Just finished the first one, and it’s also the first classic Sierra adventure I’ve actually finished.
I hear that’s what those games are all about but to be honest, I’m not a big fan of the game humiliating me constantly. First you die, then it insults you for doing so. I feel like playing a game written by 10-year-olds.
That said, most of the game isn’t too hard, but some “puzzles” are just pure insanity. To find certain required items, you need not only look at the right object in the room, but you also have to stand at the right spot while doing so. This is positively malicious. A similar one is that you need to walk past the right tiny spot in order to find the entrance to one area, that is not visually distinct from any of its surroundings.
There are multiple barriers that, once crossed, keep you from returning to find an item you need later, so even when you dodged one of them, you can still be trapped, having to replay a bigger part of the game.
Ultimately, I didn’t mind having to replay two sections after realizing I probably missed an item, BUT I would have hated it a lot if I hadn’t gotten the hint from Tijn that I was, indeed, missing an item.
The action scenes are horrible, the gambling is painful and it’s another case of malicious puzzle design that you can break the gambling machine before you have all the money you need.
There are at least two spots in which you can miss important information, one of which I only found because I was actually trying to provoke another death scene.
The dying part is more or less about the game, to be honest. At least you know you’ve messed up.
I think it’s kinda cool that there are multiple solutions to some puzzles, but maybe a single solution, but making that less evil would have helped the game.
