I really felt like I'd accomplished something when I finished Grim Fandango after what seemed like years of on and off chipping away at its many obtuse puzzles. In fact, it took all of my fevered imaginations to complete many of those puzzles, and I'm quite sure that that was per the designers' wishes!

Peter McConnell's music adds much to an already rich platter of goodies, and the icing on the cake would have to be Tim Schafer's great writing. Those cut scenes and character asides still crack me up to this day. (One of my favorites from Manny: "I'm not carrying that sign. It's demoralizing.") The thing I also enjoyed was the way the game was divided into years one through four, which added to the sense of travel and accomplishment. And still a 5-star game for me despite those wacky puzzles.

This was a fun one to finally get around playing!

It's a game that I always knew about, without knowing anything about it, which was a great way to dive into it, actually. The game opened up slow, but found its footing in the second act where it really dazzled. The Art Deco/Aztec fusion (Azteco) is so unique and so wonderfully created. GF chooses to show the player its world through backdoors and hushed rooms instead of the lavish settings which are only presented in glimpses of distant lights and parades, and somehow, instead of feeling like a grandiose world was being hidden away, it felt like the hidden world was where all the excitement was anyway.

There were some sore spots. Moving Manny is like operating a tank. Walls seem to reflect movement in really awkward ways that can make entering small doorways a pain. Manny tended to get stuck in odd corners, forcing me to reload some saves and learn the hard way that I should save more often than I would want. A few of the required actions were indicated quite badly. There were 3 occasions in total where I went to look up a guide instead of repeatedly trying all of my items in all of the places I could. One of them I think I rushed to the guide prematurely, but the other 2 felt unfair. In one of them, the game literally told me "no you can't do that on a ladder" when it was exactly what I needed to do... on a different ladder. Frustrating!

However, for the most part, I liked the "puzzles"/detective work required to get through each section. I was having the most fun when I had plenty of goals to accomplish in Rubacava and had moments of epiphany while thinking and wandering the night. If you look for it, in 90% of the cases, the game really tries to lead you towards the answer without being boring and having Manny go "hey maybe I should use x on y". Sometimes, using the right item in the wrong place/person even provided a useful hint.

side rant... It's typical to see complaints about the obtuseness of puzzles in 90s PC adventure games, but I think a lot of those come from a place of impatience. You are supposed to get stuck at first! If you instantly knew what to do at every point, why make the game a game at all? Let your mind stew sometimes... it can be rewarding. ok, end rant.

The dialogue, voice acting, and the inventive use of dialogue choices really gave the game a charm. Each character had their own personality, goals, desires, shortcomings; every character felt real. The writing was superb. I tried not to miss a single line of dialogue if I could help it, because it infallibly led to a gag, a callback, some extra insight, or whatever else Tim Schaefer had in store. Really, what a delight!

I know a lot of people do, but I can't personally consider this game to be quite on par with the rest of the LucasArts "classics"

Don't get me wrong, I love the characters, it has a great sense of humor, the world and atmosphere are fantastic...but the story kind of falls off a cliff halfway through and there's some puzzles that made me never want to play an adventure game ever again (looking at you forklift and safe)...

Still though, it's well worth anyone's time, and holds up well even to this day; play the Special Edition, if you're trying to decide, it gets rid of the tank controls

Me encantó toda su historia inspirada en el cine Noir, ambientada con cosas de día de muertos, los personajes TAN BIEN escritos, todo aquí es perfecto. Glottis fue tan divertido de ver sus interacciones con Manny y con otros personajes que se me guardo en el corazón de tan buen personaje que es. Todos los personajes tienen algo tan característico que los sientes vivos (irónicamente en el juego están muertos xD), muchos chistes me recordaron a Brook de One Piece. Siendo de mis primeros juegos de aventura gráfica que juego, me gustó muchísimo, muchas veces me quedaba parado pensando que acertijo tenía que hacer ahora o como se resolvía, había veces que en un día no avanzaba en la historia pero podía resolver un acertijo y lo tomaba como un logro completo. He de admitir que en unos 2 o 3 si tuve que recurrir a una ayuda para ver cómo se hacía, pero no abuse, solo fue desesperación absoluta xD. Me encantó este juego de verdad. Me dieron ganas de probar otras aventuras graficas. Mi única queja es la versión remastered que tenía bastantes Bugs, pero al final no arruinó del todo mi experiencia al jugarlo.

This was a staple of my childhood, trying to play this damn game and figuring out how to get pas the part with the pidgeons and the bread.

I'm so glad to finally come back years later and experience this wonderful game. First of all, pound for pound, this might have one of the best stories for a Lucas Arts adventure game, and some of the best characters. Manny and Meche's story is just wonderful and something you want to see until it's conclusion.

I will say, some of the puzzles in this game are peak annoyance. Some of them are just so so bad here, and even with a walkthrough and it can be so finicky and annoying to get everything right, worse then a lot of the golden era point and clickers.

Still though, for just story alone, this game is absolutely fantastic, and it's such a shame we've never once seen anything else from this world. I'ts so unique and lovingly done. Long live Manny!!