Generally, I'm really happy with this soundtrack. Here are my detailed thoughts:
First, I need to thank the people releasing fan rips and fan medleys of the game. They did a tremendous work. And they are absolute complete with *everything* from the game. Even if we got an OST now, I will definitely keep these in my iTunes library as well. 😉
But I always love getting something official as well! The sound quality is excellent, and it *does* contain all major Islands and tunes, just not all iterations. For example, in the park music, I really missed the toilet iteration, which I always found quite cool with the e-guitar sound. (Hmm… the repetition of 3x2 measures from 1:40 - 1:55 in "In the park" are new, and were not like that in the game, were they? Interesting to do such a little special effect for the OST 😉 )
They also left away a lot of iterations on Mêlee Island. But I must admit that it didn't disturb me too much. I actually find them rather close to each other. The full Mêlee medley can get a little long sometimes.
I miss some cut scene music though (like the betrayal scene on Monkey Island, where the OST only contains the part at the end where Guybrush meets Elaine).
I don't necessarily agree with BillyCheers that many transitions in the OST would be sloppy. Maybe I don't hear that as precisely as you do. The only one that I've come across as not 100% prefect (but still 95%) would be 2:14 in "Elaine and Scurvy Island".
However, I find it really interesting what they choose to put in their longer medleys, and also the order. For example, it's quite interesting that they've decided to split the LeShip music in two tracks. ("LeShip Stowaway" and "LeShip at arms".) Both tracks actually contain some places from le Ship (e.g. the underwater part and Flambee have been put in the 2nd track), and both contain some cutscene stuff ass well (Stowaway containing the spilled soup, "at arms" containing the sword fight with LeChuck). Interesting take, to do it like this.
I also like the "Per Spelmann" medley. First, it's nice to use the actual name of the traditional song, instead of calling it "Brrr Muda tavern". And I love how they also integrated the rather strange iterations in the different contest rooms, but no too long. Musically, they are very interesting, but a little hard to digest. That's why I like how they're only played for a short moment, and that they went back to the main theme at the end of the track.
Also, I like that we get a proper ending for some of the titles that I only knew as loops so far (e.g. "Custom Ships", "Per Spelman", "Brrr Muda suite"…). For some others, they've also chosen the classic fadeout though (e.g. "Barebones").
Finally, I loved that they've indicated the precise composer creditis for each track. We already knew since the great GDC conference (https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1029371/Thirty-Years-Later-Scoring-Return) in rough that Land did Mêlée, Bajakin did LeShip and McConnell did Brrr Muda and Terror Island. But it was fun to also learn for some of the smaller pieces who did what. I always tried to guess when playing the game. Sometimes I was right (I supposed Bajakian did Barebones, because the guitars and choir-sound reminded me a bit of Outlaws), sometimes I was wrong (I would have attributed the funny Survy Ship music rather to McConnell than to Land). So it's nice to finally learn the truth 😉
And then: whenever soundtracks of my favorite game music are released, I'll always buy them. Even if it would have been 100% identical to the fan productions, I always want to encourage publishers that releasing good soundtracks is always a good idea 😉
And as jannar85 posted in the news comments: What if Disney would release other Monkey Island soundtracks as well? Imagine they would find high quality recordings in their archives of the digital live instrument recordings for Curse and Escape, *without* being premixed with the ambient game sound! That would be a dream!
Unfortunately, I doubt this will ever happen… Even if LucasArts/Lucasfilm did quite a good job at archiving old stuff, as we learned from Tim Schafer when he did the remaster Day of the Tentacle, we don't know if the original, "pure" music still exists. And I guess it would be quite a job to properly remaster it all for an OST. And well, I guess Disney would even get the idea to go there at all. Return was quite a new game now, and Terrible Toybox is still alive and kicking. And the soundtrack was probably mastered in the context of the collectors' editions. So I guess that was different.
But still, let's enjoy what we've got 😉