it bad. Again, I didn't mind it, but I do agree that Scenario B is preferrable.
All in all though, another enjoyable set of characters and funny dialogue was enough to pull me through this game on its own.
GAMEPLAY | 13/20
This is a graphical adventure by LucasArts / Lucasfilm Games in the style that you've all seen if you ever saw an old-school graphical adventure. The interface consists of the verbs on the bottom left side and your inventory on the bottom right side. You interact with people and objects by clicking on a verb and then on the person/object. It's the same as in the original. You use this interface to pick up items, solve puzzles and talk to people.
What a lot of these games fall victim to at least once or twice, especially old-school graphical adventures, is to create puzzle solutions that are entirely unintuitive and non-sensical, to the point that most players will be stuck and be left with no option but to try out everything possible in order to progress. Or, you know, use a guide. Luckily, this issue doesn't really creep up in Monkey Island 2, at least I found almost all puzzles to more or less make sense. Sure, using a monkey on a water pump is not the most logical solution, but it works in this game world. There were a few times where I had to use a hint, but the solutions made sense in hindsight.
There isn't really too much else that could be said here since this is through and through your average graphical adventure. One thing that I didn't find great was ship travel. You need to go through three different islands to find four map pieces, but this also means that you need items from one island to solve the puzzle on another. Since you need time to figure out what you need to do, you find yourself constantly driving from one island to the other. You need to go back to your ship on the overworld to travel, and the time it takes to do this definitely adds up to the point where the pacing of it all is not always the way you'd like it.
Overall, it's pretty much the same game as the original, just with a slightly better interface.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
I used the Special Edition but played the classic version. In this edition, there is voice acting, which the classic game didn't actually have at release. But since the Special Edition is the only one available and the one any of you would play, I'm going to say that there is voice acting here for the purposes of this rating. The voice acting is great and the majority of the characters sound unique. It's a situation where half the jokes work because of the writing and half work because of the way they are said. Couldn't really have had a better voive for Guybrush either.
The soundtrack is a fantastic mix of reggae, jazz and classical music, just like the original, with a tinge of whatever is required to set the atmosphere, like a spooky melody for the swamps for example. Plus, it's much longer than the soundtrack for the original as well, and the majority of scenes have a unique track reserved for themselves, which adds to their recognizability.
I'll give this a 9 because voice acting technically wasn't included in 1991, but think of it as a 10 if you play the voice acted versions.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
I adore the game's art direction. This was extremely well done, right down to the smallest details that suggest there is something you can interact with. From the quirky designs of each character you meet to the significantly more varied and detailed locations compared to the original, to the deep use of the color palette all the way to the distinctively decorated interiors.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 9/10
You play a sympathetic oddball called Guybrush Threepwood in a world filled with sympathetic oddballs and embark on a pirate adventure spanning multiple different islands. The inhabitants all feel familiar and never out of place, whether it's characters that you met in the original or here for the first time.
CONTENT | 8/10
The game has a more or less perfect length for a graphical adventure at roughly 6 to 10 hours depending on how quickly you solve the puzzles. There are lots of puzzles to solve and a lot of different, distinct locations to visit. The majority of puzzles actually are very solvable and don't fall victim to the unintuitiveness that is commonplace at least once or twice in these games. My only main complaint is that the final half hour is not as well done in terms of puzzles as most of the rest of this game.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
I really like how many varied locations there are to visit, but it comes at the cost of pacing. You need to walk all the way back to your ship each time you want to move to a different island, and the further you are along, and the more stuck you are, the more common it is to keep traveling around. A fast-travel or shortcut to the ship would have been a big addition. The final showdown, as I already explained in much detail, I also found to be poorly done. Finally, there are many items that clog up your inventory that you never use, which I don't necessarily enjoy in these games. There are also items that you do use but that either don't leave your inventory or that you can pick up again under the impression that this means that you'll be using them later down the line. This never happens though, and since you need to constantly move up and down to pick the correct times, this surplus of items just get in the way for no added benefit.
Overall though, the levels are nicely designed, there is good variety in puzzles, there is logic behind almost all puzzles that I can get behind and locations look nice and are available in large numbers.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 5/10
At this point there have been multiple graphical adventures of this style at the time. This doesn't make them less fun necessarily, just less innovative as time goes on. The unique part about this game is that you got three islands that you constantly travel to and fro, but as I explained above, I see both positives and negatives with that approach, the negative namely being pacing from all the traveling.
REPLAYABILITY | 1/5
No motivation given to replay this game after having beaten it the first time. It's fairly linear, you could just pick up map pieces in different orders I presume. That's more than fine, there just isn't any replayability. If you use the Special Edition, there is the possibility of using dev commentary on a second playthrough to get some backstory on the game development. I didn't do that since I didn't know how much of the sequels would be spoiled potentially.
PLAYABILITY | 4/5
Worked well for 95% of the time. I had two crashes unfortunately (Special Edition) and, more notably, the final section literally didn't work for me for close to half an hour because LeChuck just wouldn't show up.
OVERALL | 74/100
Another great game in the Monkey Island series. I definitely understand why this has a cult following, the characters and dialogue is just very charming, the 4th wall breaking amusing and the "high stakes but not really" plot is enjoyable to follow. The sequel improves on graphics and adds more music, but is otherwise more of the same, with an ending that not everyone will enjoy. Even if you don't, the rest of the game is absolutely worth a playthrough.
Sequel-time is always exciting, and even more so for games that were really enjoyable. With Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, the follow-up to The Secret of Monkey Island, we are in such a situation. This game probably requires no introduction for the majority of you. It released in December 1991 for the Amiga and MS-DOS, was developed and published by LucasArts, was led by Ron Gilbert and uses the SCUMM engine that was used for LucasArts adventure games until the late 90s.
While Monkey Island 2 was a critical success, commercially it fell below expectations. According to Ron Gilbert they sold relatively well, but "Sierra On-Line and King's Quest were still kicking our ass completely". Plus, he wanted to make adventure games for kids after releasing Monkey Island 2. Both of these points combined explain why he left LucasArts less than a year after Monkey Island 2 released to create his own company. Unfortunately, what Ron Gilbert's exit and Monkey Island's good-but-not-good-enough sales meant was that we would not only see no 3rd Monkey Island game until 1997, but that the 3rd game was also not written by its original creator.
I mention this for two reasons. First, 2022's Return to Monkey Island, finally directed and written by Ron Gilbert (and Dave Grossman) again, continues from the ending of this game, not the 4th (which I have never played). Second, this game has an infamous ending, and knowing what I know about the future of the Monkey Island series, I am kind of unsure on how to feel about it.
This is the final game in my challenge in the 1991 play-list. Here is my review for the game.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 8/10
This section is going to be a spoiler-heavy part, so skip this in case you didn't play this game yet and still want to. There are only spoilers for 1 and 2 however, not for 3, 4 and Return to Monkey Island, all of which I haven't played.
Once again, you are Guybrush Threepwood, the clumsy yet determined pirate; a title he has earned for himself in the first Monkey Island game. Now that Guybrush is a pirate and has defeated the evil ghost-pirate LeChuck, he is looking for a new adventure: Finding the treasure called "Big Whoop".
The game starts on Scabb Island, where Guybrush accidentally arrives in search of the lost treasure. I say accidental because the treasure is actually not here. It's not for naught however, as he learns more about the treasure and that there are four map pieces that he needs to acquire in order to find it. To start his search, he needs to get off the island, but that is not possible. While Scabb Island is known for being a lawless island, a man called Largo Lagrande took it upon himself to impose the "Largo Embargo" and to tax all ships arriving and departing with a heavy tax that no pirates in the area could afford. His angry demeanor and, more importantly, his connection to LeChuck as his right hand man in the past, make people scared of him. Everyone but Guybrush of course.
So Guybrush needs to figure out to cleanse Scabb Island from Largo. In the end, he does, but with a cost. He, inadvertently, gives Largo the 'still-alive' beard of LeChuck that he was carrying around to boast about his accomplishments. Largo steals this beard to resurrect LeChuck. So Scabb Island is free of Largo, but Guybrush, as he goes on to explore many other islands in search of the four map pieces, is not free of LeChuck any longer.
The game features many new, but also many returning characters from the original, just like you'd expect from a sequel of a graphical adventure, if you've ever played a different one. This creates both a sense of nostalgia and comfort, but also of a fresh adventure. It helps that the majority of returning characters were funny and quirky in the original, like the "Men of Low Moral Fiber" or Stan the used ship salesman, who opened his own mortuary in this game.
Dialogue is basically the same mix as the original, containing good humor, incredibly dry jokes (in a positive way), a few double entendre's, regular 4th-wall breaking and a contemptuous attitude by most characters towards Guybrush's clumsiness and habit of putting others into precarious positions in order to get himself closer to his goals. Don't get me wrong, Guybrush is a million times more competent than Deponia's Rufus (though both are equally as succesful I suppose), but his charm, pretty much everyone's charm in this world comes from their oddness and naivete. For example, the drycleaner is hard of hearing, the cartographer cannot see without his monocole, the bartender pays you unheard of sums of money upfront only to fire you minutes later without asking for his money back, guard's arrest someone else under your name after they had just arrested you for it minutes earlier etc.
So overall, as endearing as each character is on their own, the game's narrative is nearly entirely as lovely. I say nearly, because there is the ending 'showdown' between LeChuck and Guybrush, and the ending itself to discuss.
First, the showdown: As Guybrush attempts to uncover the treasure from its designated location, a hole opens up and he fall into it. When he comes to, everything is dark, but he locates a light switch. Guybrush finds himself in a room, though not alone. He finds LeChuck himself standing next to him with a voodoo doll. The voodoo doll supposedly will send Guybrush to an endless dimension of pain once LeChuck uses some sort of lightning power to pierce through his voodoo heart. Guybrush does get teleported, but only to the adjacent room. Looks like the doll was made of poor materials. There are 5 such rooms in this ending showdown, and you constantly need to run away from LeChuck, who shows up randomly, and assemble a bunch of items to create your own voodoo doll of him.
This is not a bad idea in itself. The problem arises, or did for me, when I had to find the last piece, which, for the life of me, I couldn't figure out without a guide. There is a room with a broken vending machine. You press the "coin return" and see a coin fly out of the machine and come to a halt at the door. LeChuck enters in a scripted moment to hunch down and grab the coin. At this point, you grab his underwear. Easy. But what you also are apparently supposed to do is give him your handkerchief, so he can blow his nose.
The problem? This is only possible in that room. If LeChuck shows up anywhere else, you can't give him the handkerchief. The bigger problem? There were a lot of times where LeChuck wouldn't show up for minutes (!) at a time, and if he did, he would never enter that one room again for a good 20 minutes. Why? Because it's entirely random where and when he shows up. And if you don't use a guide but did try to use the handkerchief in a different room (out of the 30 items in your inventory at this time), and that didn't work, I don't blame you for not trying it again in that one specific room. I did get it done after a long time, but it was frustrating as hell to get there.
And now, the ending: You assemble the voodoo doll, Guybrush uses it to rip out LeChuck's limbs, and LeChuck, in his final breaths, asks you to take off his mask. It reveals ... Guybrush's brother Chuckie. Apparently, Chuckie was asked of their parents to hunt Guybrush down. A maintenance worker of some sort shows up and tells them that they can't be down there. Scene fades to black, and we get a new scene showing a young Guybrush and a young Chuckie at an amusement park, with their parents scolding Guybrush for running off. As they go off, Chuckie gives a quick stare at the camera and shows a red glow in his eyes. The end. The after-credits scene shows Elaine Marley, Guybrush's love interest, standing over the hole on the surface and wondering whether Guybrush is down there hallucinating again. The actual end.
Wow. Reading opinions on it online, I realized that this was quite an unpopular ending at the time. Having it sit for a day, I'm mostly OK with it, as it allows for your own interpretation and for a lot of discussion without appearing tacked on or fully unreasonable.
So what's the truth here? Is it A) Guybrush is actually still a kid and just imagined the entire stories of 1 and 2? Or B) The "endless dimension of pain" curse that LeChuck was talking about actually manifested itself, and Guybrush will have to endure childhood with Chuckie, who likely bullies him? I am going to try to make a case for both scenarios, knowing full well that both the non-Ron Gilbert and with-Ron Gilbert explanations already exist by now.
Scenario A) There are surprisingly many arguments that can be made for this scenario. Guybrush appears in the first game out of nowhere and declares he wants to be a pirate. One of the requirements to be a pirate? Swordfighting, which apparently are just verbal duels where you try to out-wit your opponent. Another thing: Many characters are returning from the original, even though you explore island far away from Melee Island. Objects too, like the vending machine you destroyed in Monkey Island 1, which appears in the final stage again. The barkeeper won't sell grog to Guybrush without some ID. The "Big Whoop" treasure turns out to just be ... a ticket? To an amusement park perhaps? There are a lot more points I could mention, but to not have this be an essay on the ending, I'll leave it there.
Scenario B) A lot of points that can be made for Scenario B simply include arguing against the likelihood of Scenario A. First, Elaine's after-credits scene makes it seem like she actually exists. She asks if Guybrush is hallucinating again, which makes it likelier that the amusement park scene is not actual reality, but rather a false one created by LeChuck, or simply a dream. Second, the glow in LeChuck's eyes makes it appear, as if LeChuck pulled Guybrush into that universe on purpose. Third, this could have been an elaborate plan by LeChuck throughout the game. There is an earlier scene where Guybrush falls and hallucinates. He sees his parents, then LeChuck, then wakes up shortly after. The final showdown area also has a room where two skeletons lie and supposedly are Guybrush's parents. So has LeChuck been able to track Guybrush's whereabouts throughout the game and manipulate him discretely, to break Guybrush's will and have the curse be a success?
Having the outcome of the story be "it was just a dream" is obviously not the most satisfying, so I understand how players would find it bad. Again, I didn't mind it, but I do agree that Scenario B is preferrable.
All in all though, another enjoyable set of characters and funny dialogue was enough to pull me through this game on its own.
GAMEPLAY | 13/20
This is a graphical adventure by LucasArts / Lucasfilm Games in the style that you've all seen if you ever saw an old-school graphical adventure. The interface consists of the verbs on the bottom left side and your inventory on the bottom right side. You interact with people and objects by clicking on a verb and then on the person/object. It's the same as in the original. You use this interface to pick up items, solve puzzles and talk to people.
What a lot of these games fall victim to at least once or twice, especially old-school graphical adventures, is to create puzzle solutions that are entirely unintuitive and non-sensical, to the point that most players will be stuck and be left with no option but to try out everything possible in order to progress. Or, you know, use a guide. Luckily, this issue doesn't really creep up in Monkey Island 2, at least I found almost all puzzles to more or less make sense. Sure, using a monkey on a water pump is not the most logical solution, but it works in this game world. There were a few times where I had to use a hint, but the solutions made sense in hindsight.
There isn't really too much else that could be said here since this is through and through your average graphical adventure. One thing that I didn't find great was ship travel. You need to go through three different islands to find four map pieces, but this also means that you need items from one island to solve the puzzle on another. Since you need time to figure out what you need to do, you find yourself constantly driving from one island to the other. You need to go back to your ship on the overworld to travel, and the time it takes to do this definitely adds up to the point where the pacing of it all is not always the way you'd like it.
Overall, it's pretty much the same game as the original, just with a slightly better interface.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
I used the Special Edition but played the classic version. In this edition, there is voice acting, which the classic game didn't actually have at release. But since the Special Edition is the only one available and the one any of you would play, I'm going to say that there is voice acting here for the purposes of this rating. The voice acting is great and the majority of the characters sound unique. It's a situation where half the jokes work because of the writing and half work because of the way they are said. Couldn't really have had a better voive for Guybrush either.
The soundtrack is a fantastic mix of reggae, jazz and classical music, just like the original, with a tinge of whatever is required to set the atmosphere, like a spooky melody for the swamps for example. Plus, it's much longer than the soundtrack for the original as well, and the majority of scenes have a unique track reserved for themselves, which adds to their recognizability.
I'll give this a 9 because voice acting technically wasn't included in 1991, but think of it as a 10 if you play the voice acted versions.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
I adore the game's art direction. This was extremely well done, right down to the smallest details that suggest there is something you can interact with. From the quirky designs of each character you meet to the significantly more varied and detailed locations compared to the original, to the deep use of the color palette all the way to the distinctively decorated interiors.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 9/10
You play a sympathetic oddball called Guybrush Threepwood in a world filled with sympathetic oddballs and embark on a pirate adventure spanning multiple different islands. The inhabitants all feel familiar and never out of place, whether it's characters that you met in the original or here for the first time.
CONTENT | 8/10
The game has a more or less perfect length for a graphical adventure at roughly 6 to 10 hours depending on how quickly you solve the puzzles. There are lots of puzzles to solve and a lot of different, distinct locations to visit. The majority of puzzles actually are very solvable and don't fall victim to the unintuitiveness that is commonplace at least once or twice in these games. My only main complaint is that the final half hour is not as well done in terms of puzzles as most of the rest of this game.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
I really like how many varied locations there are to visit, but it comes at the cost of pacing. You need to walk all the way back to your ship each time you want to move to a different island, and the further you are along, and the more stuck you are, the more common it is to keep traveling around. A fast-travel or shortcut to the ship would have been a big addition. The final showdown, as I already explained in much detail, I also found to be poorly done. Finally, there are many items that clog up your inventory that you never use, which I don't necessarily enjoy in these games. There are also items that you do use but that either don't leave your inventory or that you can pick up again under the impression that this means that you'll be using them later down the line. This never happens though, and since you need to constantly move up and down to pick the correct times, this surplus of items just get in the way for no added benefit.
Overall though, the levels are nicely designed, there is good variety in puzzles, there is logic behind almost all puzzles that I can get behind and locations look nice and are available in large numbers.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 5/10
At this point there have been multiple graphical adventures of this style at the time. This doesn't make them less fun necessarily, just less innovative as time goes on. The unique part about this game is that you got three islands that you constantly travel to and fro, but as I explained above, I see both positives and negatives with that approach, the negative namely being pacing from all the traveling.
REPLAYABILITY | 1/5
No motivation given to replay this game after having beaten it the first time. It's fairly linear, you could just pick up map pieces in different orders I presume. That's more than fine, there just isn't any replayability. If you use the Special Edition, there is the possibility of using dev commentary on a second playthrough to get some backstory on the game development. I didn't do that since I didn't know how much of the sequels would be spoiled potentially.
PLAYABILITY | 4/5
Worked well for 95% of the time. I had two crashes unfortunately (Special Edition) and, more notably, the final section literally didn't work for me for close to half an hour because LeChuck just wouldn't show up.
OVERALL | 74/100
Another great game in the Monkey Island series. I definitely understand why this has a cult following, the characters and dialogue is just very charming, the 4th wall breaking amusing and the "high stakes but not really" plot is enjoyable to follow. The sequel improves on graphics and adds more music, but is otherwise more of the same, with an ending that not everyone will enjoy. Even if you don't, the rest of the game is absolutely worth a playthrough.
Reviewed on May 24, 2023