Rise of the Pirate God is the fifth and final installment in Tales of Monkey Island, a series of point-and-click adventure games based on the Monkey Island brand that began with The Secret of Monkey Island (1990) and ended with Escape from Monkey Island (2000). The intellectual property was licensed after nine years by adventure creator Telltale, Inc., where many of the original LucasArts adventure developers had now migrated.
The game picks off where the last one left off. LeChuck murders Guybrush and crawls out of his grave in the afterlife. He comes to the Crossroads after crossing the Styx River, where the afterlife and the actual world collide. He discovers that everyone who arrives carries something to which they cling. He has brought a Shred of Life with him in the hopes of returning to save Elaine and defeat LeChuck.
Unlike Escape from Monkey Island, the game is entirely in 3D and uses the Telltale engine. Guybrush can be manipulated using the keyboard or the mouse (by choosing the character and dragging the pointer to the desired location). All actions are performed with a single mouse pointer, and important things are kept in an inventory to be studied. Integrating the classic adventure mechanism, in which items in the list can be combined to produce new objects or interact with one other, is entirely novel for a Telltale game.
The game contains many non-essential references to previous games, as well as classic Monkey Island elements such as slapstick-based humorous conversations and events, play on words, witty retorts and contemporary cultural references, conversation trees, an unconventional approach to puzzle solutions, and the anti-heroic main character. Triggers based on dialogues and item combination puzzles are among the game’s puzzles. It is impossible to die in the game, and the player can control the number of suggestions Guybrush casually mentions as the game progresses. However, complete solutions are never supplied.
Unlike previous Telltale episodic adventure series, individual episodes could not be purchased separately at first. Users were compelled to pay for the five episodes because they are released monthly, presumably due to the bigger story arc. Later, the decision was reversed, and attacks were made available individually.
