Ahoy to all!
Tis that time again! the time to discuss the tales of adventure, tales of Monkey island. Final warning, this review/ critique contains >spoilers<
Background:
I've been a huge sea of thieves' player/ fan since a bit before the game's release and was eager to get into Monkey Island as I have not played through any of the games nor know the lore. I enjoy the pirate theme, so just that was enough to intrigue me into doing the monkey island tales. I've only done the 1st one so far so my opinion is limited to 1. this tale only and 2. No knowledge of monkey island, but considering I've been around, and the game has been around for years now, I will be harsh with my review, my expectations are high because I expect high quality from Sea of thieves and truly wish for it to be the best that it may be. If you disagree, you're all more than welcome to state your own thoughts on the matter, I encourage it as long as we remain courteous and respectful. My thoughts? well... they aren't better than the pirate life tales... but that doesn't mean they are all bad. Let's get into what it does well...
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The music:
The music is great, wish it was in the actual game, truly feels Caribbean themed and it's pretty nice and relaxing for sailing around. Would love to have a music piece about it to choose from when playing instruments. -
Theme
Once again, Rare devs do not disappoint in the atmosphere department. The theme of melee island is mysterious yet jolly, it's unique, and fresh. The town architecture is pretty well done, the mansion is a very detailed set piece and I can tell that lots of love went into it. There are pieces that make it feel incomplete andd I never liked invisible walls because it removes me from immersion but overall, these are minor quips I have, theme and environmental world building gets a pass from me -
NPC voice dialogue
This is GREAT!!! Finally, some voice lines for npcs, really makes the island feel alive. -
Clock tower puzzle
This one kind of stood out, would love puzzles that require players to turn back time, or somehow manipulate clock hands to solve puzzles or progress through a voyage... -
Pirate coins collection through exploring of island is great, I wish doubloons worked this way, with the ability to collect small amounts of it through plundering barrels, creates, or just lying around in other places.
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Cinematics as always, are great, scenes that play out are not as frequent but have some impact
So as you all can see, this tall tale adventure has some great and interesting new treasures that really makes it stand out in the sea of thieves, but regrettably, it has just as much trinkets that were non-appealing. Let me give it to you all as dry as bones now:
- The story
We're what now? 5+ years into the lifetime of sea of thieves? and the story of the game has taken a nosedive. It wasn't great before, and it's certainly not better now. It was mediocre at best (With the exception of pirate life). I'm sorry to say that this may be the most jarring and rough implementation of a story into the game. It actually alludes back to the previous adventure, which, if you haven't played this limited time campaign, you will have absolutely NO recollection of why the main baddy decided to transform into the pirate lord. He mentions some pirates who helped him collect a sword and.... what is that sword? why is it important? Who helped him? Those who don't play the adventure within the time frame will never know.
I've mentioned it before, and I'm honestly getting tired of doing so. One more time, read this carefully: > You should not create a story that is self-contained in sea of thieves, IT DOES NOT WORK. > Why, might you ask? Because when you have a story that can be repeated (or not), and may be continued into a 2nd part, it creates the issue where all previous story contents must be explained and progressed through in a logical and linear fashion. It's an issue with pirate life, and it's an even bigger issue here. When you have self contained stories, the story you provide is limited, it doesn't allow much room for players to explore outside the confinement of that story path, especially if said story is instance based. Worse yet, self contained stories with large events, can't be taken back, they have a beginning, middle, and an end, Not a REPEAT, an END, as in finale, limit, do not pass GO, do not collect 200 monopoly dollars. Doing them over and over just feels like it's some form of stage play, it only goes so far before it gets stale. Not much happens through out either, you get a good intro, directs you to finding Guybrush, and once you get to melee island nothing really directs you into any looming dangers, except the implication one may have of a spotter on top of the island who isn't good at spotting ships at sea... Regardless, none of the npc really help move the story along well and I would have preferred more pieces of lore that alluded to the big bad at the end, melee island history, etc...
Why is it that we need to go chasing a specialized knockout grog drink when we have regular grog that should get the job done as well? One regular drink in and we are already having issues with balance ourselves and our perception of reality becomes warped, that should have been enough in the lore sense. In the gameplay sense, it would have helped trim some of the unnecessary and repetitive content,
Worse yet, the ending is abysmal, speak to npc, npc ends the voyage, cut to black... This has to be one of the worst ways to end a tale, it's so clear cut that nothing about it feels like the transition was thought out at all.
The story is a large fetch quest of things to do until the end where you fight some of the easiest enemies in the game with.... soda?... ok, weird, but ok. The issue isn't how you fight them, pirates of all stature, we are in 5 years running, and we still have npc's running straight into you posing no challenge whatsoever. Not to mention, the only form of combat is this battle which happens at the VERY END! There's not going to be any more action in this tale, that's all we get, a deluxe cheeseburger with fries, hold the fries and the ingredients aren't even that fresh. The balance between puzzles and the combat is so far off and imbalanced.
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Puzzles
Speaking of puzzles, most of the puzzles here are some of the worst, the difficulty spikes up on this one, and not in a good way. It's one thing for a puzzle to be complex, with multiple moving parts such as platforms, mini games, or quantity of riddles/ objects, but this 1st tale is just a giant fetch quest where you have to deliver something to someone, which will provide something back, and sometimes through trial and error hopefully you will find what you need to advance the story. They are maniacal and overly complex tasks (For the sake of being complex) such as find the missing ingredient to make a special stew, but stew requires like 5 different items, Create skelly to help with gate keeper, by collecting puzzle pieces or body parts, after breaking skelly with hungry dogs to get said puzzle pieces, who require food... It's like break glass to get rock, to break glass, to get bat to hit ball, to break window... And perhaps this is how monkey island may play, but if it's so then perhaps that game is just a pass for me, but more importantly, it's the type of gameplay that does not blend well with sea of thieves. it's like getting the critiques of sea of thieves voyages from day 1, the one that criticized the game for being an over glorified fetch quest in which everything was about getting to point b and back to point A, and just doubles down on it, taking the critique, ignoring it, and just accelerating all that makes it annoying even more so. And again, some NPCS or objectives will give absolutely no clue as to what it is that they want or need. The puzzles are the main attraction here, action and platforming, largely take up backstage in this tale with combat only having 1 scene and is brokenly simple. Platforming is also short and inconsistent, with some roof platforms causing you to fall off even though they might not b that steep. -
Treasure and rewards
Where are they? Or as the Pirate life pirates put it, "Where's the gold? We want the gold! Tales have always lacked in rewards for repeated completions and this one is no exception. One is provided with little to no rewards for completing puzzles and finishing the tales... -
Verdict
The tale plays more like an adventure, which isn't saying much, since I consider adventures to be even worse and inferior than regular voyages, and voyages inferior to tall tales. Countless times I mentioned how tales/ voyages or any campaign in the game needs to be open and flexible, not self-contained. It needs to be a mystery that leaves the ending ambiguous. Something along the lines of find missing captain and crew- progress through voyage and it splits into different alternative plot pints, you either find the crew and captain cursed and fight them, find the crew and captain dead (No fight), or find the thing that cursed/ killed them and boss battle begins- and finally leading to a gold haul to end the voyage. If you end the curse is the story over? yes, but not really, who knows, maybe the crew was in search of something far more sinister, or wealthier, or more secret/ mysterious. The list goes on and on.
The lack of treasure is beyond un-acceptable at this point, we need rewards for doing these things, treasure sprinkled throughout, with puzzles revealing som treasure, while th ending providing a huge haul, and they need to stop being instance based. It's a hypocritical and contradicting statement to create a game based on the ideals of "shared world" and "pvpve" when you got instance-based content that provides little to no rewards for completing them and don't offer much in replay ability, no interaction with other crews, no way that different playstyles can synergize or connect. Let me ask you all, are we still creating our own stories? Or are we simply creating our own experiences of a self-contained linear story that someone created for us to follow? The game isn't pvp, it's not pve, yet we see it catering to both groups on multiple situations, where's the synergy and balance between the two? Everything is so neatly segregated I can see the divide in game and outside of it here in the community, the threads of flaws found in what can only be simplicity found in mediocre content creation.
Although the comedy is alright, maybe even appreciated, and the npc voice acting is for sure one of the best things included into sea of thieves, it leaves much to be desired.
This 1st tale is actually too short, but the overwhelmingly tedious puzzles make this one of the longest, headache inducing, and most boring tales the game has had to see. Overall, you will find yourself doing the same thing throughout the game, fetching stuff for npcs with minimum advice, with a few exceptions. The story is broken up, does not progress smoothly, with lots of plot holes, unexplained events that no longer exist, and fails to gather traction and fuel to make me care by the penultimate scenes. The story is as messy as its puzzles, that comprises the majority of the tale, and leaves not much else to do. It seems that in order to cater to the world of Monkey island, Sea of thieves has lost some of its identity. The gameplay itself, falters due to its repetitive nature, and lack of variety, there just isn't much here to do other than solve a few puzzles. The point and click nature of Monkey island, just doesn't transition well to a full fledged role-playing pirate sim world like sea of thieves. For some, this may be what the game needs, but for others who have been starved for content, this is another disappointing reason to take another break from the waves. What is left for those feeling salty, alternatively, is to soak up a beautiful and thematically pleasing view of melee island accompanied with yet another stelar music piece and drinking their groggy hearts away with some npcs that have felt more alive than ever before. For some, it may just be another tale you complete and try to forget about forever. For monkey island aficionados out there, this tale might just be your pirate cove you always longed for, after all it's no doubt this was made as a love letter to those fans and to all that is Monkey Island, other pirates may even find some hidden treasure here, but for many a crew, they might find this tale to be just another sinking ship in a game that may be reaching worlds end. We still have more tales in the horizon before then though, and there is still hope that these tales will kick back from a less than stellar introductory performance.
Score: 6.5/10 - it's slightly above average
