Finally the Journeyman Project 2: Buried In Time have been added to ScummVM and I at last can understand the whole trilogy. I played the other two games in the series back in... 2015? God dammit, that was a long time ago. I was gonna try the Sierra FMV-games like Phantasmagoria and The Beast Within, but some bugs stopped me from that so I tried this instead. My musings over Pegasus Prime you can find here and Legacy of Time you can find here and here. Story begins sometime after the events of the first game and Gage Blackwoods future self from 10 years forward appears in what the game calls a jumpsuit. He puts the present Gage in the suit and cloaks it while Agent 8 appears and apprehends him for breaking his house arrest for being put on trail for stealing historical artefacts and causing time ripples on his mission. But he got the idea that he will be constantly watched so he gets a jumpsuit from chief engineer Daughton (not the same actor from Legacy of Time) and gives it to the present-Gage that no one will check on. So the hunt goes to four different time periods. Chichen Itza in South America, an english castle in Normandy, Leonardo Da Vinci's workshop in Italy and a space station in the 23d century. Already better locals with both future and actual historical places.
Now, stupid me chose to play in Adventure mode which is harder with more puzzle, while I might have had more enjoyment out of the walkthrough mode, but hey, I solved the other two games so why wouldn't I be good at this as well? Well, maybe cause there is a lot of busy work and repeating actions to some of the puzzles. And you don't get Arthur until you solved parts of the space station, while under a timer due to no air as it is derelict. And that was the first problem. I knew I could find Arthur at the space station, but I end up in space without propulsion equipment, so back to Gage home, checked the other areas, but found a couple of items, but not much. Back in the home began checking even more, guess what? I missed a certain area where you could order things by punching in numbers... which you get from commercials from the TV when you watched the news. Every time you wanted them, and the cheese thing you need for the space station you gotta get for every visit, since it's one use only. And you gotta punch in the code every time. Why not just let me push it and then have it as a short hand in the menu from the replicator? Or maybe not have a one use item? Or I could have been good enough to just use one, but even the walkthroughs suggest jumping back to the beginning, forcing you to get another.
So I used a couple of walkthroughs to get through the game. Doesn't help that I find the layout hard to navigate. Many areas looked the same, and, while innovative, things like the space station makes you walk in several directs since you are in zero gravity so it's walking on ceiling and all that. And I got lost in Da Vinci's workshop with more hidden ways around the courtyard. Another irritating thing is that you constantly have to switch between items and microchips that powers your suit with cloaking, translation or Arthur so that you can get the hints and such. Or even the damn menu for saving and restoring the game (thankfully ctrl+S works, but then you have to reset the items for use). So a bit cumbersome, and I should probably had used a numerical pad since that is easier than using the mouse pad. So the games have some issues I don't like. But the story is interesting. Finding hints of the person and trying to figure out who is the real culprit. I got that it had something to do with the art sale for the Louvre since it's fairly simple to see that the items corresponds with the time zones. And fairly early you get foot prints from a jump suit that leads you to an id that incriminates Agent 3, but then I knew that from the third game. That and I got a glimpse of the 3 on her suit in the castle.
Maybe should have been some internal logic puzzle that it was her other than when I found the last clue it was just a recording of her. And I gotta say I liked the final Chichen Itza as well since it was the precursor for the Shangri-La in Legacy of Time, but with mayan mythology instead of Buddha traditions. Well, captured by Agent 3 Arthur sacrifices himself to create a virus that sends him and Agent 3 into the temporal vortex. Meanwhile after regained freedom the news break that the Krynn ambassador has left the talks about time travels future after changing their stands from allowing everyone their own technology to wanting its dismantling. With that you get a code to their base where you recapture the items with the blueprints of the time travel technology. Agent 3 disclosed that she did it after being sent to the early 20th century observing mankinds atrocities like Auswitz, Hiroshima and so on, observing mankinds bloody past and feeling that only a couple of hundred of years can't undo our constant bloodlust. So she acted like the scientist who gave Soviet Russia the secret of the nuclear bomb since they also believed that if more had it it could uphold the terror balance. That was a bit naive of her we learn as when we get the items back and right before escaping the ambassador shows up and tells that the Krynn will use it to correct their forefathers mistake in not travel to the stars and become the first sentient space race. And they also began acting for abolishing time travel which tells me that they didn't intend to let any other race get the power as they promised Agent 3. You escape, future Gage is released and is awarded another medal while present-Gage is mindwiped and sent back. And the story continues in the third game.
As stated, it has some problems for me. Like the first game the jumps points are the same so you gotta redo puzzle after puzzle and in the game you are supposed too since you get clues you need to get later. But losing items and retrieving them to get back to that point is just tedious. But it's an interesting world, and Arthur heightens the whole experience. Not only do you actually learn stuff, but the references can be rather funny. But you misses him in several chunks of the game which leaves everything to your own grey cells, and I don't know if I get smarter or more stupid with age. Checking out the Walkthrough version, and guess what? No need for getting items through the replicator, no timer in the space station. But the puzzle is gone getting Arthur and basically most problems, might be boring in the long run. Now that this game is on ScummVM one can hope that in another 6 years we can get the third game as well so one can play it as intended.
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