I have to recommend this game because it is Monkey Island, and I've been a fan of the series since the very start. I want there to be more of them. I have liked/loved all of the other games in the series, including the much-maligned Escape. However this one is by far my lowest-ranked game in the series for many reasons.

First, the positives. The music is great and most of the voice actors that make a return are great as always. There are many funny jokes and gags, and Guybrush is the same lovable borderline-sociopath as before. The puzzles make sense and the game flows fairly well without any really boring pixel-hunting. The plot/story (up to a point) is typical Monkey Island pirate adventure fare, and therefore perfectly fine for me. I want a funny pirate-themed adventure, and for the most part I got that. I enjoyed exploring the different islands and hearing Guybrush's comments on everything.

Now on to the... less positive.

Some of the new actors sound a bit like someone's relative reading lines rather than acting, but it isn't so bad that it takes you out of the game.

The puzzles almost all make sense (which is rare for any adventure game), but they are very easy to solve. I played on the "hard" mode and I can't even imagine what the casual/easy mode is like.

The game is a good length, but a lot of my play time is leaving the game running while doing tasks around the house and watching the credits over and over because skipping them skips the after-credits sequence and those are where they have put the endings. This is as close to a middle-finger to the player as I have seen in a Monkey Island game and I can't understand why they would do it this way.

The art style is something that each person will have to make their own decision on. The best way I can describe the effect the art style had on me is that it is the visual equivalent of putting crackling and popping sounds in audio on purpose and calling it an audio style. It detracted from my enjoyment of the game. Everything looks extra disgusting and it was very difficult for me to tell what some objects were or what most facial expressions were trying to convey. On the same topic, the animations, for the most part, were very basic. The whole effect was unpleasant and came across as cheap/amateurish. Some people have described it as old Newgrounds flash-game level, and I think that is being mean to some of the nice work people did on those games in the past.

On to the writing. At its best, it was clever and entertaining. For the most part, it was serviceable. However, there were some pretty big problems with it.

LeChuck felt less menacing than ever. He was barely an adversary. Elaine felt very flat and boring. She was barely a character. There was an interesting subplot with Elaine, however, where people were reporting all the horrible things Guybrush was doing. I thought this might lead to Elaine having to stop Guybrush or at least confront him and he would have to prove himself to her again to win her back. This, however, led exactly nowhere. She barely brings it up and doesn't even chastise him.

The three new bad guys are barely fleshed out. They have some new kind of dark magic, but not much is said about what it is or how it is different from voodoo. They are well voice acted, however, and work well as enemies to both Guybrush and LeChuck.

The rest of the characters were okay. Nothing else really stood out to me except maybe Stan, who always carries the games on his expressive shoulders.

The endings, whoo boy. All spoilers from here on out. I read the developers' description in the game explaining where the storytelling came from, and I have to say I fear that some of us older gents only have one topic we tell stories about: getting old. Apparently there is supposed to be some meta-commentary about the nature of fantasy and leaving all that behind as you age. Really it just sounded like Ron intended the original ending to be "it was all a dream" so to speak but didn't want to just commit to that ending now because most people would hate it. So he left it vague and, quite frankly, unsatisfying. "It was all a dream" is widely regarded as one of the worst storytelling tropes for very good reason. It makes everything that happens in a story meaningless. I understand wanting to leave some wiggle room around a horrible idea like that, however it leads to an even worse trope in my opinion, which is not having a real ending at all. As a side note, not finding out "The Secret" didn't bother me, as it has clearly been a MacGuffin right from the start and with the previous games' treatment of it I didn't expect it to be anything but silly.

A Brilliant game just as i remember they were back on the Commodore 64