Tales of Monkey Island: Chapter 5 Review - Screenshot 1 of 2

It took a surprisingly long time, but the fifth and final chapter of Guybrush's latest adventure has finally hit WiiWare. Every previous chapter has been building up towards this supposedly epic conclusion, so was the long wait worth it?

Considering this is the fifth and final part, spoilers for the series abound in this review.

If you think back to the ending of Chapter 4, you'll remember that the unthinkable happened to Guybrush. He actually died, after which LeChuck absorbed La Esponja Grande's power and made Elaine his demon bride. There's no other way around it – Guybrush must search the land of the dead for a way to come back to life and save the day once again.

He rather quickly finds out that in order to be resurrected, he'll have to collect a number of items for a special spell. Of course, you don't even know what items these are, because you're not told what the spell is, exactly. You'll have to explore the three distinct areas of the underworld, all based on certain aspects of pirating – swordfighting, treasure hunting and thieving – and ask the people there.

Tales of Monkey Island: Chapter 5 Review - Screenshot 2 of 2

Once you've found what you need to assemble, things get more complicated. A number of rips appear across the underworld that link to places in the real world you've already visited. Guybrush will have to use these rips to cross over in ghost form in order to find his dead body and a way to permanently reunite with it. This proves to be rather annoying – the rips are scattered across all areas of the underworld, some of which are already far apart to begin with. This means you'll be taking very long walks the whole time while trying to figure out what to do.

Once that's done, however, it's still not over. You must find a way to shrink the enlarged La Esponja Grande, which weakens the power LeChuck gets from it and releases his hold on Elaine. After that comes something all Monkey Island fans will recognize: while getting endlessly smacked around from place to place by LeChuck, you'll have to devise a plan to defeat him. After that, Tales of Monkey Island comes to an end!

Conclusion

It's a bit disappointing the characters that made Chapters 3 and 4 so good, Murray and Stan, don't return for an encore, but at least you get to enjoy LeChuck in all his evil glory – and with his original voice actor this time, as well! Although the ending isn't quite as epic as it was hyped up to be, and the puzzles are still nothing special, this is still a very enjoyable conclusion to the Tales of Monkey Island story, and it won't disappoint anyone who's played through the rest of it.