Return to Monkey Island

 PC
User Score
7.3

Mixed or average reviews- based on 232 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 150 out of 232
  2. Mixed: 37 out of 232
  3. Negative: 45 out of 232

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  1. Tretze
    Sep 25, 2022
    4
    The puzzles are too easy and the game has been extremely simplified. There aren't any truly remarkable puzzles like the insult fights. It relies too much on nostalgia instead on being good.

    The art style is bad, specially the faces and some backgrounds, but animations are even worse. They look like puppets with just a few joints. Backgrounds have very little animations on them. There    The puzzles are too easy and the game has been extremely simplified. There aren't any truly remarkable puzzles like the insult fights. It relies too much on nostalgia instead on being good.

    The art style is bad, specially the faces and some backgrounds, but animations are even worse. They look like puppets with just a few joints. Backgrounds have very little animations on them. There are indie games made by one or two people with way better art and animations.

    The ending is disappointing and feels rushed.

    Come on! This is Monkey Island. People should be more demanding, and not settle for less just because of nostalgia. If this game wasn't a Monkey Island 2 sequel, everyone would have rated it lower.    … Expand
  2. Dr3aMz
    Sep 20, 2022
    0
    The announcement of a new Monkey Island from Ron Gilbert was the best news in the last 30 years.

    Then the trailer came, and I knew they screwed up. The art style is terrible, it's a flash mobile game with terrible animations. This is how you ruin a legendary series. It's so sad.
  3. breaddrink
    Nov 23, 2022
    4
    Initially so exciting to be back, but unfortunately uninspired puzzles, with a confusingly vague and dreary ending had me wondering if they'd run out of time/money and wishing they'd quit while they were ahead.
  4. Fyxhcl
    Jan 3, 2023
    4
    The worst game of the serie.

    Short, easy, with zero original idea, horrible graphics and a very bad plot that relies on continuous nostalgia moments and ends in the worst way possible. A few time the humour made me laugh, that's the most positive thing I can say.

    Only play it if you are a huge fan of Guybrush, but expect to be disappointed.
  5. jason_87
    Sep 25, 2022
    0
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Ron Gilbert said he wanted to make a pirate game. This game isn't one. The ending shows that.

    The ending is terrible and shows that Gilbert doesn't care about the story. Instead, we get a load of bs philosophy about stories are "mainly the middle part, which is where the good stuff is" and they "change with time".

    The original Monkey Island story doesn't change. Every time I play that game, it's great. Good stories don't change. You read them again because you enjoy them. A good story has a good ending.

    This game isn't getting my money and I'm done with Gilbert games.    … Expand
  6. Attzar
    May 17, 2023
    1
    Yeah, it's bad. It take one years for me to admit that, because I waited for this game litterally for 30 years, and I wanted to like it so much.
    But it's bad. Lazy, unfinished, with no real connections with the old ones. A boring soft reboot, as in contemporary Disney tradition. What a delusion.
    We just wanted the conclusion of the original trilogy as it was originally planned (Guybrush    Yeah, it's bad. It take one years for me to admit that, because I waited for this game litterally for 30 years, and I wanted to like it so much.
    But it's bad. Lazy, unfinished, with no real connections with the old ones. A boring soft reboot, as in contemporary Disney tradition. What a delusion.
    We just wanted the conclusion of the original trilogy as it was originally planned (Guybrush goes to hell)- Why Ron has abandoned all the good ideas he wrote in his post of 2013 is beyond my comprension.    … Expand
  7. Fuz
    Oct 31, 2022
    0
    Disclaimer: The Secret of Monkey Island and LeChuck's Revenge are my all-time favourite games and they will never be topped. I love Ron Gilbert, he's my favourite developer and I loved to death Thimbleweed Park.

    I had a very bad feeling about Return after seeing that god-awful trailer. Worse than I thought. Much worse than I thought, since I was confident Gilbert's writing would have    Disclaimer: The Secret of Monkey Island and LeChuck's Revenge are my all-time favourite games and they will never be topped. I love Ron Gilbert, he's my favourite developer and I loved to death Thimbleweed Park.

    I had a very bad feeling about Return after seeing that god-awful trailer.
    Worse than I thought. Much worse than I thought, since I was confident Gilbert's writing would have been top notch despite the art direction. I was wrong.
    The artstyle is adequate for what the game writing and story are. And I don't mean it in a nice way.
    Yeah, it's an absolute disaster visually, ugly with cheap flashlike skeletal animations everywhere. It's small, both in scope and in lenght - it has no breadth. It's empty. Just compare the islands in act IV with the islands in Monkey Island 2. There is no Caribbean to be found here. The puzzles are easy and not particularly well designed or interesting, some of them also have small hints on how to solve them (like seeing a blowfish while going down the anchor). They're just silly. The interface... well, I hate those barebone interfaces designed for tablets and little kids at their first P&C experience.
    And the writing. Oh my god.
    I said the art style is adequate... because it's a full fledged low tier nickelodeon cartoon. It's silly through and through. Forget On Stranger Tides. It's not a pirate story anymore, it's a cartoon. LeChuck - from a scary ghost pirate - became a caricature, Elaine is utterly destroyed, as is everyone else. Cartoon caricatures.
    And the writing. I don't even know where to start. Pretentious overall. I'm convinced that in 30 years Ron got sick of people asking him about Monkey Island (and a secret that never existed) and started to resent his creature. Now it's a meta story on growing old and the likes. I don't even feel bad about the ending like most people (I LOVED MI2 ending), but... AGAIN? Not that I was expecting anything different due to all the clues during the game.
    And where the hell their fixation for THE SECRET came out? They make it sounds like they didn't search for anything else since the beginning of the saga, while it was NEVER a thing.
    And why Chuckie and Guybrush aren't the ones playing, since MI2 was Guybrush's story? "Uh, no, it weren't them" yes, they were, clearly. We also saw his parents in the dream, and they were not strangers. They retconned A LOT and it sucks. Ron was hell-bent on NOT giving the fans what they wanted.
    Gilbert had no idea what to do with this game, scratched everything he planned and thought (his famous 17 points and "Guybrush goes to hell and Stan is there") and destroyed his creature.
    The music is also disappointing. I mean, it's good but... it's the bare minimum. They just basically gave an orchestration to the old tunes. And it's overdone and overcomplicated, in 1 year no one will remember those tunes, while we still perfectly remember every song in MI1 30 years later.
    A mention for Dominic Amato, who does an excellent job - still not my Guybrush voice and still doesn't sound like MI1-MI2 Guybrush should sound (too -again- cartoony), but he's GOOD at his job and he was obviously very committed to the part.    … Expand
  8. tdebug
    Oct 4, 2022
    0
    Art style is bad. Maybe it looks cool and modern to whoever designed it, but what I see is a tasteless ugly mess. It's not a remaster - the original game looks nothing like that and not because of a different technology from back of the days, but it had own style which is now completely gone.
  9. eanando25
    Sep 29, 2022
    1
    The game is a real crap. In addition to horrible graphics (I'm not surprised anymore) the story is terrible (there are too many moments where nothing makes sense). It's such a soulless game. Disney put his stamp just like in his last movies (Star Wars franchise and others). Absolute sadness
  10. rochmik81
    Sep 25, 2022
    1
    I really, really wanted to like this game.

    The puzzles seemed a little easy with the new interface but I still think it could have been good. But so much of the game is just rehashing things in a less satisfying way. There's not enough Murray (which is from a game I thought didn't count "officially"). I don't care if the art style is different. It only matters if I like the style,    I really, really wanted to like this game.

    The puzzles seemed a little easy with the new interface but I still think it could have been good. But so much of the game is just rehashing things in a less satisfying way. There's not enough Murray (which is from a game I thought didn't count "officially").

    I don't care if the art style is different. It only matters if I like the style, not whether it's new or old. I didn't like this one but it still could have been a good game.

    Ron Gilbert said Disney let him make the game he wanted. I only partially believe that. Disney's diversity quotas are in heavy effect. You see that the minute you walk into the Scumm bar. 2/3 of the pirates you talk to are female and 2/3 of the pirate leaders are female. Coincidence? Nah. It goes on throughout the game.

    Finally, you get to the ending and it just sucks. What would be a better ending? ANYTHING. I don't care what the secret is. Commit to an ending. It's not that hard.    … Expand
  11. kokotas
    Sep 25, 2022
    4
    Can't digest that they turned the iconic monkey island to this low budget, generic corpo art, soulless game. I guess it caters to a modern audience but for us folks who grew up with MI this is a major letdown art wise, script wise, puzzle wise, world wise... 4/10 from me. Now excuse me while I go play the first three games again to forget this atrocity ever happened
  12. O3liveon
    Nov 18, 2022
    2
    I want to preface that this game isn't made for me, I'm not a gamer that likes this genre of game in most cases. But, I play hundreds of games a year if not more and go into every single one of them with an open mind.
    This. Is. Boring.
    I couldn't bring myself to get past the first few hours. The art style is well done but I don't like it, the voice acting is decent, I don't like it. I    I want to preface that this game isn't made for me, I'm not a gamer that likes this genre of game in most cases. But, I play hundreds of games a year if not more and go into every single one of them with an open mind.
    This. Is. Boring.
    I couldn't bring myself to get past the first few hours. The art style is well done but I don't like it, the voice acting is decent, I don't like it. I can get through a bad game if the story is good enough, or if the gameplay itself is good enough; I don't like em. I can ignore a thousand different things if just one thing is good enough. I didn't find that one thing here. I'm giving it a 2 because of nostalgia and I do my reviews based off my enjoyment. I could've given it a 1 if I wasn't taken back to childhood like I was... and I was brought back and that was fun for 5 five minutes. Then I freaked out and cleaned my room before my dad could get home and ground me. But then I got scared because my dad's been dead for eight years! I thought about his funeral, I thought about the casket; thought about the food and I thought about this game. It was then that I realized, I had a better time there then I did Returning to Monkey island.    … Expand
  13. horst81230
    Sep 24, 2022
    4
    Disappointing.
    Don't expect a true Monkey Island 3. The writing doesn't compare to 1+2, the artstyle does not fit and the puzzles are really not as clever and challenging as Thimbleweed Park.
    I was hoping for a pirate adventure with goofy jokes and pop culture references. What I got was just another Monkey Island I didn't care for since at least Escape from Monkey Island with a lot of    Disappointing.
    Don't expect a true Monkey Island 3. The writing doesn't compare to 1+2, the artstyle does not fit and the puzzles are really not as clever and challenging as Thimbleweed Park.
    I was hoping for a pirate adventure with goofy jokes and pop culture references. What I got was just another Monkey Island I didn't care for since at least Escape from Monkey Island with a lot of annoying self-references.    … Expand
  14. Jojo12
    Sep 25, 2022
    4
    Gameplay & Puzzles: 7/10 Fun and clever, as always, but no sword/insult fight? No timed event?

    Ending (s): 4/10 I preferred the endings of the others Monkey Island. This one felt like they were lacking time, and decided to somewhat copy one of the past ending.

    Graphics: 2/10 It really felt like they skipped the corners. I was really disappointed by the general look.
  15. sirensynapse
    Sep 27, 2022
    0
    So eye-hurtingly hideous that it's impossible to bear; so I can't even comment beyond that.
  16. Kunray
    Sep 25, 2022
    3
    my humble opinion, the existence of this project is just as tasteless
    It's your call but for now it's not recommended.
    4/10 this game at that stag
  17. Vasot
    Sep 22, 2022
    3
    Graphics: 4/10 Very poor like watching a cheap cartoon show this looks almost worse from previous games. There are no details, it's full of low polygon animations
    Gameplay: 7/10 Puzzles felt ok for being hard mode altho I haven't played it in casual mode so can't measure it.
    Story.: 3/10: Just MEH nothing memorable i expected more from the way the story was being told. It left me with a    Graphics: 4/10 Very poor like watching a cheap cartoon show this looks almost worse from previous games. There are no details, it's full of low polygon animations
    Gameplay: 7/10 Puzzles felt ok for being hard mode altho I haven't played it in casual mode so can't measure it.
    Story.: 3/10: Just MEH nothing memorable i expected more from the way the story was being told. It left me with a weird sense of disappointment and tiredness.    … Expand
  18. GameforGamers
    Sep 25, 2022
    0
    big disappointment the return to monkey island, don't waste your money on this cash grab attempt
  19. WanderinMelmoth
    Nov 4, 2022
    1
    A game centered around solving puzzles... gets old fast. Puzzles are the only motivation and as such it gets tiresome. Better have a great story or do something else to captivate the player, but no. Not only is the story meh, the art design is terrible and hard on the eyes. It's even worse of an eye sore than Escape from Monkey Island! Sorry, Ron, back to the drawing board you go! F
  20. nbyte
    Sep 21, 2022
    0
    Dejando de banda la nostalgia de la saga de monkey island, 20 años de espera para este juego? No gracias. Me explico:

    Si me dijeran que este juego esta hecho por una empresa diferente, la cual ha querido retomar una saga clásica y que no tiene nada que ver con la franquicia, me lo creería, pero la realidad es que duele más saber que SI ha sido hecho por sus propios creadores (a    Dejando de banda la nostalgia de la saga de monkey island, 20 años de espera para este juego? No gracias. Me explico:

    Si me dijeran que este juego esta hecho por una empresa diferente, la cual ha querido retomar una saga clásica y que no tiene nada que ver con la franquicia, me lo creería, pero la realidad es que duele más saber que SI ha sido hecho por sus propios creadores (a excepción de Tim Schaffer, por suerte).

    En Monkey Island 2 (MI2 en adelante) tuvo un gran final de juego, dejando abierto al jugador, pero permitiendo que la saga pudiera retomarse en un futuro con otra aventura o bien terminando poniéndole punto y final a la de MI2.

    El final de este juego es decepcionante cuanto menos (me lo pasé en dificultad difícil sin usar libro de pistas en 8,5-9horas) y deja muchos cabos sueltos, no tiene ninguna historia que permita ser vinculada o resuelta con MI2, simplemente las cosas parecen metidas con calzador para así no tener que contar una historia más.

    En cuanto al precio de juego, que decir por 10€ me lo hubiese comprado igual, pero n oes un precio para este (aunque me pudo la nostalgia), además me da la sensación como si fuera un port de otra plataforma (o pensado inicialmente para esta) ademas de, dar la sensación de ser un refrito de MI2, que podrían haber puesto antes del titulo Return to monkey island, REMAKE de Monkey Island 2 y lo aceptaba.

    En fin, quitando de banda mi opinión, si jugaste a los anteriores juega a este, aunque bien es cierto, que la nostalgia no es la misma y te deja un sabor agridulce.

    Buen gaming y buen provecho de escorbutifarras! Arrrrr    … Expand
  21. mat0109
    Sep 20, 2022
    0
    Not even closer the epicness of the past titles... i'm sorry, but for me is a big NO.
  22. Fuzi0n
    Sep 21, 2022
    1
    The atrocious art style is making my eyes bleed and the gameplay is pretty meh. The dialogue and puzzles are severely lacking the charm and wittiness of earlier installments, and otherwise all I have really been doing during my playtime is revisiting locales and talking to characters that we already know. From what I have seen, RTMI is more of a reimagining of Monkey Island, than a newThe atrocious art style is making my eyes bleed and the gameplay is pretty meh. The dialogue and puzzles are severely lacking the charm and wittiness of earlier installments, and otherwise all I have really been doing during my playtime is revisiting locales and talking to characters that we already know. From what I have seen, RTMI is more of a reimagining of Monkey Island, than a new game.

    The developers are creatively bankrupt. Stay away, Monkey Island fans.    … Expand
  23. sektordv
    Sep 20, 2022
    1
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. What a trainwreck. Nevermind the horrible, corporate infographic art style. Nevermind the cheap, tweened Adobe-Flash-like animations. The entire game is apparently attempting to pander to the 'old fans' crowd by being chock full of references to the previous installments and revisiting old locations, while at the same time engaging in on-the-nose moves like enforcing a jarring diversification of the cast and introducing an ending that's much akin to the one in MI2, only this time it's even more of a "haha, none of it mattered" kind of thing. A damn shame, after all this time spent waiting for this. I really thought Gilbert and Grossman could do better.… Expand
  24. Fatmandu
    Sep 23, 2022
    0
    The artsyle is bad so I'm giving it a zero. I don't care about the rest of the game.
  25. ThreepwoodMac
    Sep 21, 2022
    0
    It is so sad to see my beloved Monkey Island become a mobile game. The art style is so bad it's unbelievable... what were they thinking? Cheap, lazy flash animation and horrible art direction... This is a disgrace.
  26. Mulder46
    Jan 18, 2023
    4
    Me encantó, el final sí me dejó un poco..... No del todo satisfecho, pero el conjunto es un juegazo
  27. DEL92
    Aug 11, 2023
    1
    First, an announcement: Ron Gilbert is my favorite developer, I consider the first two Monkey Island and Timbelweed Park wonderful adventures and perfect examples of storytelling applied to video games. I've been waiting and literally dreaming about this game for thirty years. So if you want to disqualify what you are about to read as an outburst from a hater, you are wrong. I reallyFirst, an announcement: Ron Gilbert is my favorite developer, I consider the first two Monkey Island and Timbelweed Park wonderful adventures and perfect examples of storytelling applied to video games. I've been waiting and literally dreaming about this game for thirty years. So if you want to disqualify what you are about to read as an outburst from a hater, you are wrong. I really wanted this game to be great.

    But it simply isn't. It's a total, absolute disaster. Everything is wrong. The first bad sensations had already started from the first teaser, but, out of affection for Ron and the franchise, I defended the game on several occasions on forums and blogs, even if I felt that something was deeply out of tune.

    Let's go step by step:

    1 - Graphics.

    This has been the most controversial point from the beginning. To best discuss this, we need to divide this point into three subcategories: art style, animations, technical execution.
    The artistic style, curated by Rex Crowle, is undoubtedly particular. In part it tries to "conceptually" resume the old pixel art, but it produces an alienating effect, which above all affects the general atmosphere of the game. It is no longer a "realistic" environment like in Monkey 1-2, a realism occasionally contaminated by cartoon grafts, here we are shamelessly inside a children's cartoon. The feeling of danger, of mystery, of fear that was breathed in the first two chapters is completely absent.
    I have not been able to understand, even after a year of reflections, what was the reason for this so self-defeating choice.
    If the Disney management really didn't like pixel art (which by far for a game like this would have been the way to go) they could opt for a style a la Curse.
    What's more: such a particular style, in order to be perceived as qualitatively valid, needed top-level animations and technical execution. Instead, for obvious budgetary reasons, instead of animations drawn frame by frame, we opted for poor spline puppet animations, which give the whole an amateur flavor and a Flash game.
    Finally, the technical execution of many backgrounds goes from good to mediocre: just look at the backdrops of Melee's kitchen, the fish shop, the museum, Carla's house... for an averagely trained eye it is clear that they have remained at an early stage of production. There are less colors on the screen, the proportions of the objects do not match those of the characters ... in short, a disaster.

    2 - History.

    I would have accepted all the graphic flaws in the world, as long as the story was engaging and rich, full of mystery and adventure.
    But even here ... a huge disappointment. What we all wanted was simply the conclusion of the story as Ron had envisioned it. "Guybrush goes to hell and fights the demon LeChuck". An epic and great story, capable of tying together all the unsolved points of the previous stories (the amusement park, Big Whoop, LeChuck and Guybrush as brothers, the dead parents, the orphanage...). I expected flashbacks, introspection, intricate subplots that would expand the world of Monkey Island enormously.
    But... even here, nothing. "They had already done a lot of my idea, casually, in Tales and Curse." Mah. I think that even on this occasion Disney has imposed some of its delusional corporate policies and has forced Ron to change direction, forcing him to give us a silly plot that wearily links some elements of Monkey 1-2. I'll leave out talking about how everything, from a certain point on, seems drawn out: empty islands, puzzles and other islands cut from the game, characters that have no development and just disappear into thin air, no real connection to the old stories , everything seems to happen like this, by chance.
    I understand that the upstream intention was to reflect on the "history of Monkey Island", but seriously ... it doesn't work. Regardless of the initial intentions, it doesn't work at all. It is all superficial, empty, devoid of depth and mystery.
    Just to make a quick comparison: consider the bookshops of Timbelweed Park: one could also spend hours just reading the contents of those books. This is narrative depth. Take the RTMI library: four books of which we only read the cover. In Monkey 2 there was a whole filing cabinet...that's not design "progress". It's putrefaction. The old verb interface had the advantage of creating a direct bridge between the game world and the gamer. It had the ability to hide many games and phrases, as well as making you feel directly in control of the character and that world.
    The new control system eliminates any complexity in exploration, certainly making everything more fluid, but also less interesting and alive. It's like watching a -bad- cartoon with some minor interaction.
    Puzzles of an embarrassing ease. Here I think Ron got influenced by Grossman and his bizarre mother-in-law proof design ideas. But...the target audience is not mothers-in-law. RTMI is garbage.    … Expand

Awards & Rankings

19
#19 Best PC Game of 2022
26
#26 Most Discussed PC Game of 2022

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
87

Generally favorable reviews - based on 54 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 50 out of 54
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 54
  3. Negative: 0 out of 54
  1. LEVEL (Czech Republic)
    Jan 25, 2024
    100
    The game deserves to be called one of the best point-and-click adventure games of recent times. It continues the narrative and completes the old story to general satisfaction. It blends tradition with innovation and isn't afraid to reckon with both its own legacy and the genre as a whole. [Issue#322]
  2. GameGrin
    Dec 14, 2022
    100
    Guybrush’s new adventure is every bit as fun as his previous ones. This is a triumph of a game that manages to live up to exorbitant amounts of expectation and ticks every box.
    Read full review
  3. Riot Pixels
    Oct 22, 2022
    65
    No one asked Guybrush to return, but he came anyway and crashed his own party. In the beginning, you try your best to acclimate to the unusual visual style, hoping that your patience will eventually pay off. In the end, you wonder how they managed to screw up a decent game with such a vile ending.
    Read full review
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