I love your reviews of the games... really takes me back
King's Quest 2 was the first adventure game I ever played (back when I was 6 years old) so it has a really warm place in my heart. I didn't know it was considered the worst in the series... I think it was an improvement over King's Quest 1, and a bit more fun than King's Quest 3. I actually felt the added linearity was for the better (since, as you said, it helped give the game a more interesting story). But I generally prefer games that are more linear (and my two favorite Sierra games are SQ3 and SQ5 which are both very linear).