Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh

The Good
While the original Phantasmagoria was a horrible game, its somewhat dubiously titled "seqeul", A Puzzle of Flesh, is a surprisingly good game:

• The acting in Phantasmagoria II is surprisingly good - far better than that of the original Phantasmagoria and better than The 7th Guest without a doubt, although the actors occasionally tend to overact and spoil the overall atmosphere of the game.
• A surprisingly good plot; while it is not the most original story, I still appreciate Sierra for managing to come up with several original ideas. The plot is either way implemented with excellence, and the game has amongst the most enveloping atmospheres experienced in a computer game to date. Regardless of gameplay, the atmosphere is so heavy that I find it comparable to that of the amazing Amiga game Alien Breed.
• Good video sequences and reasonable degree of CGI. The videos are professionally directed and are actually of very high quality.
• Great background music and sound -- 'nuff said.
• Some plot elements add more to the game than can be possibly imagined - especially the computer workstation and without a doubt the coolest element is the changing file and directory names, which become more obvious as the game progresses.

In short, Phantasmagoria II is a really great game, but not without its flaws:

The Bad
Three points really annoyed me about Phantasmagoria II:

• The plot takes a turn for the cheezy at some point. While you can hardly expect a masterpiece of a plot from a computer game, still I would have expected Sierra to come up with a better plot element than "a portal to Dimension-X"... however, I must stress that up until the fifth CD, the game is surprisingly good and deep.
• The video engine could've been much better - with the programming genius of The 11th Hour only a couple of years earlier I would have expected Sierra to upgrade their engine properly. The window cannot be scaled - only maximized so that the background doesn't annoy you, and the 8 bit engine (which I was at one time forced to use) is terribly slow and hideously ugly.
• A really terrible ending. No excuses, Sierra did a really crappy job with this one.

The Bottom Line
A great game which has nothing to do with its so-called prequel. Too bad that due to the fact that it's an adventure game, it has almost null replay value.