My review of Mysterious Journey 2 is posted here

http://www.gameboomers.com/reviews/Mm/MJ2byjenny100.htm

Hi Jenny100 I just read your review and as always its wonderful. I am playing the game right now and can agree with all you have said about it except for the end which I havent gotten to yet.I love the graphics they are much better than the first Schism (I think so)and the story line is great. Keep up the great reviews I look forward to the next one you write.

I just finished MJ2 yesterday and was very impressed with it. I thought the graphics were beautiful and the puzzles fun - not too hard, except for a couple of math-based ones, which I never would had solved except for Mag's WT. I'm replaying it now, just to look around some more and see if there's anything I missed.

After I found out (also thanks to this website) that Schizm 2 was available in the US as Mysterious Journey 2, I couldn't wait for it to become available in Germany and just ordered it in the US. It took me 5 days to complete it without looking up any hints. The most difficult puzzle for me was color grid doors near the end of the game, but just because I made an error when copying one of the images to my notebook. I took 12 pages of notes for all the puzzles. The puzzles were easier than in Schizm (but as in Schizm you better be familiar with number systems like binary and hexadecimal) and the annoying running through half of the world is gone.

The scenery is amazing, my favourite being the tower shown on the MJ2 box. The story was nice, although it was sometimes a bit confusing suddenly jumping from one location to another without doing the transitions by yourself. I played it with my P4 2.4GHz and GeForce4 TI4200 with no problems except dynamic character shadows not working properly. Using a state of the art 3d engine, it has the same requirements as current first person shooters.

Myst fans will like it. After playing URU with its ambitious approach on 3rd person camera, I found MJ2 a refreshing distraction and more enjoyable than URU.

I used only the mouse and did very well with it. On one place I couldn't get him up a step, but if you tap the space bar once, you're on your way again. For me this was the easiest 3D environment I've ever seen, and there was no dizzying pans with the camera.

FGM

Just finished it and found it very good. Loved the graphics and the story line. Couple of glitches, but not bad considering the OS requirements. No loose threads and most of the puzzles were just hard enough to keep it interesting. The math problems were a bit tough since I've been out of Algebra and Trig about 35 yrs.(MaG's W/T helped on those). I give it an A.

The navigation controls were pretty easy; used both methods at least several times.

Only complaint - the loading of change of location and saves seemed a bit long (may have been my OS).

I've been meaning to put down my impressions of this game for some time. Here goes:

I loved the interface. It was very easy to move around in 3D. The developers nailed this part.

The graphics were amazing. Because you start out in a space station, the graphics don't immediately take your breath away, the way they did in Mysterious Journey 1. Still, once you get off the space station/ship and into the natural world, the graphics are just as tasty as in MJ1. There is even a location midway through the game that harkens back to a certain starry night....

I liked the story very much right up until the end, where I was confused. Still, there was more story in MJ2, and it was more effective than in your average first person exploration game. I think the story worked very well, and it would have been great if the final twist had been a little easier to follow.

The puzzles started out hard and stayed hard! MJ2 doesn't "ease" you into its challenges. The puzzles are mostly self-contained -- you don't turn a lever that has an effect two worlds away, and you don't solve a puzzle just to find that it's only part of a larger puzzle. There was none of the back-and-forthing or sense of being totally lost that you can encounter in games like Riven.

Still, some of the puzzles were made more difficult by camera angles -- you could sort of see what was happening in the distance, but you couldn't make it out well enough to know exactly what was going on. So I would tweak things, then move around to get a closer look, tweak things some more, etc.

All the puzzles were logical, there are a lot of them in the game, and they come at you rather fast. If you enjoy puzzling, you will love the game.

I encountered a glitch in the Grand Tower level that made it impossible to advance if I had saved my game anywhere in the sequence (this is only a problem with version 1.0 -- version 1.1 eliminates the glitch). I was able to progress by going through the entire level without saving.

Writing, voice acting and music in MJ2 are all solid and add to the experience. The game features an interesting exploration of contrasting alien cultures (and the foibles of "human" nature). The colorful costumes are quirky and memorable.

Still, the heart of the game is its puzzles, more so than in most adventure games. Play this one for the challenge!