Overall I remember being somewhat disappointed because of my struggle to make progress. Maybe my expectations had been too high - I was a recent convert to point n' click at the time and of course LucasArts being masters of the genre, meant my anticipation had reached fever pitch.
Grim Fandango is probably even better now, since you can easily look up solutions to some of the more frustrating puzzles. The remastered version is also very good, changing just enough to make it play well on modern systems, without fundamentally altering the experience.
But at some point I followed instructions to complete the game along to the end. It's probably fair to say that following the journey of the game is one of the fondest memories of my life.
I highly recommend the remastered version from 2015 on Steam. I bought it and did another playthrough. It brought back so many emotions, and getting insight from the developers let me really connect with them.
I think I have rose colored glasses as I remember the game being difficult in the sense of lots of walking around trying to find the solution to the last couple of puzzles. Having played the remaster, it was clear how clunky the controls were. But wow, I still love that game.