If you read my review of The Siege of Spinner Cay, you know I basically said that it wasn’t as good as Chapter 1. Well if you are looking for a one-liner box quote to decide if this chapter is an improvement, here it is – Lair of the Leviathan is the best chapter yet.
Tales of Monkey Island picks up with Guybrush & co. at sea, to be immediately swallowed up by a giant manatee. You will spend nearly the entire episode inside the beast, but there is quite a bit more to be done in the innards of a manatee than you might expect. But while the aspect of exploration is done away with for the most part, character development and puzzles more than makes up for it.
What we liked
Characters
With very little exploration to be done, Lair of the Leviathan deals with the same set of characters for the entire episode. This really gave Telltale a chance to focus in on them and really develop, well, some great character development for some, and some great lines and personalities for others. You will finally meet Coronado DeCava after being set out to look for him by the Voodoo Lady, and he may be the most quirky character we have seen in this series. The other characters you will meet come in the form of DeCava’s former crew. Each of them has a very individual personality and it is a good thing too because these are the salty dogs you will spend most of your time around.
Morgan also plays a larger role in this episode. She is really the character we have seen the most development of throughout the series so far, going from a ruthless bounty hunter to a very important part of Guybrush’s team and someone you kind of root for.
But in the end, one character stole the show, in the form of… Murray! That’s right, everyone’s favorite demonic talking skull returns, and is both incredibly humorous and an integral part of advancing the story.
Humor
Remember when I said that Chapter 2 wasn’t as funny? Well Chapter 3 picks up the slack here as well. I could probably use this section to just talk about how awesome Murray is, but I won’t. There are more than several clear laugh out loud moments and Telltale really does an amazing job with this. It’s hard to give more specific examples here without ruining anything so I’ll let you see for yourself.
Puzzles
I have saved the best element of this game for last and that is the puzzles. They are just fantastic. Personally I thought the puzzles in this chapter compared to the others were the most difficult so far. Not that that is a negative; spending close to an hour on one puzzle makes it all the more rewarding when you figure it out and see how cleverly it was done. It once again brings up the discussion of striking the balance between being too hard and too easy and Lair of the Leviathan hits it right on the nose. One puzzle in particular which is sort of an ongoing one is that of a system reminiscent to insult swordfighting but with a very different spin. If that’s not Monkey Island, then I don’t know what is.
Where’s the stuff I didn’t like? There is none. I very rarely have no complaints about a game, but aside from rehashing complaints from past reviews, this episode is really spot on with what fans are looking for. Play it!
