I've recently gone back to this game and boy oh boy, it's some steamy bullshit. Invisible, breakable walls abound! The only thing more common than invisible, breakable walls are walls that remove 1/4 of your health when you try to break them on the off chance they're one of the ones you need to break. Instant death traps? Sure! Heard a satisfying bleeping noise that signifies you successfully solved a puzzle? The result very well could be halfway across the gigantic map with zero indication that that is the case! How about a tricky, timing based, permanently failable, likely death-causing-upon-failure puzzle that gets you one of the best items in the game and is immediately behind a boss fight? Why the fuck not?!? Puzzles often require that you place weights on daises. Only, one in five of those fuckers is some instant death bullshit. Very minor spoiler: One dais that is a trap requires that you instead place the weight on a nearby skeleton - which are very common in the ruins. You've wandered past dozens of those things in your time in the ruins and never had to do that before, and will never have to do that again. How would you EVER know to do that?!?
I read the tablets. When your clues are shit like "One fool believed, in his foolishness, that he was a wise man. The fool flaunted his shallow wisdom and made decisions with a narrow mind. He proceeded to the right without hesitation. Another fool possessed wisdom, but his knowledge led him to believe he was a fool. A fool who smothers himself without first considering the situation. He went with the flow, and proceeded to the left. One can only hope that a true wise man stands here now." when presented with two one-way doors to your left and right and the solution is to scan the completely innocuous light on the wall next to you instead of choosing either left or right, again, something you've never had to do before, and never have to do again, just AAAAAARRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!
Apparently, the remake is the 'easy' version. The original must be literally impossible. Holy shit! The developers (developer? I can't imagine just one guy pulling this thing off, but that might be the case?) of this game are some serious sadists.
That said, I'm actually kind of enjoying it with a guide. Not following a walkthrough sentence by sentence mind you, but actually trying to figure out what I can and only resorting to one when completely lost (which is depressingly often.) It's pretty freaking satisfying figuring some of this shit out on your own.
Sequel was successfully kickstarted some time ago and apparently due this year, too. Oh my!
Log in to comment