Tales of Monkey Island Review

June 11, 2022

When it was announced that there's a new game in the Monkey Island series in development, fans were in complete ecstasy. Some of you may not have even heard the name, and that's understandable, considering the last game in the series came out about ten years ago. However, those who do know it, also know that the series was considered one of the absolute classics in adventure games, with all of its games pushing the genre forward during the years when it was blooming, and until its decline around the year 2000.

Gameplay

The first thing fans of the series will notice is the change of art style – it no longer uses 2D graphics and is now represented by a shiny new 3D engine, which you'll pretty much either love or hate. The gameplay is more or less the same as in the previous games – and adventure games in general – you control Guybrush Threepwood, the protagonist of the series, walking around collecting items and talking to people. You'll have to solve a variety of quests before you reach the end of the game, and their difficulty will be increasingly challenging.

One of the things the series has been known for is the way quests tend to branch off as you progress – in the beginning, you'll be doing simple tasks such as getting a key required to progress – however, later on, puzzles will begin spanning over several subplots, making the game really interesting and captivating, and tying it to the backstory just perfectly. The writing is excellent, and the story doesn't fall the least bit behind those of the previous games in the series.

Graphics and System Requirements

As we mentioned earlier, a 3D engine is handling the drawing now, and this has had its impact on the game's art style – we're all familiar with the odd way 2D cartoon characters tend to look when brought into a 3D world, but we can safely say that the developers at Telltale Games have done a fantastic job in creating the game's assets. In fact, many of the fans stated that they actually enjoyed Guybrush in his 3D variant more than the one from the previous games.

For a 3D engine, the one powering Tales of Monkey Island isn't that demanding, and should run fine on most computers. It does require a bit of processing power though, so make sure you have a good CPU – but in terms of RAM and video card, the game demands very little from your hardware.

Other

The game was released in several episodes over the course of a few months, in case you're wondering why the chapters are presented as separate games in some stores. Don't worry though, they're not in the form of DLC or anything – once you've bought the game, you have access to all of the episodes right away!

Conclusion

After so many years of silence, Tales of Monkey Island had some very high expectations to answer to. Thankfully though, the developers have done their job excellently, and the game is simply a masterpiece.