Phantasmagoria vs. Phantasmagoria 2

So back when Spoony was LP'ing A Puzzle of Flesh I was curious about the original game and looked u p a few scenes. I mainly saw Carno killing his wives so i was like "wow, this game is pretty fucked up and way diffeent and probably better than the one Spoony is playing."

However, watching slowbeef and Lowtax riff on it, and seeing the full game, it looks like a total piece of shit. Like, Ms. or Mrs. Williams could not decide on what kind of tone she was going for. It's whimsical and then it's dark and it's funny and then it's serious and I just can't tell what the fuck.

Say what you will about the acting and writing in 2 but I remember how active the board was then and how a lot of people actually cared about some of the characters. (mainly Trevor) I myself legitimately ended up enjoying the story and tuned in for every new episodes not only for Spoony's comedy but to see how the story would progress.

There are no likable or interesting characters in the first game. It's just...bad, bad archetypes in a bad, bad game with even worse acting than 2.

Thoughts by people who might have actually played these games? I remember considering playing P1 back all those years ago and I am sure glad I did not.

I never played the second game. The first game wasn't all that bad. I remember being a little bit annoyed at the idea of a "one cursor does everything" gameplay mechanic, especially after being spoiled by prior Sierra games where almost everything reacted to 5 or 6 different commands. Never quite finished the game, though. There's a Guide Dang It! sequence near the end where you have to perform a certain sequence of events in a short amount of time and I accidentally saved at a time that made it impossible.

Overall, it was a bit of gimmick-game for the day with its FMV sequences and digitally film animations, but it wasn't bad.