I was perhaps a little hasty in singing the praises of The Legend of Kyrandia.
Although the first half of game (with the exception of the senseless gem puzzle) was just as fun as I remembered it, the second half takes a very noticeable dive in quality. The difference in quality is so great that I wouldn't be surprised if two completely different teams were in charge of them.
While none of the puzzles in the first half are particularly clever (the maze puzzle comes close in how you have to figure its rules out through experimentation, then apply those rules to safely get through the maze [instead of just save-reloading your way through it]), the game is good looking (and sounding) enough that simply exploring the world and seeing what comes next is enjoyable.
Sometimes in a game you get stuck and no matter what you try you can't figure it out and have to look the solution up online (or, 20+ years ago, you asked your friends if they had any ideas [or maybe dialed into Prodigy]). You can tell a great puzzle from a poor one by how you feel after reading the solution. With a great puzzle you will think, "why didn't I think of that?!" and you respect the designers and promise to yourself that you will think harder next time. With a poor puzzle you think, "huh" or "..." or "what?" It makes the rest of the game seem worse and you lose motivation to solve anything on your own.
Sadly, the second half of Kyrandia is like that. I would say that there are four major puzzles in the game. The first is the awful gem puzzle (in hindsight not so bad... more later), followed by the decent maze. That is the first half. The final two are a totally ridiculous alchemy puzzle and the final area (which is one large multistep puzzle).
The alchemy puzzle is just bullshit. The only hint you get is "get me a blueberry" then the hint giver disappears.
I remembered the solution vaguely from playing through as a kid, so I checked online figuring, there has got to be something in the game somewhere that at least gives you an idea. Maybe some book or note I missed. Nope. The lady is gone for good, and you are supposed to figure out that you need to mix several potions, then combine those potions to make new ones, in order to solve a couple of puzzles. You can place literally anything in the cauldron, and of the things you actually have to mix, half of them randomly generate way back at the beginning of the game. After mixing them you then have to travel to yet another location to the place to mix the potions into new potions.
Come on. Left to your own devices, how long would you have to spend going back and forth and back and forth—literally across the entire game at this point—and figuring this out purely through trial and error? The worst thing about the puzzle is the total lack of feedback. You do get a different effect if you mix the wrong thing vs. the right thing, but nothing more. There is no thread connecting the puzzles you need to solve with the potions you need to make.
This could have been a GREAT puzzle. Make the player go have to find pages from an alchemy book listing potions, ingredients, and effects. Hell, even put it in the manual as a form of copy protection. You could read the effects, and it would make your imagination run wild as you consider all the stuff you haven't figured out and how the potions would fit in to it all.
To be honest, this potion puzzle completely demotivated me. I got sick of fooling around and wasting my time trying to mix potions completely randomly to create some unknown effect that I could somehow use on something, so I just looked it up and got on with the game.
But it doesn't end there. The final area looks great, and could have been great. It's a giant puzzle basically, and while some parts of it are really cool, others are just pixel hunting for junk you don't even know you need.
I really hate to say it, but Kyrandia is just not a good game. The atmosphere is great and the graphics are wonderful, and I even liked most of the characters and generic fairytale feel. But the actual game—exploring and puzzles—is a total letdown for at least half of the game.
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