If you loved the previous Monkey Island games you'll love this. If you hated them, you might still like this, as it now has an Easy Mode to help you with the harder puzzles, plus a hint system. This game doesn't really push the envelope much beyond the previous entries, so it doesn't get five stars, but aside from that it's a great game.
Really fun game with an excellent story. Lots of death; not for young kids. Excellent voice acting from the stars of "Batman: The Animated Series", Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill. Collectibles are fun rather than tedious. Boss battles are varied and challenging. Combat is intense. Exploration is rewarded and upgrade system teaches you the game as you go. It's kind of a no-brainer to buy it.
Story is 10/10 Gameplay 10/10 The only three complaints I have with this game are that the campaign tracks have accolades that are missable, the predator sections are somewhat thin on the ground, and there are some bugs in the game. Aside from these gripes, this is basically a perfect game.
The main thing to mention is that the game as-is has an audio bug that can crash your PC, requiring a reboot. Checking the forums led me to a downloadable DLL file that fixed the issue and also corrected a few other smaller issues, such as level title screens flashing by too quickly. So it's unplayable as-is but a simple mod fixes it. Once that's fixed, the game is quite good. For its era, at least. The puzzles evolve as the game goes on, so they're trivial in the beginning but require a bit of thinking in later levels. Nothing too challenging; just enough that you don't completely steamroll through everything. Exploration is rewarded with EXP points which expand your life gauge, but the maps are never sprawling enough to feel like any exploration is going very far out of your way, and if you didn't feel like exploring, it's easy enough to get EXP through combat. You're not gonna get lost in this game. The combat is a mixed bag. Limited-durability weapons keep you weighing your options whenever you find a new one, but later enemies are so inclined to block everything you do that sometimes a sword will only last long enough to kill a single enemy. Getting around enemy defenses can be frustratingly time-consuming, although you get an ability later in the game that mitigates this. When there are multiple enemies you really have to plan your approach. A key element of the game is that your health is always going down, as Kain needs to constantly feed on enemies to keep his health up. This was never an issue during my playthrough as it's easy to keep feeding, but it's cool that the game forces you to not dawdle. The gameplay is only just challenging enough to not be a cakewalk, but the main reason to play this game is the story. The voice acting is first-rate, and there are enough plot developments to keep your interest piqued. Overall it's a fun game and if you liked the Soul Reaver games you'll probably like this.
The main thing to mention is that the game as-is has an audio bug that can crash your PC, requiring a reboot. Checking the forums led me to a downloadable DLL file that fixed the issue and also corrected a few other smaller issues, such as level title screens flashing by too quickly. So it's unplayable as-is but a simple mod fixes it. Once that's fixed, the game is quite good. For its era, at least. The puzzles evolve as the game goes on, so they're trivial in the beginning but require a bit of thinking in later levels. Nothing too challenging; just enough that you don't completely steamroll through everything. Exploration is rewarded with EXP points which expand your life gauge, but the maps are never sprawling enough to feel like any exploration is going very far out of your way, and if you didn't feel like exploring, it's easy enough to get EXP through combat. You're not gonna get lost in this game. The combat is a mixed bag. Limited-durability weapons keep you weighing your options whenever you find a new one, but later enemies are so inclined to block everything you do that sometimes a sword will only last long enough to kill a single enemy. Getting around enemy defenses can be frustratingly time-consuming, although you get an ability later in the game that mitigates this. When there are multiple enemies you really have to plan your approach. A key element of the game is that your health is always going down, as Kain needs to constantly feed on enemies to keep his health up. This was never an issue during my playthrough as it's easy to keep feeding, but it's cool that the game forces you to not dawdle. The gameplay is only just challenging enough to not be a cakewalk, but the main reason to play this game is the story. The voice acting is first-rate, and there are enough plot developments to keep your interest piqued. Overall it's a fun game and if you liked the Soul Reaver games you'll probably like this.
