(Original review posted April 30th, 2014)
Verdict: Recommended after 4.5 hours of playtime. (Currently 196.0 hours and 70.7 hours in Remastered .)
Okay, I suck at this game. But to be fair, you probably do, too. I don’t know very many people who can say that they’re “good” at the game without being sarcastic.
The game takes a third-person action-adventure stance and proceeds to pummel you with it. For lack of a better comparison, the gameplay is similar in movement style to a modern Tomb Raider or a 3D Legend of Zelda game. The difference is that this game comes close to redefining “Nintendo Hard.” Any child of the 80’s will understand what I mean. The dam level. Yes, that one. Imagine that, but harder.
You’ll probably put a lot of time into this game. Much of it will be scrambling to recover lost souls from your last death point. Some of it will be actual progression. Stopping to admire the level design and the scenic vistas is possibly going to fill some of that time as well, but make sure that everything nearby is dead first, otherwise your time spending will revert to the recovering souls part.
All in all, this is definitely a fun game. Just be sure to update Games for Windows Live or you might have trouble starting it on Windows 8.