Recent reviews by Malnormalulo

It's a classic for a reason.

However, don't buy this edition for the remaster alone. The new art style clashes with itself (look at the lighting on the 3D rendered characters vs the matte painting-like backdrops), and parts of it feel very uncanny, very off. Worse, the new art removes visual gags and details from the original. E.g., in the original Scumm Bar kitchen, there's a portrait of a chef who looks suspiciously like the Pillsbury Doughboy; whereas in the remaster, it's just an unmemorable portrait of an ordinary dude. Perhaps the biggest letdown is that they replaced the gorgeous, detailed splash portraits with ones done in the new style, which are competently done but clearly much, much lower effort and, to my eye, less appealing.

The only downside to playing in classic mode is that you miss out on the voice acting, which is very good. Definitely go buy the Monkey 2 remaster, though, which lets you play in classic mode _and_ get the voiced lines,

Play it if you really, really like the first three games, but even then only if you're willing to use a controller 99% of the time and then the keyboard for a couple minigames. The controls are absolutely, irredeemably abysmal. Guybrush constantly refuses to look at what you want him to look at. About 15% of your playtime will consist of nudging the joystick back and forth to try to face him in the right direction.

The writing and puzzles are mostly up to snuff, though this game's incarnation of insult combat is a huge letdown. Don't expect a satisfying ending.

If you don't want to play it, here's the only important continuity development: Herman Toothrot regains his memories and turns out to be H. T. Marley, Elaine's grandfather. At the end, he resumes governorship so Guybrush and Elaine can return to piracy.

All that said, if you are willing to suffer a little for the love of the series, I don't personally regret playing it.

If you like particle effects then boy do I have the game for you.

Within an hour of play I had already gotten my money's worth. There isn't a huge amount of content, but the quality more than makes up for it. When you make a mistake it's hilarious instead of frustrating, so the surprisingly difficult gameplay and the need to grind a song over and over to get S rank is no problem at all.

Is it balanced? No. Is it innovative? Not particularly. Is the gameplay clear and intuitive? Not always.

I still highly recommend it. This is a digital adaptation of one of my favorite board games. Expect about a 1:2 mix of strategy to chance, and get comfortable with the suspense of a really important roll of the die, and you'll enjoy the chaos. A game takes a few hours to play through, but you can save and resume (which the game UI doesn't make totally clear).

Truly a work of art, and an addicting game. However, instead of this version, you probably want Rebirth, which continues to get balance tweaks and new content. Not recommending it simply because I would recommend that anyone interested in the game buy the remake.

Every quest amounts to:
- Talk to quest giver
- Walk for four hours
- Kill something, steal something, or talk to someone
- Walk for four hours
- Talk to quest giver

The plot and lore is very tasty, but the work that goes into digging it up is dull and tedious. The gameplay is simply uninteresting. The only way I was able to enjoy this game was by stopping to read every book I found, but this is much more easily done by perusing the game's wiki.

As you can see from my playtime, I gave it a really solid chance. Several times, in fact. Time I won't get back.

There's some good stuff here, but why in the name of all that is holy, in this day and age, is there a character named after an ethnic slur? The "g*psy" character is just a fortune teller – call her that.

Incredible game. Incredible soundtrack. Buy both.

Absolutely everything you want it to be. The biggest change from previous Civ games is to the actual placement of troops on the field -- units can no longer stack. The non-stacking may sound like a nerf, but it adds a new level of strategy to the game where you could previously just throw a huge stack of units at the enemy. The math-hammer is gone, and the game now plays more like chess. It's a very simple improvement, but it really makes the game.