I'll bite.

    - Nothing like it in style and execution.

    - Superb and unique universe. It's brilliant. Fight me. ;)

    - Charming, engaging storytelling full of wit and humor. Charm and humor are particularly hard to pull off, it seems, given how few games I can think of that have them. (Bard's Tale and... uh...)

    - If you like the adventure games of the era, then this one is right up your alley. The puzzles are much more frustration-friendly than modern games, so they're not for the coddled gamers of today who, frankly, would just use an answer sheet when they got stuck. OTOH forcing yourself to stick with it and get that "Ohhhhhh the *diamond* makes the boat sink around us! *that's* how we climb out!" -- which is a real example from a *different* LucasArts game -- is very satisfying.

It's the theme and characters. Remember this game predates Coco by a lot!

If the Day of the Dead setting does nothing for you, then you'll dislike the game. But if it intrigues you, you'll likely love it.

The puzzles are arbitrary, it's not really what the game is about.

> Between an art style that didn't age well and didn't grab me even then, obscure puzzles and a theme that doesn't interest me so much...

Everything's subjective, but I think most people would say that the art style was great then and is still great, and the theme is pretty unique and compelling. That's why people like it so much.

The puzzles and interface really are awful though, and I say that as someone with a reasonable tolerance for adventure game logic. It's far-and-away the worst-playing classic LucasArts adventure, and even though I'm sure there's plenty of adventure games with worse puzzle design, I'm struggling to think of one with a wider gap in quality between the game design and everything else. Everything's frequently so disjointed and it's such a slog to get around, it's not even one of those "use a walkthrough when you get stuck" games; it's a "just follow a walkthrough constantly" game, or maybe even a "just watch a longplay" game.

I like some adventure games. But old man murray's take still holds up:

https://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html

There's a reason puzzle solutions (like walkthroughs) are called spoilers. It's because they spoil the game.

Without them, I would have simply bailed out early like used to be the case with many games back in the day... I never use "spoilers" if I'm having fun. It's usually when I say "well, let me at least finish this to see the ending".

It feels like I'm playing a dream.

Too bad the dated puzzles pull me out of it so much.