I am facing the big four- zero soon, and I love playing these games!

And I totally agree on the fact that in vv2 you rather buy your way to the solution through tech points than solve puzzles. From the very beginning on, while I exactly knew what to do next, I just had to wait like 1 and 1/2 days in order to get the tech level to procede with my puzzles.
This *is* lengthy. But on the other hand, the game would get too short since the puzzle are just repetitive (at least 3 are the same as in vv1).

Having said that, I do realize that the vv2 players do vary in age greatly and that the developers needed to compromise on the level of difficulty concerning the puzzles: what is easily solved by an almost 40 year old, might make a 10 year old player
think for a while (at least I hope so )

I am not quite sure if this compromise is a lucky one though, or, in other words, if you can please all of the players.
The current solution was not sufficient for me, I was very disappointed with the puzzles and especially the fact they they relied again almost merely on tech points.

But I do think that in further sequels the customers' age range should be narrowed down when the next game is planned.
You just cannot make everyone happy.