Mysterious Journey II: Chameleon

I watched a longplay of this on Youtube, and like in the first entry, the puzzles seemed not so hot, with what I would assume is a lot of trial and error to get ahead. I did think at least a couple puzzles had pretty smart solutions, and the overall plot was presented at a slightly better pace than the first game, although both have a bit of plot-dumpy endings. Unfortunately, the visuals take a bit of a dive in this game with the primitive 3D models, when compared to the FMV people in the first entry. Some of the visual effects are cool, but there was something about that first game's visual style that was so much more appealing. Maybe it's because it was kind of the swan song of the 90s adventure game "feeling"--I'm not sure there are any adventure games after Schizm that give the same vibe. (I guess for other examples of that vibe, Myst is obviously the big one, but Lighthouse: The Dark Being is another prime example of that 3D-rendering-meets-real-life-picture/video approach that so many vaporwave artists struggle to reach.) As for the soundtrack, it is almost as strong as the first game's, which is definitely high praise. Some of the tracks aren't as "active" as others (more ambience, fewer alien-sounding noises popping in), but it's still quite good.

Lastly, I should note that the third game in the series came out this year.