I was one of the idiots that played this game on Steam. It's an awful Windows game, as it is heavily bugged and requires a lot of time and effort to make it playable. However, I gave it another go since I acquired the Steam Deck. Playing this game through Proton actually fixes a lot of the issues with playing the game on a modern windows system. You would still have to do a couple of things to get it working as if it was native to the system, but the amount of effort required is much less on the Steam Deck than a modern Windows machine.
As for the game itself now that it is relatively bug free? Age hasn't really diminished its gameplay for the most part. The platforming, wall running, and flag pole jumping portions never felt stale and there is always something new to pull off when scaling a room. This is where games such as Assassin's Creed and Uncharted got their inspiration of the platforming and wall climbing portions and it's on full display in this game.
However, the combat is the Achilles heel of the game. Despite that you have a diverse moveset and the game has some interesting ways of allowing you to pull those off, many of the encounters overstay their welcome and the fights draw out way longer than needed. You mostly fight three to four enemies at a time, but the encounters have you fight upwards of more than 20 enemies especially late in the game. It makes the combat feel almost endless. There are times when I wanted to run away to continue with the game as the fights grew tedious, and sometimes the game lets you do that, but there are times when you have to finish a fight before the game lets you move on.
The camera doesn't make things any better. Its collision detection with the walls along with its preprogrammed focus on combat makes it a constant fight between getting the camera to work right and making sure you and Farah don't die, and the latter is going to be especially problematic late in the game.
Graphically, the game looks fine. As a game from 2003, I can't really complain about how it looks and it pulls off its Arabian nights look pretty well. As for the sound, the SFX does its job and the soundtrack is a mixture of an Arabian-influenced sound melded together with hard rock. The mixture is surprisingly tasteful.
Unfortunately, there are issues with the attenuation of 3D sounds as some of the emitters are too small when the narrative happens between characters. The game also has no subtitle options, making it extremely difficult to make out what some characters are saying when they're far away from the camera, or when there is a lot of stuff going on in the scene. On the Gamecube, the sound effects have horrible file compression issues, giving them a very grainy effect, making them sound like they're from a PS1 or an N64 game.
For its puzzles alone, this is a great game that still holds its own to the test of time, but maybe play it in short bursts because the combat does drag on, and oftentimes frustrates near the end of the game.
As for the game itself now that it is relatively bug free? Age hasn't really diminished its gameplay for the most part. The platforming, wall running, and flag pole jumping portions never felt stale and there is always something new to pull off when scaling a room. This is where games such as Assassin's Creed and Uncharted got their inspiration of the platforming and wall climbing portions and it's on full display in this game.
However, the combat is the Achilles heel of the game. Despite that you have a diverse moveset and the game has some interesting ways of allowing you to pull those off, many of the encounters overstay their welcome and the fights draw out way longer than needed. You mostly fight three to four enemies at a time, but the encounters have you fight upwards of more than 20 enemies especially late in the game. It makes the combat feel almost endless. There are times when I wanted to run away to continue with the game as the fights grew tedious, and sometimes the game lets you do that, but there are times when you have to finish a fight before the game lets you move on.
The camera doesn't make things any better. Its collision detection with the walls along with its preprogrammed focus on combat makes it a constant fight between getting the camera to work right and making sure you and Farah don't die, and the latter is going to be especially problematic late in the game.
Graphically, the game looks fine. As a game from 2003, I can't really complain about how it looks and it pulls off its Arabian nights look pretty well. As for the sound, the SFX does its job and the soundtrack is a mixture of an Arabian-influenced sound melded together with hard rock. The mixture is surprisingly tasteful.
Unfortunately, there are issues with the attenuation of 3D sounds as some of the emitters are too small when the narrative happens between characters. The game also has no subtitle options, making it extremely difficult to make out what some characters are saying when they're far away from the camera, or when there is a lot of stuff going on in the scene. On the Gamecube, the sound effects have horrible file compression issues, giving them a very grainy effect, making them sound like they're from a PS1 or an N64 game.
For its puzzles alone, this is a great game that still holds its own to the test of time, but maybe play it in short bursts because the combat does drag on, and oftentimes frustrates near the end of the game.