Gave it a very brief start, bit of a mixed bag so far. The background art is lovely, the voice acting is charming, full of regional British accents, and the opening tutorial puzzle was well pitched; but the 3D cel-shaded characters (boiled down to 2D) just don't have the charm of the original game's 2D art, there's no way to disable the subtitles (which come in great big speech bubbles), and the cursor doesn't hide during cutscenes. So far the humour is very very gentle (which iirc it was in the first game too), and perhaps a little sparse but I've only been playing for a few minutes so presumably it'll pick up a bit!
The negatives are mostly mild irritations, though, and it's still got the same vibe as the first one, which is the main thing.
Aggh, I can't name savegames or delete the older ones either! More minor irritations!
Have to say, though, the subtitles thing is the most glaring, as I find they always kill comedy, whether in tv, movies or games - it's hard not to read ahead and ruin the timing of it all. So I'm trying to look at other areas of the screen while characters are speaking, but that's not ideal either, it's a mental distraction.
Anyway, am pottering about at the moment and have found a classic 'win a competition by sabotaging the other contestants' set-up. I've chuckled a fair few times, so obviously the comedy hasn't been completely scuppered by the subtitles!
Also, hooray, it handles alt-tabbing fine!
Okay, got through the first batch of puzzles, and so far they're really nicely pitched, making me think but not stumping me, and not giving me too much to deal with right off the bat. Very much in the Spoonbeaks/Wallace & Gromit realm. Plus I've been laughing a lot, so that's good! (One of my favourite moments was finally taking a second to consider the character name Commodore LXIV and then laugh-groaning.)
I think I'm about three quarters through now, very much enjoying it. I've laughed a lot, and the puzzles are the same pleasing difficulty level as the first game - I've not got stuck but I have had to think things through. It's not the 'idle clicker for adventure game veterans' that a few other games on this list have been. My favourite joke so far was the pirate called Lucas who exists purely to do lazy Lucasarts references, and gets booted out of the game after a couple of them.
Speaking of which, this instalment feels a lot more indebted to the MI games that Spoonbeaks Ahoy did - gathering a ship and crew, defending oneself in court, fixing a competition etc. Obviously there's going to be overlap with another comedy pirate PnC series, especially when said series has 6ish games in it, and it feels like a remix rather than a rip-off (similar to what we aimed for with TGP's clock puzzle), but I do hope that we get a bit more of the weird leprechauns/ships made of bloomers/etc energy of the first one in the final quarter.
There was indeed some weird energy in the next section, a classic 'go into someone's mind, represented by a liminal void with floating platforms and a series of doors, and fix their mental issues'. It then went to a tight little village section and then wrapped up with an action finale. The credits song was great, poking fun at the Monkey Island influences (of which there were more in the village section!) and making a brilliantly groanworthy joke about Google Chrome. Nice to be laughing right up to the end.
Rating: more of the same Nelly Cootalot gently amusing comedy adventure goodness, which was exactly what I wanted it to be.
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