I Returned to Monkey Island
Sep. 29th, 2022 07:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crystalcazzieI have completed Return to Monkey Island! Actually I completed it on Saturday morning, so it took me just under a week. According to Steam I spent a total of 10.5 hours on it, which sounds reasonable. I'm glad I didn't zoom through it all in one day (which was my original plan) and made it last. I'd been looking forward to it for months, so it would have been silly to binge play it!
My thoughts about the game:
I enjoyed playing it but I do think that it was a lot easier than previous Monkey Island games. Certainly more straightforward. One of my worries going into it was whether or not I'd have the patience to be stuck for ages, like I used to be when I played the early games, without resorting to cheating. But that never really happened. I made that post on Friday about being stuck and unsure of what I was supposed to do, but then I went back to it the next morning and found what I was looking for. That was the most I was held up in the entire game. There was another moment later on that was a bit frustrating too cos I was overthinking the puzzle and it turned out to be a lot simpler than I was trying to make it, but I still managed to get past it pretty quickly. At no point did I look up answers online or use the in-game hint book. (And I was kinda disappointed that there was no achievement for completing the game without the hint book!) And yes, I was playing it on hard mode.
The early parts of the game felt very linear and it was always pretty clear what you had to do. It branched out a bit when you had to get the keys, cos there were multiple islands to go to and various puzzles you had to solve but no set order you had to do them in, and that felt more like classic Monkey Island. But even then, there wasn't a huge amount to explore on any of the islands, which was a bit disappointing.
I did luck out on at least one puzzle though. There's a bit where you have to walk through twisty, almost identical caves and pick up pieces of paper which you have to use to help you work out which path to take. I'd picked up two pieces of paper and then wandered into where I was supposed to be going completely by accident! I didn't even realise what the papers were for until I was helping Mum with her game and saw she had five!
The ending was a bit weird and I honestly can't decide if it was a clever call-back or the writers being too lazy to come up with something good. It also felt a bit like they were trolling us. They knew so many people hated the ending of LeChuck's Revenge, so they wrote this game with the promise of finally fixing it, and then ended this game in almost the exact same way. I suppose it was inevitable cos nothing they came up with for the Secret would have lived up to everyone's expectations and this way at least tied in to previous games. I didn't realise that you could end it different ways though. Apparently what you say to Boybrush affects what you get as the post-credits scene. And whether or not you open the chest can get you different endings. There's also the option to go back into the caves and deny what you've seen, which is pretty cool. I suppose I'll just have to play it again and see all the different options for myself.
Speaking of playing it again, they've done a good job building replayability into the game. As well as the multiple endings there are quite a few achievements that you can get, lots of which require doing things at a specific time or you miss your chance, and there are trivia cards in the game which you collect as you go around and a lot of the answers can be found as you play. So while I have completed the game, I'm not done with it just yet. Those achievements and trivia cards will be mine!
I do have to say that I found Elaine's character to be a bit odd. She acted more like Guybrush's carer than his wife. There were a lot of cut scenes where she follows his trail of destruction and it felt like it was building up to a confrontation between them but then that... never happened. They talk and she kinda verbally pats him on the head like a small child whose fantasy she's indulging. She's lost all the spark she had in the early games, and that's a shame.
When it comes to the new art style I must admit that I wasn't a fan to start with, but it ended up growing on me.
Overall I'd say it was a good game and definitely one made for fans. There were so many in-jokes and references to things gone by that it felt like a love letter to the previous games. I do wonder what it would have been like to play this without having played any other Monkey Island games before. I suppose it would still be fun cos it is a solid puzzle adventure game, but so much would go over your head that I'd definitely recommend starting at the beginning.
Speaking of which, I did manage to complete both Secret and LeChuck's Revenge before embarking on Return. I didn't manage to squeeze Curse in as well, but I've just started my replay of that anyway. It's still a fun game!
My thoughts about the game:
I enjoyed playing it but I do think that it was a lot easier than previous Monkey Island games. Certainly more straightforward. One of my worries going into it was whether or not I'd have the patience to be stuck for ages, like I used to be when I played the early games, without resorting to cheating. But that never really happened. I made that post on Friday about being stuck and unsure of what I was supposed to do, but then I went back to it the next morning and found what I was looking for. That was the most I was held up in the entire game. There was another moment later on that was a bit frustrating too cos I was overthinking the puzzle and it turned out to be a lot simpler than I was trying to make it, but I still managed to get past it pretty quickly. At no point did I look up answers online or use the in-game hint book. (And I was kinda disappointed that there was no achievement for completing the game without the hint book!) And yes, I was playing it on hard mode.
The early parts of the game felt very linear and it was always pretty clear what you had to do. It branched out a bit when you had to get the keys, cos there were multiple islands to go to and various puzzles you had to solve but no set order you had to do them in, and that felt more like classic Monkey Island. But even then, there wasn't a huge amount to explore on any of the islands, which was a bit disappointing.
I did luck out on at least one puzzle though. There's a bit where you have to walk through twisty, almost identical caves and pick up pieces of paper which you have to use to help you work out which path to take. I'd picked up two pieces of paper and then wandered into where I was supposed to be going completely by accident! I didn't even realise what the papers were for until I was helping Mum with her game and saw she had five!
The ending was a bit weird and I honestly can't decide if it was a clever call-back or the writers being too lazy to come up with something good. It also felt a bit like they were trolling us. They knew so many people hated the ending of LeChuck's Revenge, so they wrote this game with the promise of finally fixing it, and then ended this game in almost the exact same way. I suppose it was inevitable cos nothing they came up with for the Secret would have lived up to everyone's expectations and this way at least tied in to previous games. I didn't realise that you could end it different ways though. Apparently what you say to Boybrush affects what you get as the post-credits scene. And whether or not you open the chest can get you different endings. There's also the option to go back into the caves and deny what you've seen, which is pretty cool. I suppose I'll just have to play it again and see all the different options for myself.
Speaking of playing it again, they've done a good job building replayability into the game. As well as the multiple endings there are quite a few achievements that you can get, lots of which require doing things at a specific time or you miss your chance, and there are trivia cards in the game which you collect as you go around and a lot of the answers can be found as you play. So while I have completed the game, I'm not done with it just yet. Those achievements and trivia cards will be mine!
I do have to say that I found Elaine's character to be a bit odd. She acted more like Guybrush's carer than his wife. There were a lot of cut scenes where she follows his trail of destruction and it felt like it was building up to a confrontation between them but then that... never happened. They talk and she kinda verbally pats him on the head like a small child whose fantasy she's indulging. She's lost all the spark she had in the early games, and that's a shame.
When it comes to the new art style I must admit that I wasn't a fan to start with, but it ended up growing on me.
Overall I'd say it was a good game and definitely one made for fans. There were so many in-jokes and references to things gone by that it felt like a love letter to the previous games. I do wonder what it would have been like to play this without having played any other Monkey Island games before. I suppose it would still be fun cos it is a solid puzzle adventure game, but so much would go over your head that I'd definitely recommend starting at the beginning.
Speaking of which, I did manage to complete both Secret and LeChuck's Revenge before embarking on Return. I didn't manage to squeeze Curse in as well, but I've just started my replay of that anyway. It's still a fun game!
