This surprised me with how atmospheric and spectacular it is. As you explore desolate ancient structures, there's nothing but wind and echoes and distant sounds of monstrous creatures. No music. You are forced to face the loneliness and the ghostly remnants of dead centuries lingering in decrepit mechanisms. The lighting and sound design give a high level of tangibility to the environment. One minute you're climbing a rope over a pit of lava and you can hear it bubbling beneath you. Next moment you're observing a giant crystal hammer moving in circles and its light crawling up and down the ornate walls steeped in darkness.

Occasionally you fight, which the combat here is simple but not without its depth. You need to time your attacks carefully and avoid getting hit. A variety of strategies can be applied. In my experience the most effective one is to rush the opponent with a flurry of rapid attacks and then retreating to restore your stamina.

The platforming is often adrenaline-pumping as you get to navigate incredible heights, whether hopping platforms above them or dropping down them or sometimes jumping up off of some kinda booster. The way the camera works here complements this. Although you can use your mouse, the game is clearly not designed for it. Best way to play is to bind movement to WASD and turning and looking up and down to the arrows. Whenever you approach a drop, you press down and your character looks down, and you can see your legs standing on the edge, next to a large pit. Whenever you're falling, your character will automatically look down too. The camera generally adapts to whatever you're doing, and it's pretty intuitive for an all-keyboard first-person game.

Unfortunately the difficulty has filtered me. I remembered this game as being fun, but that's probably because I never made it past the first level, which is pretty easy. Starting from the second level it becomes hardcore. It's one of those games you need to really commit to and treat as a challenge, which is not something I have the energy for at my age.