My Phantasmagoria 2 playthrough

[notbobsmith]

So far I've just started Chapter 3. So far I think it's pretty good. The story so far seems to have some potential. I wonder where it goes "off the rails" as other people seem to think. I do think that maybe they revealed too much too early on. They explain "Threshold" in an email in Chapter 2. I think continuing to have everything ambiguous longer would work better. I guess I'll find out when I am finished. Other than that, the game is kind of easy. I don't really feel like I've "solved" anything yet. It's mostly just clicking on things a lot.

[Tawmis]

So far I've just started Chapter 3. So far I think it's pretty good. The story so far seems to have some potential. I wonder where it goes "off the rails" as other people seem to think. I do think that maybe they revealed too much too early on. They explain "Threshold" in an email in Chapter 2. I think continuing to have everything ambiguous longer would work better. I guess I'll find out when I am finished. Other than that, the game is kind of easy. I don't really feel like I've "solved" anything yet. It's mostly just clicking on things a lot.

Things will start to take a twist, but I think it's not till a few more chapters.

[JasefWisener]

I really need to play through this one again. I like the story a ton.

[notbobsmith]

I actually find myself a little bit stuck at this point. I'm in chapter 3 and I'm not sure what else I can do. What is strange is that there are only a few places I can go: home, the restaurant, and work. And even at work I can't go in to the office area, just the storage room. This should limit my options and make what I am missing easy to find, but I haven't been able to yet.

[notbobsmith]

Got it. Combine the screwdriver and hammer. It wasn't clear that that was something you were able to do.

[BBP]

Congratulations, you solved the first puzzle of the game!

[notbobsmith]

Congratulations, you solved the first puzzle of the game!

Yeah, that's the impression that I'm getting from this game. Although I suppose it should be the second puzzle. Getting your wallet is the first. I'm just about finished. I trying to get home by fixing the console. The game seems crash prone at this point.

[BBP]

According to the Phantas 2 instruction manua you had to restart your computer when that happens, or else you keep getting error messages.

[notbobsmith]

Just finished. So first of all the story:

It actually started out pretty promising. There is the mystery of Curtis' hallucinations: are they visions? Is he being gaslighted (gaslit?)? Who is doing this and why? This is a compelling driver for the story and I found it more interesting than the first Phantasmagoria which boils down to: he's possessed. But things go off track from there. In the second chapter we found out what the "secret project" is in a file Curtis finds. I though that this occurs a bit too soon. It probably should have been not revealed at all until you reach the basement. The final reveal of what everything is about is.. wow. I see what people mean when they say that things went over the top. A lot of seems like twists for twists sake; intentionally making it as strange as possible. Warner's motivation boils down to "I'm profoundly evil." He doesn't even benefit that much from his plan. There are also all sorts of plot holes. How did Curtis begin working at Wyntech in the first place? I can see them wanting to hire him to keep an eye on him, but what if he doesn't have the job skills they want? What if he moved to another state? What if he just didn't want to work there? How did Jocilyn track down Curtis at the end? The, um, kinky stuff was fine, but it somehow seemed like they put it in for the sake of being "provocative" or something. It also leads to a bit of a disconnect with what Curtis is doing at work. He learns of earth shattering secrets at work and then... goes to an S&M club. Priorities, people. There were some parts that I did like. There were a couple scenes with the psychiatrist that were surprisingly... honest.


The other part is the gameplay. As mention before, it's really pretty easy. Most of the time it's just viewing all of the cutscenes which trigger even more cutscenes. Once in a while you have to use something, but it's fairly infrequent that I actually encountered what could be considered a "puzzle". The one that I posted about earlier caught me off guard.

For '90s FMV the acting is pretty solid. A few of the characters are over the top, but Curtis is fairly believable and it's nice to have characters like Trevor and Tom (the supervisor) talk and act like normal adults. They used real sets for the production and it shows in the quality of the video. Everything in the first Phantasmagoria look a little too bright and contrasty in comparison.

So my final impression is that the story isn't that great, but I guess could be enjoyed for being so over the top. Basically a bad B-move horror flick. But what really dooms it is the lackluster gameplay. It's barely an adventure game.

Other notes:
Dimension X? Seriously? Where's Krang?
I went through a list of Easter Eggs and almost found one by accident. In the storage room, I notice that the screwdriver became clickable on Curtis, but didn't actually do anything. After 5 tries, the screwdriver becomes unclickable. There was one more thing I needed to do to find the Easter Egg.
So one more playthrough with a walkthrough and then I move on. As requested, my save files are attached.

According to the Phantas 2 instruction manua you had to restart your computer when that happens, or else you keep getting error messages.

I did find a fix to the crashing.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/501970/d ... 756948493/

Post #6 did the trick.

[Tawmis]

The final reveal of what everything is about is.. wow. I see what people mean when they say that things went over the top. A lot of seems like twists for twists sake; intentionally making it as strange as possible.

This. And making it as strange as possible for the sake of making it as strange as possible, for all the wrong reasons.

Warner's motivation boils down to "I'm profoundly evil." He doesn't even benefit that much from his plan.

Agreed. He was, it seems, the sake of being evil, for just - well, to be evil. No real end goal. No real prize.

The, um, kinky stuff was fine, but it somehow seemed like they put it in for the sake of being "provocative" or something.

Agreed.

So - this my problem with this game, which is typically my problem with sequels to even movies.

When one does really well - and there's a sequel - rather than following the formula - they crank everything to 11, and go way over the top for the sake of going over the top.

And it loses everything that made the previous one special.

This is what I feel like happened here.

RE: The Crashing, was it in the steamroom thing? I remember a constant crash near the end, and I believe it was a basement or boiler room?

[notbobsmith]

RE: The Crashing, was it in the steamroom thing? I remember a constant crash near the end, and I believe it was a basement or boiler room?

It's with the puzzle to get the portal working again. There a prickly button (upper left) that fires a laser into a circular reflector (directly below) with three possible orientations. If the reflector is in one particular orientation, it crashes to DOS with an error message. Every time. Removing and replacing the files mentioned in the post does fix it.

[BBP]

Now there's one thing left to do, and that's to watch TheSpoonyExperiment's playthrough of it!

[notbobsmith]

Now there's one thing left to do, and that's to watch TheSpoonyExperiment's playthrough of it!

I actually did watch part of it a few years ago. I did happen to see the solution to finding the wallet, not that it would have been that hard to figure out. Although why couldn't you just move the couch? Use a broom handle? Something? Curtis' solution is actually an indication that maybe he is insane.

Otherwise I caught only bits and pieces so I didn't see any spoilers.

[Datadog]

Now there's one thing left to do, and that's to watch TheSpoonyExperiment's playthrough of it!

Definitely a great companion piece to the game.

[JasefWisener]

I actually watched that before ever playing the game, so maybe that's why I love the game so much.