I don't have a great love for point&clicks. Usually the puzzles end up as 'click everything of your inventory on everything else possible' until you find something that lets you progress a little.

Some point&clicks have some good logic to them, while others the logic is so absurd it's a wonder anyone ever beat them.

Here's a few examples

IMO, Monkey Island 1 & 2 are already at the top of what the genre has to offer and a model to many other titles, most of which have much worse puzzle design. If you don't enjoy checking out your surrounding for things that could be of use to you and figuring out puzzles by combining them, I fear your experience with most other p&c adventures won't differ much from the experience you've already made, unless their themes and stories are more interesting to you, but in that case rather than ask for random recommendations, tell us about your expectations - what kind of stories would be more to your liking?

Without any idea about what you like, I'd concur with the suggestion to try the Blackwell games. They are similar to Monkey Island but they are a bit more focussed on the story-telling than the puzzle solving and are therefor a bit easier and could be more motivating to you, also because the stories are a bit more serious and less wacky. Jolly Rover is an easy one, too, but a Monkey Island clone, so you'll probably find its themes even more juvenile and less interesting. But it's one of those modern indie adventures that has in-game hints and clues, if I recall correctly, same as Machinarium (which is quite puzzle heavy and not that easy though), Hector: Badge of Carnage or The Inner World.

Or if you don't like the puzzle mechanics at all, try some different breed of adventure games like:

- the interactive movie style adventures by Telltale (e.g. The Wolf Among Us) or other studios (Life Is Strange, Dreamfall Chapters). Less (or next to no) puzzles, no pixel hunting, more dramatics/cinematics, more action (often in the form of Quick Time Events). Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy could be considered an early form of them, you should check that out too, it has a gripping start, but also its share of flaws.

- the story/exploration games that are derogatorily called "walking simulators" by some, like Gone Home, in which you mostly just move forward, learning the story by examining your environment. Or those that are close to visual novels but with more interaction, like To The Moon.

- adventures like Jazzpunk, or Botanicula in which you just interact with things in very simple ways to make funny stuff happen

You most probably won't need to consult walkthroughs for these.

I did! But it was a side-note not a straight recommendation, although it certainly becomes a recommendation if you like Indiana Jones at all. It's better than any of the movies, imo!

Oh, and I'll also recommend UHS-hints.com for helping you through games if you REALLY get stuck (honestly, getting stuck is PART of adventure games, and you should be okay being stuck for at least 30 minutes every so often until you "figure it out") It can be part of the fun, but it can also get really frusrtating, just be honest with yourself.

If you do get the blackwell bundle, I suggest beating each game in a full sitting. Forgetting small details like your business cards glow in the dark for the solution in a later puzzle, is quite annoying when you have to refer to a walkthrough.

Also just having recently beaten the final game Epiphany, you should go through the 'looking around' bit with both characters and not just one, as the ghost died much earlier before technology was as advanced and as such he might not notice something that Rose will. An early portion shows the example where I examined everything and came across a box full of crap electronics, while Rose would notice there's a fuse in there...

My Blackwell thoughts and here too (mixed with other people's)

By your opening post I’d recommend avoiding many 90s point & clicks. Beneath a Steel Sky would expect you to remember dialogue that can’t be repeated in order to solve a puzzle, a few Sierra titles like King’s Quest can rail-road you into an unwinnable situation if you miss an object much earlier on, etc.

Try Fran Bow. The music and artwork are beautiful, the mystery kept me going, and it contains most of the modern amenities – longer puzzles tackled in stages, reminders of what you should be doing from a companion, and double-click fast travel through explored areas.

I don't know if someone already suggested it but i think that you should try The Longest Journey,a really awesome point and click with,for my opinion, a very original setting

PS:And is the base for other two awesome games: Dreamfall:The longest Journey and the currently on going episodic series Dreamfall:Charapters

What makes adventure games stand out from any other games is that the story isn't ornamental, but is essential to the gameplay. If the Deputy have a thing for "them French postcards, the kind that men like", it is part of the story, sure - but it may be a gameplay mechanic too.

In non-adventure games, you're 'progressing' constantly. But in adventure games, you are stuck. Then you finally beat that damn puzzle ... congrats, you're stuck somewhere else. This makes the genre hard to love.

But if you want to give the adventure genre a try, you can download The Crooked Man for free here:
http://www.thefreebundle.com/indiegames/bundle12/game3.php

It's a japanese-inspired horror adventure. The visuals are cutesy-retro-RPG, but the story has some really mature themes - consider this to be one of them fancty trigger warnings.

Most of the items you find are used automatically when you interact, so you won’t be fiddling with your inventory much.
Arrows = Move
Z = Interact
X = Menu

Well, "back in the day", adventures used to be text only. I grew up playing the "verb noun" (i.e. go north, take rum, etc.) adventure game genre by Scott Adams on my TI-99/4a. Later, I ended up acquiring several of the Infocom games which had a much more advanced parser. The nice thing about interactive fiction was that it was like reading a book, but you could interact and change the story as you went along.

Then along came Sierra On-line's flagship adventure game meant to show off the features of the IBM PC Jr. It was "kind of" point and click, but you did that to move your character around and still used the keyboard to command him to interact with the world around him.

Eventually, there was the full "point and click" system where you could use your mouse to access not only your movement, but actions as well and the games usually required you to solve puzzles and go out of your way to find items which worked together in order to solve other large puzzles.

Back in the early days of Sierra games, it was easy to make the wrong move and die and there were some games where pixel hunting was a necessity (ahem, Torin's Passage comes readily to mind). However, it seemed for quite some time, Point and Click adventure games had been dormant, but are seemingly making a comeback.

Nostalgia aside, there have been a few games I either played or watched the trailers for, I could recommend the following:

The Walking Dead (A twist on the old PnC genre)
Anna's Quest (Played)
Night of the Rabbit (Played intro only so far)

If you want to go old school, I can recommend:
King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow
Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness
Quest for Glory V: Dragon Fire

- The Moment of Silence

- The Longest Journey

- Black Mirror

- Grim Fandango

my favs, in this order

Also good: Monkey Island 3. And as noone mentioned them yet (not available on GoG): Discworld 1, 2, Noir.

Those games were amazing, but I fear they have far too many guide-dang-it moments that could end up frustrating OP :(

*knock knock*