There's really not much more to Monkey Island beyond that - the same game mechanic plays throughout the later chapters, but it still draws you back for more because it has the very compelling story. Ha-HAAAR - she fights like a dairy farmer! It does lengthen the gameplay with a bit of grind admittedly, but it's still continually funny (though still guffaw-funny, not ROFL-funny) to build up an arsenal of comebacks in order to defeat against the Sword Master.
It works on the strengths of the interface - to win a sword fight you need to learn and collect a library of insults and witty retorts, which is far better and more fun than any shoe-horned melee system might have been. One thing that makes Monkey Island better than most adventure games though is that it's not just a point and click, item mix and match game like so many others. That seems to be due to the fact that the audio of the Remastered version has to be exactly in time with the muted original because the user can flick back with that F10 key at anytime - the audio needs to sync with the flow of the text in the classic version, in other words. It's just that, as a modern FPS adrenaline junkie, I find it's hard to maintain enough patience at points, with some the conversations dragging on a little and the new audio dialog sounding just a little bit stilted, like it used to be on old PlayStation games. Gameplay on the whole is pretty slow going - but there's not excessive walking just to get places (at least in the first area). It's likely newcomers will need it at somepoint too, as some parts of the game involve either abstract thinking or some light pixel-hunting.
If you're having trouble though then the new hint system may be a help as it's able to offer some fairly decent tips, before eventually coming out and telling you directly where to go - which makes it handy whether you want just a gentle nudge or a straight-forward walkthrough. The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition The Secret of Monkey Island isn't the hardest adventure of all time and it's definitely a walk in the park if you've played any of the Discworld games, but it's still possible to get stuck in the game (though there's only one place where you can actually get into an unwinnable state).