Yesterday Origins

pros
+ gorgeous looking and colorful hand drawn comic book style background artwork and character models
+ well made long cartoony cut scenes
+ many different and interesting cast of characters
+ good character animations
+ decent voice acting
+ nice musics
+ hard to solve but mostly enjoyable puzzles. there are lots of inventory-based puzzles which you can combine some items
+ story is engaging
+ there is auto save
+ when you click to upper left corner, hotspots highlighted so no need to pixel hunting.
cons
- controls and interface mechanics made for gamepad so playing this game with mouse and keyboard quite frustrating
- if you want to get all achievements you should make some chores such as click all hotspots or you may have to replay game if you want to get all achievements
- Pauline basically a snotty gender stereotype.
- I did suffer from a couple technical difficulties during my playthrough. the game on several occasions just froze and a few times cursor just disappeared so I had to restart the game.

This game is much better than its predecessor which I still reviewed positively. The increased length was a big help for evening out the tone. I particularly liked the different time periods and background art. Pauline is thankfully much less useless this time around (although still not particularly likeable. I think maybe it's the harsh manner the voice actress has with her lines.) And whereas the previous game had a very rushed and disappointing ending, this game's ending has as much detail as the lead up and an ironic tone.
Negatively, although the puzzles are harder, they still won't ever make you feel clever for figuring them out. In fact often the puzzle is less about figuring out what to do than figuring out how to communicate with the game engine you know what to do. The game engine is a bit odd with levels of thinking about things and zooming in and scanning and using things and conversing with people and looking at people up close, but it doesn't utilize all these options as effectively as, say, some of the Sherlock Holmes games do. But it's okay, it's just cumbersome. The other negative is when the humor sometimes involves pop culture references which the main character wouldn't understand. I don't believe for a second that he plays Crusader Kings, for instance. Of less importance there appears to be some sort of bug with what I think are achievements. Something sometimes causes a bunch of red error text to appear on the screen and the only way to get rid of it is to restart the game. I think maybe it shows up when I'm supposed to have gotten achievements and didn't, because I notice that there are a few achievements I didn't get that I should have. It's very minor, it only came out a few times.
But overall a great adventure game. If you like adventure games, I'm sure you'll enjoy yourself here.

This was my first "point-and-click" adventure since I played King's Quest V decades ago. Happy to report that it was a very positive experience. I might do another play through just to see how fast I can solve it, now that I know the puzzles and such. Also, it appears that there *might* be an alternate ending. We'll see...
I have two nitpicks though.
The first is about some of the puzzles. There were three separate times when I had all the items and information I needed, but I missed one specific clue or neglected to look at a specific part of a person or object. If I hadn't had access to a walkthrough, I'd have been stuck for hours in frustration. It would be great if there was a "progressive" hint system. Like, if you've looked at the same items 20 times or been stuck on the same scene for than an hour, perhaps throw up a hint pointing to what needs to be done. Also allow an "Options" selection to avoid the hints (set to off by default).
The second is the feature that shows the areas you can interact with. Rather than flashing each dot for a moment, then disappearing, I'd like to see them stay on screen. Often, I'd miss a dot because I was focusing on the appearance of one on the other side of the screen. A nitpick, but still something that I found annoying.
Otherwise, I'd give the game a solid 8/10. Really intriguing story, good voice acting, good dialogue, clever puzzles, interesting environments, interesting characters. I'll be picking up the other games in the series now. :)

Overall, this game features an engaging story, some beautifully drawn backgrounds, and an intriguing interaction and puzzle interface.
Definitely play the first game in the series before this one, because this builds and expands upon the story as half-sequel, half-prequel. As an experience, though, I think this is an overlooked gem well worth the price of admission.

The story are neat than previous episode but bugs are much more too.
I think this game is good enough to buy when it discounted below 50%.

I enjoyed the story of the game, though the ending has left me scratching my head a bit, but overall I enjoyed it. I really appreciate the unique way you interact with characters and objects from an artistic level, but in terms of gameplay and clicking mechanics it can be a bit clunky regarding finding and using hotspots. I would love to see another game with this type of mechanic, but more fine tuned. I got this game on a really good sale, but I would have been ok paying more since it was about 8 hours of gameplay and with missing achievements I'll likely re-play in a year or two once I've forgotten the solutions.

I am a big fan of Pendulo games and the two Yesterday and Yesterday Origins are my favourites. If you like point and clicks with well crafted characters and story, these are games you will enjoy as well. Buy Yesterday and then this sequel without hesitation.