Thanks, I didnt realise this existed! I'll use that first, then a guide if it still doesn't click!

I'm enjoying the speaking and reading parts, and I do like that when you go back to places, things have changed and you can talk to people about new things that have come up. It's just the total lack of knowing what I can and can't interact with that's really harming my enjoyment of the game and turning it into a total slog! :( Like I said in my other comment, I think I'll just have to cut my losses and use a guide sometimes which I hate to do but I'm not doing this crap for hours on end!

Yeah this is the exact same issue I'm having. Graphic adventures are my favourite genre of game, but I grew up playing the Lucasarts ones and have recently been going through all the Wadjet Eye games, all of which have hotspots like you mention, and to have absolutely no indication of what is and isn't useful on a screen is so jarring and is really sucking the enjoyment out of it for me. Click....nope.....click......nope.......click......nope. I do think I'm going to have to go down the road of using a guide because the story is engaging and I'm enjoying that aspect of it, but the lack of hotspots is just getting to be too much. I hate to do it, and it will take away a lot of the experience for me, but rather that than just walking away from it, which I'm close to.

Thanks, that could be very helpful without giving too much away :)

I'm really glad you've mentioned about the game being overpraised. I hear so many good things about it, and while I'm loving the story, the defects are really holding it back for me as an actual enjoyable game. I'm starting to use the guide a bit more just because I'm running out of patience with it and there are so many things I would never have thought to do because (to me at least) it's so obtuse. Definitely going to play it through but will have the guide near me, so I can just enjoy the story.

Ah it wasn't the French phrase, it was the one that opens up a dialogue option about a certain event (don't want to spoil). But that's just the thing - I don't want to spend months finishing a game, so I'm ok looking up a walkthrough for this if I hit a brick wall. At least with the ScummVM games you know what you can and can't use together or try on each other. But in these Sierra ones it's just so vague (as in, what things in the background can you use)! Again, I can see how people like it, but not for me. I don't mind having to sit and puzzle it out and I don't use a guide easily because I do want to figure things out, but there is a line!