Lair of LeChuck/Legend of Monkey Island Feedback (Spoilers)

  • Lucky11
    Commander
    Insider

    I finished the Lair of LeChuck and the Legend of Monkey Island story arc as a whole. I thoroughly enjoyed the atmosphere, the characters, and the point-and-click-styled gameplay puzzles.

    However, while I thought the story had a fantastic start (using A Dark Deception as a prelude was ingenious, in my opinion), and the middle of the Tall Tales was great, I thought the ending kind of fell flat. I've been struggling to put it into words, but it felt like there was nothing really at stake. Maybe I'm unfairly comparing it to Lords of the Sea, but during that Tall Tale, it felt like we were the last line of defense for the Sea of Thieves against Davy Jones.Lair of LeChuck almost kind of had a side-quest feel to it. Someone could have asked: "Oh, where did you get that red Sword of Souls?", and you could have simply replied: "It's a long story, you had to be there."

    I loved exploring Monkey Island, but it would have been cool if we had to stop LeChuck from taking a portal back to the Sea of Thieves or something like that during the final battle to emphasize the threat he posed. Although, I had another idea of how I would re-write the end of Lair of LeChuck:

    Going back to the awesome cutscene in the church, we are captured by LeChuck alongside Guybrush and Elaine through the power in the Burning Blade. In a last-ditch effort, Ramsey and Kate would have stormed into the Church to try and stop Lechuck, only for them to fall prisoner to that Paralyzation Spell the blade used. LeChuch has us all dead to rights, and he's about to venture to the Sea of Thieves to do who knows what.

    That's when Captain Flameheart enters the room. LeChuck would have tried to use the Burning Blade on Flameheart, but through a visual cue, it would have been obvious the spell didn't work. Flameheart would have said something to the effect of "There is only one king of the Sea of Thieves!" before ruthlessly beating LeChuck up while we're all frozen on the ground (As ruthless as a T-rating would allow to drive the point home that Flameheart has arrived, he's awesome, and like Darth Vader, you DO NOT want to cross him)

    In an attempt to endear us to his cause, he'll leave the church after telling us that "My power could be yours to wield, if you pledge your soul!" or something like that. Lair of LeChuck would end in a hollow victory; we stopped LeChuck, but now we have much bigger problems. (Ramsey could be concerned with what just transpired, while Guybrush and Elaine could say something to the effect of, "I don't think we're going to be able to help you...good luck anyway!")

    The Legend of Monkey Island ends the way it started, through a plot twist, and the Tall Tale becomes the introduction to Captain Flameheart only after an awesome adventure through the world of Monkey Island.

    On the whole, I thought the three Tall Tales were phenomenal! I don't want to take away from all the work that went into this thing, because I loved it! I just think the ending, at least to me, felt a little anticlimactic.

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  • BurnBacon
    Vanguard
    Insider

    The ending was indeed sorta....lacking.
    "Take over the SoT, and make FH bow to him" Okie.... and we beat him with RootBeer. :/
    SILLY as he is, he came off strong as a posing villain. In his own world, he always comes back and his main goal was the same, Marry a girl. But in SoT, his introduction was lacking.

    Like many would say, if you MISSED the Adventure, you be asking...how did he steal the sword. How or why does he disguise himself as Ramsey? What really drew him to SoT. I was expecting more like...he met FlameHeart or something. Or better, Him and Flameheart "Fused" together. xD

    As I recall, promised the ending would connect to SoT in a big way. Where? All was ended was, "Look forward to Guybrush visiting about a treasure map" ok see you in two years.

  • abjectarity
    Lord
    Insider

    I was excited for #3 to release after doing 1-2, but it was pretty underwhelming at the end, the whole below ground part was just boring and I even said that at one point to my crewmate. We let Guybrush and Elaine do all the shooting and just goofed off until the end, then we spent more time spraying each other with the root beer than LeChuck…

    I love the incorporation of the adventure with the tall tales, but I wasn’t excited by the ending of this at all.

  • heslashthem
    Castaway

    Everything about the last tall tale for me was amazing. The only two things that went on a bit were the pathway through the lava river and shooting the rocks ahead, and the actual fight with LeChuck.

  • Lucky11
    Commander
    Insider

    @tesiccl
    I can see why a bunch of people said the last two chapters dragged on for them, but I actually didn't mind the cavern area and the boss battle over the pool of lava. I thought it was a pretty faithful recreation of the lair, and the battle was unique due to its location. I guess I'm weird like that. :)

    It's just something about the ending that took the wind out of my sails. (no pun intended)

  • heslashthem
    Castaway

    @lucky11 oh the naval battle was amazing don’t get me wrong, it was the 1v1 insult sword fighting that dragged a bit for me. Guess I was just never a fan of that drawn out way of combat!

  • Kaoteek
    Legend
    Insider

    I'll be honest, I finished the third TT yesterday, and while i was totally on board during the first half of the adventure (even though it only highlighted the issues with having a point-and-click adventure-type Tall Tale without proper inventory or manual save), I slowly lost interest once in the volcano.

    Part of it was my fault : I had to get away from the screen a couple of minutes just before reaching LeChuck's ship, I stopped way before the last Memory spot, but when I got back, the game had still carried on without me, the cinematic had come and gone, and the Monkey was waiting for me - as a result, the entire sequence was just my ship sailing in the lava river, without LeChuck's ship anywhere in sight, and with Guybrush & Elaine shooting rock blockades once in a while (but not always, leading to a couple of awkward moments).

    Not ideal, but it just highlighted the fact that it turned into a Disney ride, nothing more, nothing less : no ship damage, no way to fail, and so on. Same with the battle : I barely did anything but steer the ship, it ended with a whimper (as in, twenty seconds where nothing happened before the next script kicked in), and then, we were off to the insult battle... which refused to give me the retort prompt for at least 5 minutes. I had to leave the fight and come back for the game to work properly.

    On a conceptual level, I still think that taking that duel to the top of the mountain would have been much more cinematic and satisfying, and overall, the TT were fun... but that's it. And given that this entire last bit of the adventure really felt rushed out of the door to meet the deadline, can't ask too much of Rare, I guess.

    Oh, and since SoT is such a well optimized game, I got the good old Xbox audio stutter/crash right as Guybrush and Elaine were saying goodbye to me. I managed to complete the TT, but the game crashed as soon as I got out of the tunnel of the damned.

  • Liberance
    Master

    I thought it was fine, especially since this third chapter at least doesn't play exactly like the original Monkey Island game to the point of feeling like a 3D remake like in the previous two Tall Tales. Perhaps a bit more of that in the second one would've been better, but that's the balance I was expecting at least.

    I was also hoping for some naval combat at some point toward the end and we got it. It's true that the maze and the chase run too long. It would've been nice if your crewmates were allowed to use the front cannons in Kate's ship when playing as a group of friends, otherwise one to three people are left with nothing to do but man the sails during the whole chase part.

    Not much to complain about when it comes to the duel with LeChuck, both naval and the sword fight afterwards. I agree that having Flameheart show up and/or involve the Sea of Thieves more deliberately would've been a nice touch, but I'm guessing Rare was going once again for total faithfulness here. The final confrontations with LeChuck in the original Monkey Island games were often kind of silly and underwhelming. Whether that's something worth preserving or not is up to each person I guess. I do side with the idea of leaning more epic, but gameplay wise it worked well enough.

    Overall these three Tall Tales have felt like a labor of love and they are crafted with an insane attention to detail. Personally, the aspects where I found them less appealing are also aspects I didn't love about the original LucasArts games, so I can hardly criticize them for that. At times, during the insult fights, I found myself thinking "is this the best the studio known for the old Cranky Kong burns and Conker's Bad Fur Day irreverent dialogue can do?" But what they're aiming to reproduce here is Ron Gilbert's voice and design sensibilities, which are more childish and whimsical in nature. Same goes for anything else. So overall, trying to look at it objectively, they did a phenomenal job.

  • HiradC
    Legend
    Insider

    @lucky11 I was likewise hoping for a flameheart appearance in the chapel

  • lafrules
    Commander
    Insider

    I agree, the last tall tale was very underwhelming. It started alright but felt extremely rushed and lacking at the end. I almost quit during the long and pointless turtle race in the lava at the end. It was also buggy for me and the insult sword fighting, while interesting in theory, is rather boring to do. I pushed through it all to end up having my shanty still locked out at the end due to a bug.

    All of this reflects how Rare is chewing more than they can bite with the development of adventures, seasons, tall tales and periodical events all at once. Quantity is provided at the expense if quality.

  • ImpyMidna2303
    Captain
    Insider

    When you think about it, LeChuck DID just boast "Flameheart won't know what hit him!" implementing he would easily destroy him and his Reaper followers with Elaine at his side and Ramsey's Legend Pirates and that would have been the point where Flameheart himself would have showed up in a fit of rage confronting the Zombie Pirate who dared to challenge him, which would have been epic to witness his true power.

    Also, everyone was saying LeChuck is the mysterious Cap'n, who has a history with Flameheart, and is leading the Dark Brethren, but LeChuck did not reveal anything if he was that person, or just another servant of the group like Rathbone and Davy Jones. But it appears he's not on their side and has his own agenda.

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