
The story revolves around Guybrush Threepwood, a wannabe pirate who defeated the mighty ghost pirate LeChuck in the previous game, who's primary mission is to find the legendary treasure named Big Whoop, and to regain Elaine's love. But every sailor who's gone in search of the treasure has never returned or had died from mysterious circumstances. In order to start his enormous mission, Threepwood must find a way to recruit other (unemployed) pirates and get a ship to take him there. But the ghost pirate LeChuck has been brought back from the dead and has new plans to destroy our hero. Unfortunately, Threepwood is stuck on Scabb Island which is under embargo, and is not allowed to any ships to enter or leave. Initially he wanders into Woodtick, the only town on the island in order to seek a way to leave the damn island and embark to the legendary treasure! How can you do that? Try to make a map by recovering all four fragments of the map and bring them to Wally the cartographer and get rid of the bullying Largo LeGrand the sooner the possible! That's a hint for a start.
Gameplay is really resembling the way pirates live back then. Your quests involving library research, rigged gambling, theft, drinking contests, necromancy, monkeys, spitting and so on! All in a funny way though, much like its predecessor!
Both Monkey Island 1 and 2 games use the same interface where commands are built up by choosing from a selection of possible statements at the bottom of the screen. Many of the commands have a default setting so that clicking on an object in the game world or inventory enables you to 'look at' it and offer a description or comment. Several alternate commands are also available on certain items (i.e. doors) so you can simply right click to use them rather than consulting the available selection of possible statements!
Monkey Island 2 is much larger than the first game and offer two difficulty settings. You can travel to several islands as there are many characters to meet and puzzles to solve. Note that, the game is funnier than the first and is still as hilarious today as it was back in 1991. A real masterpiece of programming that is!
The PC versions runs in VGA graphics only and look great with nicely detailed cartoonish backdrops and sprites. Although each screen sports here around 256 colors on screen, the visuals look quite close to the Amiga version (up to 50 colors on screen)! Sprites are nicely animated but move a bit faster when compared to the Amiga version.
Sound offers some nice tunes interacting with the scenes (the so called iMUSE innovating system - interacting music under sound effects) but are short and quite few. Note that the PC version offers some SFX during gameplay (missing in the Amiga version).