It's easily the weakest entry in the series. Monkey Island is known for its pretty out of the way logic for its puzzles and this game takes it a bit farther to a fault. You'll find yourself going back and forth between many areas because there was one small area that you might have overlooked that had an item that is critical to continuing the story. Many times I'd have a guide next to me because of how unclear many of the solutions are presented, which seems to be an issue for a lot of older adventure games, but I feel like Escape takes it too far.
The controls are also pretty bad, manageable on the PS2 but hell on PC. A lot of the actions are spread out into several buttons and a few of the actions would benefit more of being condensed into one button. This was also a problem with Grim Fandango back in the day, but that was addressed in the remasters.
Escape on PC also simply outright refuses to use any controller other than directinput ones, so steam users are gonna have a very bad time with this game. The developers also disabled the alt-tabbing and alt-f4 keys, so if the game crashes, have fun force quitting!
After almost an hour of trying to get the game working, I've settled on the fact that the PC version was too much of a hassle to get working properly, so I just played the game through a ps2 emulator and it was pretty flawless for the most part. Apart from the occasional frame dip, it plays infinitely better than the PC version.
Overall, It holds its own quite well with its comedy, the Pirate Rehabilitation School is among the most hilarious moments in the series, and some returning characters stand out very well too. However, with its technical issues of making it work, its very confusing controls, and the amount of backtracking and Where's Waldo item searching, it's hard to recommend Escape from Monkey Island to most players.
Maybe consider it if you enjoyed other LucasArts adventure games, but it might be worth watching a YouTube playthrough of the game because of how much of a hassle it is to play.
The controls are also pretty bad, manageable on the PS2 but hell on PC. A lot of the actions are spread out into several buttons and a few of the actions would benefit more of being condensed into one button. This was also a problem with Grim Fandango back in the day, but that was addressed in the remasters.
Escape on PC also simply outright refuses to use any controller other than directinput ones, so steam users are gonna have a very bad time with this game. The developers also disabled the alt-tabbing and alt-f4 keys, so if the game crashes, have fun force quitting!
After almost an hour of trying to get the game working, I've settled on the fact that the PC version was too much of a hassle to get working properly, so I just played the game through a ps2 emulator and it was pretty flawless for the most part. Apart from the occasional frame dip, it plays infinitely better than the PC version.
Overall, It holds its own quite well with its comedy, the Pirate Rehabilitation School is among the most hilarious moments in the series, and some returning characters stand out very well too. However, with its technical issues of making it work, its very confusing controls, and the amount of backtracking and Where's Waldo item searching, it's hard to recommend Escape from Monkey Island to most players.
Maybe consider it if you enjoyed other LucasArts adventure games, but it might be worth watching a YouTube playthrough of the game because of how much of a hassle it is to play.