Not that I dislike Curse of Monkey Island, though I have to say that I consider it being the black sheep in the series. For some reason there always seems to be a black sheep in every series...
Let's have a look:
The Ys series - Ys III just has to be the black sheep. Not only did they drop the overhead view and transformed it into a kind of platform-adventure-rpg with less than 10 hours of gameplay, but also they made it without doubt the worst looking game in the series. How did this happen?
The Zelda series - Zelda II did exactly what Ys III did some years later. Changed from overhead view into sidescrolling view, transformed it into an RPG rather than an adventure making use of experience points and ordinary leveling of the character. it just doesn't seem to fit into the series... although I have to say that I love the game anyways.
The Final Fantasy series - That FFII was really odd with its "beat-the-crap-out-of-me-to-make-me-stronger-against-attacks" and so forth leveling system may well be, but at least it played like a Final Fantasy game, but when FFXIII got released and had changed practically everything that made Final Fantasy Final Fantasy I had to cry a bit. Leveling up the characters suddenly made no point at all, and no one seemed to realise this until it was to late. Hey, all my characters are at level 99 and I can't seem to beat the crap out of Omega? What's going on? Well, it just so happened that the monsters were leveling up at the same time oneself leveled up, and to make it a bit more complicated the level of the monsters one stumbled upon were the sum of the levels of the characters in ones party divided by the number of characters one had in the party. Thus, Lv99, Lv99, Lv99, Lv99 = VERY BAD while Lv99, Lv99, Lv99, Lv10 = VERY GOOD. And besides that the graphics were not all all Final Fantasy-ish in any way (normal characters looking like real persons? not small people with enormous heads), music one really can't remember when the game is turned off, no shops at all since there are no weapons to buy, just upgrades which one can read about in magazines, which are very scarce, which requires materials, which are even scarcer, which thus leaves one with almost never upgrading anything at all. I mean, nothing really seemed to go right this time around, luckily FFIX corrected everything, and when they did another game looking like XIII, namely X, they managed to do everything odd in the right way. Cheers, Square! And, actually, if one looks upon FFXIII as not a part of the series, a game on its own, it can be quite entertaining. That FFXI was released as an online game, well, that I ignore since I still haven't accepted the fact that the game exists. It will forever be as non existent as Larry IV is to me, and thus I can't look upon it as the black sheep of the series.
The Turrican series - Although I never really enjoyed part one in the series, it is a first and they did quite a good job. Turrican II blew me away and still does, but Turrican III was some 1 hour and 30 minutes of not so engaging playing through rather bland levels with boring and not so good music. I can't remember a single tune, actually, but I can mumble every single one from TII. What happened? Where did all their inspiration go? Why on earth is TIII nothing but a mediocre stereotypical platformer while TII is a masterpiece on all levels (I do really love the fact that if one holds the button to activate the rotatable weapon, and while doing so blows away the blocks belows, one is able to stand in the air for no apparent reason! It's not a bug or a miss, it's just the way it is meant to be to make me happy)?
The Doom series - Doom III; does it exist hardware to run this game smooth yet? It's been like a year now, no?
I could go on for ages. But I'll stop here.
And get to the point.
Curse of Monkey Island just feels so odd? The graphics seems rather not so Monkey Island-ish, much less than MIIV, even though that game in part is in 3D? The pussles are at times at par with the Discworld logic... not at all, in other words... in the other MI's one could at least have a clue as of what to do, but not here at times? I don't know what it is... but the game just feels so odd to me... not necessarily bad, but odd. I can't shake that feeling away. And hence, my least favourite part in the series.
