Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of Flesh

Only doing this so a friend can add me.

Having recently played this game as well as its prequel, I must say that both games are perfect examples as to why the whole FMV "interactive movie" craze of the mid-90s died out almost as quickly as it came. It's like watching a Bollywood movie where you have to click from one badly acted cutscene to the next. To even consider this an adventure game is almost a stretch. Most adventure games have a variety of logic puzzles to keep the player occupied. This game's puzzles are almost nonexistent, and when they are there they're usually based off of really vague (and I mean REALLY vague) clues that you hear maybe once throughout the game. For example, there's one point in the game where you are locked out of your computer system by your not-so-nice coworker Bob, and you have to insert the right word to get back in. Are there any real clues laying around the office? No, of course not. That'd make too much sense. Instead, all you have to go off of is a single word uttered by Bob during one of the game's many cutscenes. What's worse, there are a couple of "puzzles" (and I use the term very lightly here) at the end of the game that involve combining random objects that you would never EVER think to combine, and even then if you do the wrong combination you're dead. The game's storyline appears to me an attempt by the game creators to throw together as many overly controversial subjects as they possibly could. I guess they didn't get enough attention from the media from that fully-clothed rape scene from the first game? This game has references to homosexuality, bondage, and S&M among other things, and contains a fair bit of violence. I must say, however, that the level of violence doesn't quite top some of the death sequences from the first game. Still, the story is lackluster and often borders on nonsensical. If you're looking for a real adventure game, look elsewhere. Much like the original Phantasmagoria, I think it's worth the time just for the sake of pure amusement, so if you're in the mood for playing a game-- I mean, interactive movie-- that is so bad that it's funny, perhaps maybe this might be a good game to pick up.

...but still a little south of average. The second Phantasmagoria game fixed a few of the problems with the first game. You can skip individual lines of dialog, helpful if you've had to replay a section. Scene transitions are much quicker. Load times are pretty nonexistant, and the acting is downright GOOD for a videogame of this era. On the other hand, other problems the first game had are even worse here. Once again, it's not really a videogame at all; it's grainy movie with the illusion of player interaction. Phantasmagoria 2's story is more dialog-heavy than the first game, which you carry out by clicking on the other characters over and and over and over. That's it. You click. Sometimes you show them items from your inventory and talk about them. There's one particular scene with your character's therapist in which you've got to show her about 10 different items to get through. You've got to keep hunting through your inventory to find items she'll interact with at specific times. It's tedious. Gone is the irritating "rotate every item to see if something's on the back" thing the 1st game didn't tell you about, but it's replaced by a system of combining items that the game never tells you that you can do. Equally frustrating. The last challenge of the game is a non-intuitve puzzle that it gives you no clues on how to solve. The story's fine and I would watch this as a movie, but it's not really a game.

I don't particularly like the game to begin with, but if you enjoy FMV games and cheesy horror, and you're not bothered by some rather nonsensical puzzles, it may be for you. It's not badly made, and I think it's a better looking game than the first one (which it doesn't even reference, to the best of my knowledge). It's just... weird. Caveat emptor: The version GOG is selling is subtly broken. I'm guessing that a buggy tool was used to merge the audio files from the original CDs into one large file, and as a result some sounds a missing. You can test if this is the case by going to your office cubicle and look at the photo of your rat. There should be a spoken line, but if all you see is a subtitle ("You're such a pretty girl, Blob."), it's broken. GOG has been informed about this bug on several occasions, but blame unspecific technical or legal reasons and refuse to elaborate. Some things might work a bit better with the latest ScummVM release, but as far as I understand there's nothing it can do to fix GOG's boo-boo.

The first game had an excellent soundtrack and "so bad it's hilarious" acting going for it. Not this game. No, the soundtrack is bland, the acting is banal, to say the least, the graphics are terrible--even for the time, considering in the first game, the actors at least looked like they meshed with the scenery--the story is incoherent, sloppy, barely even there until the end. Players will frequently find themselves stuck until they resort to endless pixel-hunting and guide-using. The first game's hook was cringe-inducing gore that still packs a punch today, but this game's hook is boobs, boobs and bondage, and it is cringe-inducing in all the wrong ways. You will not be aroused. You won't even chuckle. It has no connection to the story and takes up roughly a third of the game. Just to add insult to injury, the final puzzle of the game CTD on me, so I had to watch the ending on YouTube. Do not buy this game.