Review: Return to Monkey Island

destructoid.com:

If you were a friend of mine around the launch of the Special Edition of Secret of Monkey Island, I probably tried to thrust it upon you. I was in the midst of exploring the point-and-click adventure genre, as I had passed it by when I was young, and Secret of Monkey Island was the new high point. Maniac Mansion is a wonderfully well-designed puzzle box, but Secret of Monkey Island is a symphony. Its puzzle design is near perfect, and its humorous script makes it extraordinarily rewarding to solve them.

Monkey Island 2 might be better than that, but following those two hits, the series took a dive. Curse of Monkey Island, Escape from Monkey Island, and Tales of Monkey Island are all fine. Okay even. But the first two games weren’t fine, they were magic.

So Ron Gilbert has rejoined Dave Grossman on the series and has promised to deliver Monkey Island back to its lofty status. Well, I don’t remember him saying that; he probably didn’t. However, that’s how us fans all took it. But can Return to Monkey Island really live up to those classic titles?

Return to Monkey Island (PC [Reviewed], Nintendo Switch)Developer: Terrible ToyboxPublisher: Devolver DigitalReleased: September 19, 2022MSRP: $24.99

Leading up to launch, I heard a lot of speculation about Return to Monkey Island ignoring everything after the second game and being a direct sequel to LeChuck’s Revenge. I want to be clear here, that is not the case. I don’t know that it needed to be the case because the Monkey Island continuity was hardly ever perverted. The first two games didn’t start some overarching narrative that was fumbled when handed to other teams. They were dumb, self-aware pirate tales. There’s even a joke early on that the games are typically bad with