For background, I love most classic Lucasarts and Sierra adventure games (I grew up with them) so I got very excited when I heard of Return to Monkey Island. After finishing the game, I'm happy and sad and somewhat disappointed at the same time. The story kept me playing, the dialogue is funny and the puzzles are pretty decent, if a tad on the easy side. I wish the game used a more classic UI - if not the old Lucasarts 9 verb UI, then maybe the simpler Sierra UI. The art style is an acquired taste - it's good but I never got used to how Guybrush looks. I really wish the art style was closer to either LeChuck's Revenge or Curse of Monkey Island. The trivia section is cool and the scrapbook is great but I don't think the ending will make sense to anyone who didn't grow up with these games. (In my twenties I probably would've called the ending stupid and awful but now I understand why it is the way it is.) I feel like the 1-star reviews don't consider how hard it is to come up with a story for a sequel that has to live up to that magical feeling that the first 3 games in the series were. I think Ron Gilbert did well on this one - while the ending is slightly disappointing, because it's so final, it's also charming. I kept changing my mind about giving 4 or 5 stars - I decided to give 5: the game is entertaining and I recommend it but I'm not sure it's really for new players. Make sure you play at least the first 3 games in the series before you start this one.
I played this on Xbox Game Pass (only the base game, not the DLC-s) and there are many things that I liked a lot. The story starts out very interesting, the Firefly-like sci-fi environment was welcome, the fights were great. I liked the characters, the sounds, the music. The game had no major issues (at least on Xbox). With all those positives, it's with some sadness that I decided to give it only 3 stars. The environments turn out to be pretty small and lack depth. You're on an alien planet with 3 or 4 alien animal species. The fights become super repetitive. The quests are great but they're almost all fetch quests. Upgrading items quickly runs out of steam and becomes a boring chore - the upgrade combinations aren't very exciting. Most items only exist to be picked up and sold - they're featureless blobs of things that you can look at (the visuals are nice) but can't interact with. Some of the story is very ham-fisted about corporate greed; a bit more depth and subtlety would've helped. There are parts of the game that I really enjoyed but I got bored with it toward the end when it became too long and yet, I felt dissatisfied at the end, expecting more (just not more of the same). As it is, the game is massively overpriced, even at a 50% discount. If it had many more quests, more environments (like more moons, towns, etc.) it might justify the higher price but as it is, it doesn't. I hope if there's a sequel, the dev team listens and keeps the fun bits but also addresses these issues; I'd love to play an improved version of this game with more variety and deeper story.
