I first played this game on my windows 95 pc probably around the year 99. I have intensely large nostolgia for it. It's funny, it's charming as hell, and at the time of it's release it was a really large outlier in indie game development. The community also really rallied around it, creating custom modules and being active in it's fandom. A outcome that seems to persist to this day albeit to a lesser extent. But the game aged pretty hard. The controls aren't great, the graphics definitely have their charm but it can be frustrating to navigate the game by modern standards. And while I enjoyed the hell out of the story as a kid, as an adult with a more critical eye it is very shallow and lacking in a lot of areas. If you sat down most modern kids in front of this title with no context or explanation they wouldn't have great things to say about it, and that's ok. It was amazing in context of it's year of release, and those of us who played it even a few years later perhaps, can still go back and enjoy a high quality little funny game that really entertained us all those years ago. As it stands, I recommend this game to those who enjoy action rpg games, and I genuinely love it as a part of my childhood. But to say it's worthy of a perfect 5 stars is a stretch. It's a wonderful game. It's worth playing. It's not without it's faults. But at the end of the day, maybe some of those faults just make it more charming. Worth remembering. Not perfect. Don't punch your mother you monster.
(NOTE: I Own this game on another platform) What... what was this? I waited 25 years for Ron to make another Monkey Island game. Listened to him wax on and on about how other creators simply didn't do the series justice.... Even listened to his ridiculous bashing of Curse (the best game in the series). After all those years, and all his yelling this is what he delivers to us? Let me be clear, I don't care about the art style. It is what it is. Every game since MI2 in the series has taken artistic leaps and i'm ok with that. I don't expect modern games in 202X to try to look retro just for fan service. What absolute SUCKS about this game is that it doesn't trust it's audience AT ALL. Every single minute of this game absolutely bludgeons you with hints. Even in hard mode. Even when you don't ask for them. I can think of multiple times when the game outright told me to go talk to a character or do a specific thing to progress completely unprompted. At so many points in the game they airdropped nuclear bombs of hints on your head. I beat this game in ten hours. No hints. On hard mode. I wanted to cry when it ended... not because it was a good journey, but because after sticking up for Ron being a pompous ass about how much better of a game he could make if given the IP back for two decades, I expected a treatment befitting the lucasarts days of glory. I wanted a hard, challenging puzzle around every corner. The story was lame, predictable, and not funny. Let alone the horribgle lack of ending that he is becoming infamous for. In conclusion, After playing the not perfect but extremely excellent Thimbleweed Park, I guess I had high expectations that Ron had not lost his flair for adventure games, let alone doing justice to the one that made him a household name. I was wrong. I am disappointed, and I hate that this is what he chose to deliver after all these years. Monkey Island peaked with Curse. Maybe in another 20....
In order to run this game in windows 10 and 11 follow these directions from the pcgamewiki. After following the directions the game worked for me in windows 11. https://tinyurl.com/pandemoniumfix This is a classic platformer from the Sega Saturn, PS1 Era. It is hard as hell, but has charming characters and really expansive levels. I'm unsure i'd reccomend this game to anyone for the first time in the modern era, but if you wanted to experience it again for nostolgia reasons, apply the fixes linked above and have a go! I wasn't able to get a gamepad to work, but the controls are simple enough to be easy to use on a keyboard. In fact my first time I played this game was on windows 95 with a keyboard. The graphics aged pretty hard, as did the overall game design, but im a happy rose tinted glasses nostalgia gamer right now.
This isn't a classic crpg. It's mostly an action rpg with a very unique combat system. Theres definitely rpg elements there and the magic school setting was fun but its clear that story was never the main focus of this game (having said that it's perfectly servicable). There is a fair amount of grinding and skill tree research needed to be done to reallly succeed in the game. But you really get to enjoy meaningful progression as you go along. Nice bits of bullet hell at times, lots of roll dodge boss fights, funny sidequest text. All in all this is a great game to pick up on sale, and I found it pretty fun to play even if it always feels like its just inches away from being a really great game instead of just a good one. Wish I could rate 3.5 because that's what it deserves in my book.
I'm not going to beat around the bush, this game is kind of a joke. The price is insanely high for the quality, and the fact that its literally just a standard visual novel. I played with the adult content patch installed from the Denpasoft website. To start with the artwork is really beautiful and vibrant, the backgrounds, cg, and characters are all really alluring. And thats the best part of the game. The story propping up the (mosaic covered) hentai is....fine? Its functional but hardly draws you in and keeps you there. But the worst part by FAR is the writing during the adult content. Its written like the power fantasy of some 13 year old who just discovered porn. The protaganist has no charisma whatsoever yet somehow jumps straight into banging every girl he ever talks to. His dialogue is borderline rapey if not outright rapey at times. Every. Single. Woman. Regardless of her personality in the actual story is just submissive and innocent and purely there as a human fleshlight for him. Its just bad and cringe.
The Secret Of Monkey Island holds a dear place in mine and many gamers hearts. My first play through of the game happened in 1998, when I picked up a copy of the "Monkey Island Madness" CD as part of a lucasarts anthology at a local cd and movie shop. I spent countless hours playing and enjoying the unique story and challenging puzzles. I have to admit I fall into the "hardcore fan" category for this series and take it quite seriously. As such it took me a very long time to come around and actually finish playing this special edition. My first play through had me cursing the controls, hating the new shiny graphics (I know, I know you can switch to the old style), and being unsure of many of the voiceover choices. Dominic Armato returns to voice Guybrush as he has done for every Monkey Island since Curse, which is great because he fits the character amazingly. That is about where my praise stops for the voice actors however. Many of the characters made me cringe because of their bad interpretations of the dialogue. One of the things about 'SOMI' that made it so great was the amazing humour and fantastic character writing. Much of that charm and emotion did not translate well to voice actors (again, I praise Dominic for doing an amazing job despite the other actors). I found myself playing without voices for any cutscenes heavy on the dialogue. Next I must address the art. Which perhaps I have the most to gripe about (until we reach controls). The original SOMI is a GORGEOUS game, and the included "classic" gameplay showcases just how well the game has held up despite limiting tech when it was created. The carefully utilized colors and pixelated characters retain a charm that is hard to find in most modern games. The characters look terrible in the new art style, though none took as harsh of a beating as guybrush himself. Guybrush was given the neck of an irradiated girrafe and the hair of a bad anime character that literally defies gravity. Much of the cutscene conversation interactions are more cartoony looking, and lack a gritty reach for realism that it felt like the original game tried to achieve. The characters lost much of their appeal and had it replaced with cartoon imitations in this new art style. Now before you accuse me of rampant fanboyism, I DO think that the special editon artwork has some charm despite it's faults. So what's positive about the new art? Many of the backgrounds are fantastic! Melee Island in particular benefitted greatly from this update and if not for the garbage character design, I would have found the ambience damn near flawless. I was excited to go places I knew very well and see how they now looked. If there is one thing I LOVED about this special edition it was most certainly those gorgeous painted enviroments. Kudos to the art team for that. All of this was nitpicking however, and the true reason that despite my love for the series I had to not reccomend this game is that it's controls are simply not well suited for many of the puzzles. There is one puzzle in particular that was literally impossible to do quick enough in the new control scheme. It felt like they wanted to simplify the system to leave the original action menu hidden, but it just ended up being confusing and hard to use, severely detracting from the experience. I was often switching back to the classic gameplay just to finish things quickly and easily without fumbling through the controls. Am I glad this was released? Hell yes, this series deserves more fans, and more people getting to enjoy it. And I acknowledge that my review will likely not be the typical experience as the special edition of this game is highly recieved by many many critics. If nothing else, I am happy to have a fully updated version of the classic game packaged with this so I do not have to bother with scumm or dosbox whenever I am feeling nostalgic. I promise my review (coming soon) of Lechuck's Revenge SE, is much more positive than this one (because its a much better update than this was).
