TLDR: A low-quality point and click game with an awful story, terrible voice-acting and puzzle design that averages on poor. Only really recommended for those that loved the original game or are really desperate for an adventure game; and only then on a sale.

Long story: You play as Nina and Max once more, but after they have apparently broken up. Nina bumps into a guy minutes before he horribly dies, only to find that she has gotten his luggage by mistake. Cue secret sect which threatens the world and you have the makings of the most cliché story ever. Now, there is nothing wrong with a cliché story, as long as the details make it come alive and the characters make it memorable. Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis does not do that. The story is awful from the start until the very end. It does not seem to know whether it wants to be a more serious game (like Broken Sword which is seems heavily inspired by or is trying to mock… I don’t know which) or a light comedy… but the “if this was a computer game” jokes clash badly with the scenes where we are supposed to believe Nina is scared or feels guilty. It’s all a mishmash of different tones. This may in large part be due to the horrific voice acting. Some of the side-characters are fine, but the ones for Nina and Max are atrocious. Nina’s voice actress does not seem like she could hit a right intonation if it bit her in the throat. She butchers every half-decent joke the script throws at her. Max’s actor instead seems to have been told “speak slower… and douchier! No douchier!” The only saving grace is the fact that you can skip dialogue and cutscenes; if not for this I would not have finished the game at all. However, this still means that you’ll be skipping most of the dialogue and whatever atmosphere and hilarity they were trying to convey.

The puzzles then. Some of the puzzles not related to items are actually quite nice. Nothing too challenging, but good fun. The item puzzles are a bit more problematic. They are often obtuse or suffer from the same adventure game logic as other games in the genre (i.e. many puzzles should have been solvable with other objects), but that’s okay if not great. The real problem is that the game loves throwing a ton of items at you, but rarely explains your goals very well. This means that you are almost always combining items without any clue or reason why, and you’re forced to try them out randomly at whatever spots are available. It was exceedingly rare for me to feel like I was actually planning my actions in any logical sense. For example, on the boat you are supposed to build a European monument, but while you are given some cities from which you can build, you are given no examples of monuments from those cities. Maybe you know them all, maybe you don’t. Personally I had not visited the city from which the correct monument was from and only built it by randomly combining items. No thought, no plan required or even encouraged. The game is full of that kind of thing. The worst of which is probably when you are supposed to get a street cleaner to clean the street by getting him wet. *SPOILER* You do so by getting an alarm to go off which makes a guy run there, which makes his friends drive by and miss him, which makes them turn up on the bridge, into the puddle which makes the guy wet. *END SPOILER*. The solution would be fine, if there was any indication that this is what would happen if these events were set in motion. Instead the only reasonable way to figure it out is by doing everything possible with your items at the different locations and hope for the best. That is not good puzzle design.

I will not compare Secret Files 2 to the original game, because frankly I don’t remember it that well (though if I’m not mistaken they liked to drown you in items there too), but I did like it well enough to want to try the sequel… but only if it was on sale. Apparently I did not like the original so much that I thought the sequel must be worth 10 Euro. And I was right, it isn’t. In fact, I’m not sure it is worth the 2.5 Euro I paid. It’s not an awful game. Puzzlewise it is a very standard adventure game, not special in any way. It just happens to be coupled with a boring story and main characters which are either bad in of themselves, or are just made so by their horrific voice-actors. Anyway, I can’t recommend the game unless you are deeply in love with the series or desperately want an adventure game. But even then, there are definitely better ones out there.

not so bad, still old school. pros: main character's voice improved, main plot entertaining. cons: even easier, interactions too easy to spot on the background.

Good game though it seems pretty budget to me. Totally worth your while if you get it with a 75% discount.

I finished the first Secret Files on the Wii, and I have to say that Part 2 so far is much nicer. The graphics are much better and the controls on the mouse are much easier to use. I like how the game ties into part 1 nicely.

Whilst not as good as the original Secret Files, this sequel does have its highlights and features an engaging plot. Worth buying if you want to know what happened next in the lives of Nina Kalenkov and Max Gruber.

A rather big step down in quality from the already mediocre Secret Files 1: Tunguska. Everything is worse here: The graphics, the story, the music, the puzzles, the characters, and - holy hell - the voice acting! Literally some of the worst acting and voice direction I've heard in my life. You know you're in trouble when you constantly want to gnaw your mouse-clicking hand off while being exposed to yet another lengthy and supremely annoying internal monologue delivered with a warbling vibrato.

And the jokes - don't get me started on the "jokes". The quips in this game are so embarrassingly bad, the fourth-wall-breaking references so completely out of place that they soil the whole tone of the game. Puritas Cordis doesn't seem to be able to decide whether it's supposed to be taken halfway seriously or as a complete farce. Every other character you run into spews nothing but sarcasm at you, and the main character positively oozes sarcasm from her every pore. You can't have coherent dialogue when everybody's sarcastic! Conversations are mostly comprised of annoying drivel that goes on and on a good while after stating the obvious while throwing dead-on-arrival puns in the mix.

Even the puzzles are, for the most part, insane. Gone are the relatively coherent and logical puzzles of the original - You need to be on some pretty heavy medication to come up with the solutions to a few of the crazier brain-benders in here. Avoid if you value your sanity.

The second game of the Secret Files serie is a good one too, even if i preferred the first one. I just not liked the story as much...

This is a pitiful excuse for a game and a disgrace for the genre. I clawed my way through it, and by the time I was halfway through I was THIS close to going insane from:

-) the lousy voice acting
-) the wannabe funny dialogues, that end up being nothing short of awkwardly bad
-) the ludicrous story and
-) the disastrous "riddles".

Here's a random example of the latter: Find random "noisemaker" on the ground at a zoo, use it to lure a pair of DUCKS halfway through Paris back to the Zoo so that the zookeeper will give you one of the baguettes he's convieniently sharing to feed them, give baguette to homeless man who apparently spent his entire life waiting for such a selfless act and immediately turns sober so that you can have his old booze, which you then use to be incarcerated for being drunk only to bust back out 5 minutes later with about the lamest of explanations).

In short, this game tries, it really does. But it just falls short in pretty much every aspect that make an adventure game good, and just makes for a very tedious experience of about 4 hours from start to finish. Avoid if you can.

They replaced the entire voice cast in the second installment. Didn't help. The same voiceover problems, both artistical and technical. The lead actress's attempts at dramatism are simply pathetic. On top of it, most of the object interactions still heavily utilize the "quest logic" instead of... well... logic, forcing you not to think but brute force everything until you stumble upon a solution. Sorry, but still no recommendation from me...

Nice!

Very good aventure game. Not overly difficult, but not just dialog and finding and combining objects either. With patience it is solvable, a few puzzles are annoying and not obvious. At no point will the game get so discouraging that you'll end up giving up and using a walkthrough to get through the whole thing.

The game is funny when it wants to be, and dramatic too. Overall this is a great adventure. Highly recommended. I'd already played Tunguska, and I'm looking forward to Secret Files 3 based on this game.

Did see wierd bug where the characters walked being the background image sometimes. This is noticeable in one of the first areas, there is an infirmary on the ship and I saw it there as well as a few other places. Might be video card specific. Not bad, but just in case you end up looking at a screen and wondering why characters are talking but nothing is there, that's why.

Story was good.
Voice acting of non-main characters was good; for some reason, ALL main characters voice acting was very poor. But it may have actually been the writing not the acting...couldn't tell. Also could be related to German -> English translation.
Puzzles pretty good.
Some nicely drawn scenes.
Graphical glitches here and there...not many bugs found.

I would only recommend this for adventure game fans of Secret Files and/or the developer (Animation Arts). Otherwise, it is just too bland. As such, my general consensus is Not Recommended.