Unlike some people here I had no prior experience with point-and-click adventures, but I feel like this was a good choice for introducing myself to the genre. The story was fun and took some unexpected turns, the puzzles were never overly frustrating, the humor was great (albeit repetitive in specific places, but you can click through the dialogue so it never irritated me too much), and the German voice acting was pretty good, even if a bit overdone. The animation was indeed stiff, but this, too, didn't detract from the game very much. The pacing was good (hint: you can double-click on destinations), and the last section of the game really clinched it for me, especially the ending! Personally, I find the puzzles were pretty decent and creative and didn't really veer into crazy territory, as I had heard some other games of this genre tended to do. The only times I was randomly combining items were when I had overlooked something that was obvious in retrospect. There are plenty of in-game hints, too, and a few times I had figured out what to do but had missed a place to click on or thought I had tried something when I hadn't. Once I found out what to do the game gets right back on track. (The lesson for me is to not play these sorts of games when I'm tired.) Technically the game ran fine, there were some minor nits where I had to restart the game (possibly due to my dual-monitor setup), but I never once lost progress; the game continued right where I left off. There was *one* puzzle where I had to reload from a save because I skipped it and left it in a state where I couldn't finish another puzzle. At least that's what it looked like. It didn't break the game for me, however, but *was* annoying. All in all, this was a very good game, even if some aspects of it are, so-to-say, very well-trodden, I'm still buying the rest of the series on the strength of this title alone and am looking forward to also buying other games from this team.
