So, here we find ourselves at the penultimate episode in the great episodic Monkey Island experiment. If you haven’t read our reviews of the previous episodes yet, make sure you check out episode 1, episode 2, and episode 3 to get a feel of our opinions of the three instalments in the series so far (in summary: excellent, very good, and not so good respectively).

We received our review copy of the game quite late, so our apologies for the lateness of this review. Here’s a little summary of the previous episode’s story, and how it sets the scene for episode 4:

Spoilers!

At the end of episode 3, after helping Guybrush out escaping from the belly of the manatee and finding Le Esponja Grande, pirate hunter Morgan LaFlay turns against Guybrush and resumes her mission to return him to the evil scientist DeSinge. We begin episode 4 with Morgan transporting Guybrush back to Flotsam Island to collect her reward. Shortly after turning Guybrush over, the people of Flotsam arrest him and put him on trial for his pirate crimes.

First order of the day for Guybrush is to try to find evidence to get each of the charges against him dropped, so that he can escape to freedom and resume his mission to activate Le Esponja and cure the world of the voodoo Pox which was unleashed in Episode 1. Phew!

Spoilers End!

We find ourselves back on Flotsam Island, the island  from the first episode of the game and by far my favourite environment from Tales. All the familiar faces from the island make an appearance, as well as some others, and they’re understandably quite mad at our hero for duping them or wronging them along the way in some form or another, resulting in a trip to pirate court for Guybrush. With Stan and his amazing jacket making a welcome return to the series to represent the people of Flotsam using his ever-persuasive powers, it’s going to take a whole lot of puzzling and finding clues to clear Guybrush’s name.

The first part of the episode is a glorious return to the excellent style and “cleverness” of Episode 1, and while we are presented with each piece of evidence, the clues on what’s needed to do to clear your name aren’t just given to the player on a plate, with a fair bit of puzzling required to collect / manipulate / fabricate pieces of evidence to escape. There’s also some fantastic writing and voice work, and tonnes of dialogue to be had with the game’s varied and interesting characters.

The pirate face making combat system from Episode 3 sadly doesn’t make a return, and with Trial and Execution following on from the events of Episode 1, it just makes the two episodes inbetween feel slightly isolated from the story as a coherent whole. Of course, that doesn’t stop them from being good games, and I’m guessing that the events of Episodes 1&4 and 2&3 will all come together somehow in episode 5 for the game’s finale.

Another thing which I’ve commented on in all of the previous instalments is character, and it’s something that TellTale have hit square on the head with a very large hammer this time around. The interactions between the characters are witty and believable (at one point, Morgan and Elaine have some fantastic dialogue which is laugh out loud funny in some places) and Stan’s voice work has a fantastically cheesy “game show” feel to it which matches his character perfectly.

Not wanting to go into too much detail about the remainder of the game, once the trial part is over Guybrush resumes his mission to use Le Esponja to cure the pox and hopefully get his life back on track. The second part of the game is classic adventure gaming fare, and culminates in a showdown which is surprising, brilliant, and still manages to be somewhat serious while retaining Monkey Island‘s traditional humour and sense of fun.

The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood is a fantastic return to form for the series, and I’m not sure that there’s anything I could suggest to improve it. The episode is witty, clever, and challenging enough without getting frustrating, and there’s a lot to see and do, with the episode feeling a lot less linear than Lair of the Leviathan. We learn a lot more about the interesting characters of the Monkey Island universe and it’s great to see Stan, a fan favourite from previous games, return with all of his character intact.

In conclusion, as this episode is definitely on par with Episode 1, I think it’s time to court controversy again with a return of those golden teabags. This is fantastic stuff.

A very well-earned 10/10 for Telltale. I’m counting down the days until episode 5!

(Review is of the PC version of the game)

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