If you want this game then I'd strongly recommend buying it along with the first, as they're basically two halves of the same story. It's very similar (and equally good), but a little more ambitious - character interaction is greatly expanded, and you'll finally get to actually meet Leonardo and other well-known Renaissance personalities, as well as get some answers to the mysteries raised in the first game. The discounted bundle price is also much better value than either game on its own.
I love puzzlegames which are really just about solving riddles - no endless dialogues, no places to remember and to visit again, everything you need you find where you are. The House of Da Vinci looks really wonderful, all wood and mechanics, and the sound when something opens or changes is exciting,
Thruth to be told there are some annoying moments when you have to zoom in and out and in and out and in and out to adjust the one or other thing, but it doesn`t happen to often.
I really liked it - as much as part 1 - and I hope there will a third part not so far away from now. The games ends with some sort of cliffhanger, which is promising.
Huge number of more or less impossible machines inclding innovative puzzles, without boring repetitivity, embedded in a reasonable story. The hinting system will be needed once or twice, but doesn't spoiler the clues. Again, the czech developers delivered notable solid work. Seven stars.
However the mouse control is annoying (no gamepad support, anyways). The game engine seems not to adopt the mouse settings from the operating system, but needs like half the table to pan one screen. Panning needs dragging, i.e. moving with the mouse button pressed. Fixing that by doubling the mouse dpi settings (refers to a SteelSeries Sensei with an integrated processor) leads to pointer losses such as false interpretations of a drag as a double click, or worse, leads to loosing a dragged object leaving unclear whether this was inusable at the tested place or the mouse drag was dropped. Also, the pointer sometimes clicks through, namely, a hidden target behind an object's surface is picket, whereas you intended to pick a visible one in front of the object's surface. Often the bounding boxes around what would be picked are not quite clear and too big. Minus three stars.
