Completed the game, did not get all the magic and equipment possible. Completed without guides, used info from the internet a couple times.
Overall, I enjoyed it. The game was suffering a bit from slowdowns, but I am not sure if it is expected or because emulation on PSP is underperforming.
The game is strong in its atmosphere of hopelessness and not knowing what to do and where to go. But as you play the game and explore the island, you get the sense of accomplishment and everything starts to make sense bit by bit. At first, you will die to squids, but then you learn to circle strafe and become stronger both in terms of stats and in terms of your skill. In a sense, this is a predecessor of Dark Souls as much as it can be in the year of 1995.
Unfortunately, as much as the game tries to explain how to play it to the player through notes and NPCs, it doesn't always succeed, and I often found myself stuck in endless labyrinths, or trying to find certain places, and I wish I could leave notes on the map so I could navigate better.
Having many "secret" doors in the walls in style of Wolfenstein3D, where you have to press every wall to be sure to not miss a secret passage or treasure without any indication of them being there is quite annoying as well. I have at first missed Flame Sword, for example, which was hidden behind a wall mounted enemy, and I would struggle a lot later in the game without it.
The difficulty curve is a bit uneven. It is very high in the beginning, goes down in the center, but then spikes up in the end, because the enemies are dealing a lot of damage and tanking quite a lot of hits even with the best equipment possible. The final boss took several tries, because the game was laggy, he was casting a flame spell that was taking half of my health, I was shot by his flying minions and he kept knocking me out into the water, because he was standing on the bridge.
But all in all, it was surprisingly a much better experience than I could expect from a game from 1995 on PS1.
Apparently this is the second game in the series with the misleading title, so I will have to beat the actual first game that was released in Japan with English patch to be able to compare it to.
Overall, I enjoyed it. The game was suffering a bit from slowdowns, but I am not sure if it is expected or because emulation on PSP is underperforming.
The game is strong in its atmosphere of hopelessness and not knowing what to do and where to go. But as you play the game and explore the island, you get the sense of accomplishment and everything starts to make sense bit by bit. At first, you will die to squids, but then you learn to circle strafe and become stronger both in terms of stats and in terms of your skill. In a sense, this is a predecessor of Dark Souls as much as it can be in the year of 1995.
Unfortunately, as much as the game tries to explain how to play it to the player through notes and NPCs, it doesn't always succeed, and I often found myself stuck in endless labyrinths, or trying to find certain places, and I wish I could leave notes on the map so I could navigate better.
Having many "secret" doors in the walls in style of Wolfenstein3D, where you have to press every wall to be sure to not miss a secret passage or treasure without any indication of them being there is quite annoying as well. I have at first missed Flame Sword, for example, which was hidden behind a wall mounted enemy, and I would struggle a lot later in the game without it.
The difficulty curve is a bit uneven. It is very high in the beginning, goes down in the center, but then spikes up in the end, because the enemies are dealing a lot of damage and tanking quite a lot of hits even with the best equipment possible. The final boss took several tries, because the game was laggy, he was casting a flame spell that was taking half of my health, I was shot by his flying minions and he kept knocking me out into the water, because he was standing on the bridge.
But all in all, it was surprisingly a much better experience than I could expect from a game from 1995 on PS1.
Apparently this is the second game in the series with the misleading title, so I will have to beat the actual first game that was released in Japan with English patch to be able to compare it to.