I would have really liked to love this game even more. I remember spending hours on this game when I played the CD version some 15 years ago (gosh I'm that old). I dived right back it. By the way it is the DVD version here (meaning a few more cinematics, better compressed graphics, and the (in)famous telescope puzzle). There's the bad acting, which is immediately balanced by the still gorgeous graphics and the great music. The atmosphere is quite unique and hasn't aged that much. The first puzzles are great and well thought out, providing that you have a liking for mathematical puzzles (say hello Thales! hello 12 base calculations!). Then comes the moment when your characters meet and everything slowly goes south. The second half of the game is really tiresome, filled with much less inspired puzzles (telescope, bridge rising) and an awful lot of backtracking (especially if you do it without any walkthrough). The problem there is that you have 2 heroes to guide, meaning that you will have to perform all remaining travels twice, and on top of that, all transitions from point to point and between areas are unskippable (and rather long). For a game relying on exploration and experimentation it quickly becomes annoying and I found myself reaching for a walkthrough simply to make sure that I was not travelling for nothing. Overall a good myst-like, that fells short (about a 'quick travel function' short) of becoming a must-have.
