The Monkey Island series continues down a disappointing road with this enjoyable, but non-dazzling sequel.
"Tales" is, for the most part, a rather average adventure game. Its puzzles are logical and mostly straight-forward, but its story and characters are not really that engaging. There's over 20 hours to enjoy (at least that's how long it took me to get through the game, including getting stuck on a few puzzles and listening to a lot of optional dialogue), but by the end I found myself wondering why I had spent so much time playing this game at all.
There are several problems here, and most of them stem from the direction in which the Monkey Island series swerved with Curse of Monkey Island (I.E. Monkey 3), and in which it keeps going with "Tales" (I.E. Monkey 5). The style and theme of the series seems to be heading more and more into immature humor, cartoonish visuals, and a sort of self-indulgence that is often a mark of a bad sequel.
This can be seen in many places, starting with Guybrush himself. The deadpan snarker that made this series famous is almost all but gone now, replaced with a "new and improved" Guybrush who spends half the time making "witty repartee" that is anything but witty, as though the writers are laughing at their own jokes. He reminds me less of Guybrush Threepwood and more of the Outrageous Okona. The storyline of his marriage to Elaine continues here, and reminds us only of how much more interesting this series was when Guybrush spent his time hopelessly trying to woo Elaine rather than saving her from peril over and over. He generates so little sympathy that by the end of this chapter in the series, I couldn't even bring myself to care whether they'd get back together again (especially considering how much chemistry he has with newcomer character Morgan LeFlay rather than his own wife!).
The other characters don't help either. Those that don't look like blobby 3D buckets of puss right out of an early 2000's adventure game are nonetheless flat and uninteresting, or simply re-hashes of characters from earlier in the series playing the same tired jokes again in this sequel. The mad scientist, De Singe, is pretty much the only real original character - and he's so over-the-top that he becomes grating 2 minutes after his first appearance. The bottom line is that none of these characters are sympathetic nor interesting. While it's true that most of the characters in the original games were unsympathetic too, at least then it was not being pushed in your face (and without voice narration they certainly weren't so grating on the ears).
The story itself also makes little sense, even though it does a good job keeping you looking forward to the resolution. Forget it - the ending is so weak you'll be regretting looking forward to it. Each "episode" in "Tales of Monkey Island" can be enjoyed on its own, but as an entire over-arching story it ends up falling flat on its face in the last episode.
The atmosphere of the game is pretty much the only thing standing up for it - at least when compared to Monkey 3 and 4, which were much more light-hearted than this installment and missed the point entirely. "Tales" has some of the creepy and disturbing atmosphere that, in the originals, served to contrast the wacky scenarios that take place - but again its scenarios are so cartoonish in nature that they end up washing away that creepiness. What's more, the sappy romance plot makes for some face-palming moments that feel like they belong in an entirely different series. It almost begs the question of whether this entire game should've been done using a completely different franchise (heck, Pirates of the Caribbean might even do) since it has so little to do with Monkey Island.
Overall, I have to give this game credit for being a good _game_, which is why I gave it an 8.0 - it's playable and enjoyable for its puzzles, which are both challenging and (in some cases at least) have logical solutions. However for me, a game with just 7.0 would already be considered not worth playing, so 8.0 is not much. It all boils down to the story, the characters and the setting being so at odds with each other and with the original style of the franchise that they end up being very disappointing, particularly when you get to the pat ending. Again, just for comparison, I gave both the originals (Monkey 1 and 2) a straight 10.0, make of that what you will.