Maquette Review (rhywun)
Flawed but ultimately worth a play.
Pros:
The diarama mechanic is neat and used in some interesting ways. The art is gorgeous. There were several sequences, like the long neighborhood walk towards the end, that I found particularly impressive. I found the story touching - I don't play "story rich" games so I wasn't expecting anything like that. Parts of the story hit close to home. The voice actors are excellent - way better than most games I've played. The sountrack has some nice indie rock/pop tracks.
Cons:
Somewhat buggy, especially at the end. As others have noted, restart the final chapter a couple times and you can get through it. Frequent manual saves can be helpful. Some of the puzzles near the end are especially obtuse. Even the walkthroughs I looked at couldn't or wouldn't explain how they arrived at the solutions.
Overall, I recommend this title for the interesting puzzle mechanics and the thoughtful story.