Stylistically, Grim Fandango is a 10/10.

That said, I tried playing it again recently and the puzzles do not hold up. Extremely frustrating and unsatisfying solutions.

I would not be opposed to a remaster of the game that also fixes some of the puzzles - similar to what the Cyan team (controversially) did with their Myst and Riven remakes.

I think the world has just changed. Back then, the puzzles were just right, because often you would get the demo of the game on a CD bundled with a magazine and it would kind of suck to be done in 10 minutes, whereas with a challenge (even an obtuse one) you could play the demo over and over, enjoying the sights and sounds, without feeling like you were wasting time on a "replay", since you hadn't yet cracked it. On top of that there wasn't really a glut of these kinds of almost indie-styled yet big studio games in the adventure genre so it would be one of the few games you'd have bought, and again it would suck to be done with it too soon.

There were a couple of games though (like the curse of monkey island) that gave you a bit of a choice on how much you cared about spending time on puzzles.

In the TikTok era, you could probably make the argument that even a shape matching puzzle is obtuse and overly difficult and it could be a popular opinion.

The Nintendo DS stimulated a bit of a renaissance in point-and-click adventure games -- maybe because the touch screen lent itself so well to that style of gameplay.

The first Ace Attorney game is riveting from start to finish.

The Professor Layton games are all great.

I've read that Hotel Dusk and Last Window are both really good but haven't gotten around to playing them myself. I can vouch for Last Window's soundtrack, though, which is spectacular.

Grim Fandango is absolutely one of the best games of all time. Yes, some of the puzzles are very difficult. I had to read a walkthrough to figure out the cat race ticket number.