I think Return is the BEST Monkey Island game

[Based Jar Jar Enjoyer]

I had an amazing time with the game, absolutely loved it from beginning to end.

Story

Once again it's a fun adventure. I feel like with Secret they were very limited by how big they could make a game, and Revenge felt a bit disjointed at times, but Return was a great evolving story. I'm glad Elaine was a bit more actively involved in the plot than in the first two games, too.

Puzzles

I understand people who are disappointed because they wanted more elaborate weird puzzles of old, but personally I'm older and I have less time to game. I'm in there for the atmosphere and humour, not to be stuck at one puzzle for hours. It hit exactly the right spot for me of not that difficult, not trivial.

Voice cast

I just want to add it here since I've seen multiple people mentioning their displeasure with LeChuck's new voice actor, that I thought he was great at making the character his own. I loved this iteration of LeChuck, Guybrush was brilliantly voiced as usual, and they had a great supporting cast.

Humour

Just as great as the first two games, with the bonus of being able to call back stuff across decades of games. There were several times the game gave me a laughing fit, like Guybrush throwing his disguise eyepatch in the air, or the Secret.

Art

The screenshots and trailer don't do the art justice, once I actually was playing the art/direction felt great, like I was playing a cartoon. Personally I am of the opinion that every Monkey Island game having a totally different art style from all previous games is tradition now, and this was a great art style that really fit the mood of the game. People who call it "bland, sterile, corporate" need to get glasses, or a dictionary, because while it's fine to dislike the art and I get it if you don't agree with me that it's great art, but the art is none of those three words.

Ending

To people who didn't like the ending: what did you expect? The first two Monkey Island games, especially the second one gave you an anticlimax ending too. The ending was always going to be weird. Personally, I was expecting a Monty Python And The Holy Grail, with Guybrush being arrested for his crimes. Having this game explain Revenge's twist ending, only to do it AGAIN was hilarious, and the Secret being a shirt was genious - I've even heard an NPC actually spoil this near the start of the game in optional dialogue. And hey, nothing lost - afterwards at the park it's immediately made clear that the ending we saw wasn't the ending proper, it's just how Guybrush is telling it now. There was dome sort of final confrontation, and Guybrush prevailed - it's just not important, because the hero always prevails anyway. It was about the journey, not the goal. Personally, I loved it.

Length

I finished this game at more than eleven hours, more than what I needed for my first time with the first two games put together (and I was stuck less in this game than in Revenge). I love it, the game gave me a lot of bang for my buck, and I'm definitely replaying soon if not right away to look into the stuff that I missed because I have less than half of the achievements (I don't care for achievement completion and only go for 100% for games that I really, REALLY enjoyed, and I enjoyed Return more than enough to take a look at what I missed).

Conclusion

Everything clicked with this game. Its bigger size, pleasing art, cool story and great humour made it a great mix and an excellent game. I loved it. If this is the end of the franchise, I'm okay with it, but hopefully it does well enough for Disney to want to contract Gilbert for another game or two.

[BaronHaynes]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Tourette's Guy:

Absolutely not. The game is a cakewalk, it holds your hand the entire time, the interface is extremely simple (a pure point and click videogame), and honestly, I miss the SCUMM interface.

This game is LIGHTYEARS away from the first 2 releases. This game is an extremely dumbed-down version of any classic Monkey Island game. Any player that really enjoyed the classic games back in the day will not really like this new release.

I enjoyed the classic games back in the day and I really like this new release, don't try to speak for everyone lmao

Also, like always, the woke thing. Seriously, we are a bit tired about it. Not every game, every movie, every THING must be stuffed with that. Seriously. It does not feel natural, it feels totally forced and at this point it's clear that they do not care about social issues at all. They add woke stuff because that's what sells today.

What are you even talking about? What "woke stuff"? Can you name even one example of what you're blabbering about?

[Based Jar Jar Enjoyer]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Screaming Deaf Man:

I'm just the guy who thinks declaring this the best MI game to be an insult to everyones intelligence.

I find it fascinating that you people who hate stuff keep having to insult people who enjoy stuff. It's like you get some weird kind of satisfaction out of thinking people who enjoyed this game are dumber than you. News flash: this says more about you than it does about me.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von amigastar:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Tourette's Guy:

Also, like always, the woke thing. Seriously, we are a bit tired about it. Not every game, every movie, every THING must be stuffed with that. Seriously. It does not feel natural, it feels totally forced and at this point it's clear that they do not care about social issues at all. They add woke stuff because that's what sells today.

What is this woke stuff you talk about, please tell me because either i'm resistent to woke or i haven't noticed any woke stuff.

To the people who scream "woke" at everything, just having representation for non-white and non-male is "woke". The old pirate leaders were three white men, now it's one black man and two women. LeChuck's crew used to be all (probably male) skeletons, now there's three women on his NPC crew of six, with one woman being LeChuck's right hand. Then there's another woman governor (of colour, no less), a queen who beats Guybrush in challenges unless he resorts to cheating, a woman of colour having her own blacksmith shop... To asshats, and woman or person of colour being mostly competent and having a decent job is like nails on a chalkboard.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Tourette's Guy:

This game is LIGHTYEARS away from the first 2 releases. This game is an extremely dumbed-down version of any classic Monkey Island game. Any player that really enjoyed the classic games back in the day will not really like this new release.

Hi, person who enjoyed the originals a lot here. Stop trying to speak for everyone.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von scream.queen:

Best monkey island game? Just choked on my own vomit

You should go see a doctor.

[GAMING_Alligator]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Space Sphere:

there's another woman governor (of colour, no less)

Yes, that new and definitely never before seen character Carla ... who has been in the series since the very first game and become governor in Escape to Monkey Island (#4).

[Based Jar Jar Enjoyer]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Bookworm:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Space Sphere:

there's another woman governor (of colour, no less)

Yes, that new and definitely never before seen character Carla ... who has been in the series since the very first game and become governor in Escape to Monkey Island (#4).

I'm just saying, these things add up in the fragile anti-woke's eyes.

Oh and P.S.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Bookworm:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Space Sphere:

I don't dislike any Star Wars movie.

Ok, well whatever your opinions on Monkey Island games, you've just made sure I never get movie recommendations from you.

There's of course a difference between liking a movie, and thinking it is without flaws. I can enjoy Jurassic Park III, but that doesn't mean that I think it's a quality movie in any way. The Rise Of Skywalker is the Star Wars movie I enjoy the least, and I think it has a huge bag of issues, but I can still enjoy it, just like twenty years ago I could enjoy Attack Of The Clones even though it had what quite possibly was the worst romance dialogue ever written.

[Zaxx]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Space Sphere:

There's of course a difference between liking a movie, and thinking it is without flaws. I can enjoy Jurassic Park III, but that doesn't mean that I think it's a quality movie in any way. The Rise Of Skywalker is the Star Wars movie I enjoy the least, and I think it has a huge bag of issues, but I can still enjoy it, just like twenty years ago I could enjoy Attack Of The Clones even though it had what quite possibly was the worst romance dialogue ever written.

This is going to be entirely off topic but there are two absolutely dreadful big budget movies that I've seen twice in theatres: Batman v Superman and The Rise of Skywalker. I didn't do it because I'm masochistic but because of friends wanting to see it with me.

Both of these movies were a pain to watch but in the case of BvS my second viewing was a bit more pleasant than the first: it was less confusing and while the gaping plot holes and the bad pacing were still issues it almost didn't hurt.

RoS on the other hand was incredibly bad both times, it's like the movie just has no structure and it's random scenes following each other. And well, Palpatine returns in the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ title crawl so it's like this senseless mess made from hundreds of millions of dollars that's legitimately unpleasant to look at.

I refuse to believe that anyone can enjoy that movie even in the context of "I enjoy it the least". How? Why? :D

[Based Jar Jar Enjoyer]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Zaxx:

Both of these movies were a pain to watch but in the case of BvS my second viewing was a bit more pleasant than the first: it was less confusing and while the gaping plot holes and the bad pacing were still issues it almost didn't hurt.

RoS on the other hand was incredibly bad both times, it's like the movie just has no structure and it's random scenes following each other. And well, Palpatine returns in the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ title crawl so it's like this senseless mess made from hundreds of millions of dollars that's legitimately unpleasant to look at.

I refuse to believe that anyone can enjoy that movie even in the context of "I enjoy it the least". How? Why? :D

Your BvS experience is what I had with The Rise Of Skywalker. The first time I saw it, I was massively disappointed. Second time, I knew what I was getting into, and I could enjoy what was there. It's very underwhelming and messy as the end of a trilogy or even the end of a saga, but it's pretty decent as an Indiana Jones-like adventure that happens to be set in the Star Wars setting. Still hate that Palpatine was just brought back in the opening crawl though. I don't mind him being back, I don't mind the movie being vague on how he managed it, but for f*ck sake, let us hear that message and discover it together with the characters please. The movie was in such a rush to get through its set pieces, they should've just gone all in and made it a three hour movie.

I can still enjoy The Rise Of Skywalker in the sense that anything Star Wars is like comfort food to me. If you manage to put the bad stuff aside, there's still a bunch in that movie that makes me smile, like seeing Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine again (that lightning start was awesome). Kylo Ren's actor did a great job even if he had the script against him, and it's always a joy to see Richard E Grant in anything. Oh, and I think this movie had C-3PO at the funniest he's been ever since A New Hope.

On BvS, I was so insanely annoyed with that movie when it came out, and with Josstice League even more so, I actually fell asleep during that one. I also have to say that I thought Man Of Steel was dull. When the whole Snyder cut thing happened, I decided to give all movies a second chance, watching Snyder's cut for BvS and JL, and I have to say, that experience is pretty pleasing. The BvS extended cut fixes a lot of pacing issues, and Snyder's JL was a blast. Looking back I think the issue was with Warner Bros wanting a cinematic universe like Marvel and then using Snyder to headline it. You don't use Snyder as the groundwork for your cinematic universe, you let him make a side project where every superhero is depressed and messed up.

[Zaxx]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Space Sphere:

I can still enjoy The Rise Of Skywalker in the sense that anything Star Wars is like comfort food to me.

Yeah, I guess if you're a huge fan of SW then you get the aesthetics you like and things like that, I can understand that. I kinda work differently though in that if I really like something then I want it to be good more so I find it hard to accept a mess. In the case of RoS it was just a bad movie to me though, I'm not super into SW.

The BvS extended cut fixes a lot of pacing issues, and Snyder's JL was a blast.

Yep, that's what's frustrating about those DC movies. While I wouldn't say that the extended cut of BvS is particularly good you can at least see that what hit theatres was a gimped version. And the Snyder Cut is legitimately great cinema.

[Thorba]

I am a bit tired of "i have not enough time and like simple games", there are already plenty such games out there. Without the scumm interface it cant reach the class of the older games (even monkey3 wasnt at the same quality level then the first two monkeys).
What everyone says about the puzzles is a downer for me but i will check it out for my self in a few days.

[Priest of Syrinx]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von amigastar:

To the people who scream "woke" at everything, just having representation for non-white and non-male is "woke". The old pirate leaders were three white men, now it's one black man and two women. LeChuck's crew used to be all (probably male) skeletons, now there's three women on his NPC crew of six, with one woman being LeChuck's right hand. Then there's another woman governor (of colour, no less), a queen who beats Guybrush in challenges unless he resorts to cheating, a woman of colour having her own blacksmith shop... To asshats, and woman or person of colour being mostly competent and having a decent job is like nails on a chalkboard.

When you look back you'll notice it's nothing new in the series. Voodoo Lady is probably the biggest business owner in the entire series. You can't beat King Andre without cheating. Elaine is usually shown as more competent than both Guybrush and LeChuck. At the end of Tales it's two women who finally kill LeChuck

[Ragnardo]

The people who say the game is "ToO WoKe#" and liking it the best is "InsULTinG tO evRY 1 who Dis as Smarts with teh Brainz as ME!" -

Are the same type of people that think Trump won the american elections, or think elections are rigged. They just yell a bunch of BS that they regurgitated from somewhere else, then, when you ask them to explain further it's all crickets, because they can't think for themselves... the irony is they are the sheep they try to tell others about but their ego is so huge they can't see it.. Trolls used to be a little smart when they troll people who they did not like, now they are just dumb as a box of rocks, come and sh!tpost and bail, never to return lol. Or, if they do come back, they tell you that you are falling into the corporate stupidity cycle which is literally what they all say, like they are all the same person, like they are sheep. IT's one big chest bumping cycle.

[windh]

Well said OP. I agree about everything, except the puzzles. They could have been a little tougher to me. I love the feeling of cracking a puzzle after hours upon hours of fuming about them.

To me, this ranks a little below 1 and 2, a bit before "old 3".

[Zaxx]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Ragnardo:

The people who say the game is "ToO WoKe#"

Did anyone say that about RTMI? I don't think so but now that you mention it RTMI is the prime example of how "woke" should be done.

I'm usually annoyed by this stuff in modern media because it generally results in bad writing, like suddenly a character becomes competent because she's a woman or a person of color or whatever. It usually also results in these weird scenes where characters stand on their soap boxes and just come up with some incredibly dumb conclusions about women in society, racism etc. To make it worse the context to these scenes is usually some lazy "now I'll really tell my white co-worker how I feel" type stuff so yeah, bad writing, cringe, obvious incompetence.

What do good writers do instead? That's where RTMI comes in where the only "woke" joke is that LeChuck is now an equal opportunity employer so not only ghosts but zombies, demons and humans can apply for a job. So this is by default just funny, like it's a good joke but on top of that it's relevant for the story that's about to be told, it's part of the plot. Amazing especially if you think about how easy it would have been to turn the whole thing into some crappy narrative where you have to disguise as a zombie because LeChuck hates humans now and racism is bad.

And when it comes to "wokeness" diversity is just treated as a normal thing in this game, it's never brought to your attention, there's just a bunch of different people here which is you know, how those things should work in the real world too. For example the locksmith is a black woman and that's it, she's just a well written character, the same goes for Carla being her original "strong female" self from the first game. It just works because these are good characters who aren't defined by their external features, they are just written well.

So if anyone wants to say that this game is "woke" well, the truth is that RTMI is the biggest middle finger you can give to that type of media simply because it does that stuff well. It's not forced, it's not terrible, it just fits.

[GAMING_Alligator]

Interesting how the person that started the "woke" thing hasn't actually been back to respond even after so many responses. Nearly like they were ... trolling?

[VastGirth]

It's on par with the first 2, but not as good as Curse. Clearly the early adopters loved it, hence the overwhelmingly positive initial reviews, and it has gradually dropped as less invested people started playing.

Its a very good game, despite its faults. I'm not surprised it is positively received, Personally I would award it 8/10.

[Cartek]

There's no "best" game, only favourites.
I loved Return, but Curse will always be my favourite, because it was the first one I played.
Hoping for another in 10 years.