A pretty significant improvement over the first game! The very first thing I noticed is that you have a "think" command which usually points you in the right direction when progression is unclear. Due to this addition, and smarter narrative design, I was able to make my way through the game with substantially less Googling than its predecessor.
Due to the much smoother narrative progression I found myself much more immersed in the mystery here. Again, much like the first game I don't think this mystery is all that special compared to other works in the genre, but the memorable characters and fantastic music really elevate it. One other thing that stuck out to me was the creative uses for your actions. I don't want to get into spoilers here, but just imagine your "talk" command doing something very different than usual in specific scenes. Every time they subverted the game's mechanics in this way was very impressive to me, especially for a game written in 1989.
Due to the much smoother narrative progression I found myself much more immersed in the mystery here. Again, much like the first game I don't think this mystery is all that special compared to other works in the genre, but the memorable characters and fantastic music really elevate it. One other thing that stuck out to me was the creative uses for your actions. I don't want to get into spoilers here, but just imagine your "talk" command doing something very different than usual in specific scenes. Every time they subverted the game's mechanics in this way was very impressive to me, especially for a game written in 1989.