Lost Horizon 2

The first game was much better. Had a good story, good characters and charm. This sequel is just bad. A certain character is absent from the game, and the ending sucks. Hope they make a Lost Horizon 3 to fix the series. The series has great potential and setting

This game is not as bad as most people here seem to make it. Is it worse than the first part? Absolutely. Does it have some flaws, like ultra low quality cut scenes, some fade-to-black scenes where content seems to be cut out? Yes, a few. Does it have annoying arcade events? Only very few, not enough to make or break the game. If you are new to the genre just looking for a point&click adventure to enjoy, this game is not it. Play the first part, as it is quite a good game even when compared to the genre classics. If you are really keen on the genre like me and think you need to revisit some titles you have missed in the past, I would recommend this one. I would say it is at on par with secret files 3 (the worst of the main secret files games), whereas the first part is much better than all of the secret files games combined.

To beat a dead horse real quick, yes, the graphics are bad. It looks like a 2007 game, even though it came out in 2015. That said, I happen to like 2007 games, so let's get into what actually matters. It's a point and click adventure game, and as such, the puzzles are... good. Arguably just as clever as they were in the first game at times, even if the runtime is far shorter. There's also a single QTE section near the beginning of the game, but it's short and unobstrusive. From a gameplay perspective, it has what you expect in the genre. No more, no less. And like the first game, you still get to go on a globe-trotting adventure through various Cold War settings, although sometimes it feels like we're just being shoved through each location in pursuit of the next. Remember how the first game took you to Berlin, and there were like 30 puzzles to solve? Well, in the sequel we go to Moscow, and solve a grand total of *one* puzzle. Yes, only one. In Soviet Moscow, which should be the big setpiece of any game set in the Cold War. One puzzle. It's a good puzzle, but it's the only one you solve before you leave. The entire game has this feel to it. You feel like there should have been more to explore in each region, instead of just coasting from place to place. None of this is helped by a storyline that seems to have forgotten to have any sort of tone whatsoever. LH1 had a fantastic blend of humor and adventure, and while *I think* LH2 wanted to do something more serious, it doesn't really show in the final product. The dialogue is lifeless, and characters only ever have simple motivations for anything they do. If the writers didn't want to retread old ground, that's fine. You can still see inklings of a much darker tone that could have worked really well, if they had stuck to it. Instead, the tone gets stuck in this murky abyss that doesn't feel dark, or light, or funny, or sad, and barely even adventurous. Obviously, this game was unfinished. And it shows.

Lost Horizon is one of my favourite P'n'C titles and a regular replay choice. This was sadly not all I hoped for. Paddock is older and still tied up with the Army but has lost a lot of his swagger and humour that made him appealing. A lot of the puzzles are rather run-on-rails and walking back and forth in the harbour asking the same question to unlock dialogue options was a particular lowpoint. The callback to the seemingly out of place prelude was interesting, but the conclusion was rather flat and doesn't actually feel like it resolved the issue. Worth playing, but prepare for disappointment in the rushed feeling of the end.

A classic point and click adventure game. It's fast paced (less dialogue than Broken Sword for instance) an adventure story with a sprinkling of action in some diverse locations around the world. Graphics are fine (to me at least, but I still consider the 90s pixelart games beautiful, so many may not agree with me!). Backgrounds are slightly dynamic by zooming in and out on occasion. Puzzles are fairly logical, though one puzzle near the end had me reaching for the built-in walkthrough. Sound, music and voice acting are all competent. Warning: Near the beginning there's a QTE bit, but luckily it's quite easy. Overall the game felt less epic than the first Lost Horizon, but enjoyable nonetheless. I won't spoil the story, but the last part is pretty neat.