Yeah, actually, I should make it clear that I liked the new version better precisely because I’m really not a fan of Anchorhead’s puzzle structure. Anchorhead is too hard for me
In particular, this post is where I figured out my main complaint:
In brief, the problem is that the map is giant and full of puzzles, but usually only one of the puzzles can be solved right now, and there’s no way of knowing which puzzle to work on, even in hindsight.
In Anchorhead, you just have to pick a puzzle at random and bang your head on it, and fail, and then give up on that puzzle and try another one. You have to keep trying that again, and again, until eventually you happen to luck upon the puzzle that you actually can solve on the current day.
Reading the thread, apparently a lot of people really like that. As far as I can tell, what people like about Anchorhead is that the game is big, time consuming, and “difficult.”
IMO good puzzles, like good jokes, are supposed to have surprising solutions that are inevitable in hindsight. Anchorhead has many good puzzles, both in its 1998 version and the 2018 version, but the central puzzle of Anchorhead is “which puzzle should I be working on right now?” and that puzzle is no good. It’s a “guess what Mike was thinking of” puzzle, which is “hard” but in a meaningless way.
The 2018 puzzles make more sense than the 1998 puzzles, which I guess makes them “easier.” If you don’t care if the puzzles makes sense, (especially the puzzle “which puzzle should I solve now?”) and you just want a challenge, well, I suppose guessing what the author was thinking of is “hard” and you might like the 1998 version better for that reason.