I was never a huge fan of adventure games as their replay value was never praticularly high in my book. But a friend of mine bought Enigmatis and invited me for an evening playthrough so I decided to give it a shot.
Let me start with the fact that the visuals within the game are really nice; dunno if that's a standard for the genre, but I certainly liked the art style and the overall look of locations.
The story has its strong points; the beginning is great as you start out as a detective with amnesia who was investigating a girl disappearance in Maple Creek, a small town in Vermont, USA. To jug your memory you travel through the empty town, which seclusion brings an eerie feeling, creating a great atmosphere for the story. Sadly, about halfway through (when you uncover the most crucial details) it kinda goes downhill on account that suspense is mostly gone; the mystery is basically solved and you just proceed to complete the game.
And completing it isn't particularly hard; my friend and I managed in just one evening, roughly 4-5 hours. The challenge is mostly in finding the objects (as the genre name implies); you still need to know where to use them, but whenever you click on an obstacle, the game tells you quite clearly what it is that you need to proceed... seriously about 90% of time whenever we picked an item, we already knew exactly where to use it. It doesn't help that some progression feels random as spots where you search from the next object activate only at certain points in the story; there's no way for you to know when unless you check the map which tells you where there is something for you to do at the point of the game you're at.
The music blends rather well with the story to the point I often didn't even notice it; given the theme of the game, I'd say that's a plus, especially if you want to play it in the evening which is what I would recommand, due to the atmosphere the game tries to create.
Overall: if you like HOG, it's a decent choice.