Comment by hibikir
8 hours ago
A strange take, as the Lucasarts multi-character games, like Dott and Maniac Mansion at least try to push you forward and have reasonable hints. KQ6 has fewer nonsensical dead-man-walking situations (you should see how much worse earlier installments were), but it still has them. Oops, the game is unfinishable now, because of an item you don't have, and it's not even hinted that you need, or you could have obtained earlier!
Thimbleweed park is, if anything, on the easy side of the genre. Not quite as easy as Loom, but it's still on the easy side, and with a built in hint system. Day of the Tentacle's main problem is dependence of US culture. Just like the old "monkey wrench" thing in Monkey Island 2, using an actual monkey as a wrench. Still, in DoTT, you get in-game dialogue that will basically teach you some of it, although it doesn't work quite as well.
The complaint would make more sense if it was limited to Zak McCraken, as that one really s quite tough and random.
I heard Charles Cecil make the same comment about "monkey wrench" in a recent podcast interview, and I must say it was not my experience at all. In my world (45+ years in Western Europe), monkey wrench and pipe wrench have always been synonymous. An adjustable spanner is another tool entirely.