The Curse of Monkey Island

The Good
The graphics were technically flawless, the sound was awesome, the storyline was good (not excellent, mind you, but good), the jokes were mostly funny, and it's always good to rejoin your old friends from Monkey Island 1 and 2: Stan, the Voodoo lady, Lemonhead, Elaine, LeChuck, Wally, and so forth.

The Bad
Well, the change in style from Monkey Island 1 and 2 is very noticeable (of course it's been six years between MI 2 and 3), and quite a few fans didn't like it. To me, Guybrush was a little too cartoonish. Monkey 1 and 2 had serious graphics: remember Monkey Island 1? The ghost ship looked like a ghost ship and the lava cave looked quite frightening? The dialogues made the game funny, not the jokes. But it's mainly nitpicking. It looks to me that the designers tried to make the Monkey Island series more over-the-top with every new game in the series, and they shouldn't - the somewhat subtle humor made it so successful.

Elaine just isn't Elaine in this game - she was a strong stubborn woman in MI 1 and 2, and here she's a cartoonish chick with no own will. It's like a different person.

Where is Herman Toothrot?

Re-hashing the insult swordfight just seemed tedious and out of place. It had much more style in MI1.

Part V kind of sucked, all the puzzles were illogical, while the previous parts were mostly logical. Maybe it's just me. And the plot was much too linear. Do this on this island, move on to the next part. Remember the freedom you had in Monkey Island 2 when you could move freely between three islands? It seemed a lot less restrictive.

The Bottom Line
Wow, my "did not like" section looks a lot bigger than my "did like" section. I didn't quite intend it like that. Ron Gilbert's absence is noticeable. It's still a very good game and it was very nice revisiting old characters from the first two parts. But it's "good" when everyone expects it to be "great"; therefore a slight disappointment. Still, well worth a look. Monkey Island 1 is still the best game in the series, and I doubt that'll ever change.