[dongle]

I did not like the Longest Journey. I didn't get that far in it, so maybe it redeems itself through plot after the first couple of chapters, but it did absolutely nothing to fix problems with late-era adventure games. Phoenix Wright and, to a degree, Trace Memory fixed a lot of issues regarding backtracking and items of ambiguous importance.

[dongle]

I agree with your assessment of Trace memory as diluted, and you're right that I'm a bit reactionary since I played too many shitty adventure games. However, I would call it bad design if your character examines an object early in the game and says something like "what would I need that for?" and refuses to pick it up, when that object is needed several hours later into the game, with 5+ minutes of clicking on area hotspots and watching the walking animation necessary to fetch the object. That is, if you even remember the object, which, at least in my case, is unlikely since the game previously stated it was useless. And, yeah, the first couple of hours are pretty self explanatory, but I found that it started getting more obscure after the candy puzzle outside the theatre. I don't mind engaging problems, but I have a low tolerance for shenanigans as outlined in the Old Man Murray article on the death of adventure games.

It's true that the girl's responses are in character, but if we're playing by arbitrary rules solving not entirely sensical arbitrary puzzles, I think it's ok to help the player at least have the tools necessary to solve said puzzles.

The reason that I like Phoenix Wright so much is that its streamlined format means that the bulk of the play time is spent in dialogue and actually solving puzzles which are arguably the reasons that people play adventure games.