The Curse of Monkey Island™

This was the first time that the UI was incredibly smooth and easy to use in this series. I'm not saying they could have done it sooner; I’m praising them for doing it this well the first time they were able to. Basically you hold down a mouse button over what you want to interact with three options will pop up you choose one of them by moving the onto it and letting go of the key. No more having to click the verbs on the screen. This also introduces voice acting. I honestly can't even imagine this series without these voices; I played this one before the others and have now played the remaster and special edition of the first two. Without Earl bowens raspy tones it's simply is not the same pirate LeChuck. This has a lot of my favorite characters of these three. I cannot get enough of Murray The Living skull who is still convinced that he and his kind will win despite the fact that he no longer has a body. This was also the first time that I felt emotionally engaged with one of these. I like to think of it as the first two feeling like they were made by the Monty Python crew and this one was more Edgar Wright think of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz: Funny right from the start but now there's character arcs and we actually care if someone succeeds at what they're setting out to do or not. I'm not saying the former is inherently worse but I do think that this way hits much harder and encourages more replayability and going over stuff in your head afterwards and such. There's finally actually consequence to Threepwood’s incessant incompetence and now the way you’re relating to Elaine is actually trying to make things better fixing your own screw up because you have always been the biggest problem in her life. This brings back the insult sword fighting and adds that you now have to board other pirate ships from yours in order to engage in it and you're not just doing it for an ego boost like everything you did in the first two - you're doing it to save your love.

second best monkey island game behind the first, do not skip it!

Masterpiece - one of the best of the series

I played this for the first time when it came out in '97, and overall it still holds up! It's fun, goofy, and only has a few moon-logic solutions on the mega-monkey mode. Definitely look up the modified graphical rendering modes to get the best result on modern computers.

Monkey Island 3 is often overlooked because 1 and 2 and so incredibly good. 3 may be easier and the novelty from the first 2 has worn off, but it's still a great game you won't regret playing even for a second. It's funny, it's got a great design and you simply will be very happy for the 12 or so hours the game lasts.