I was pretty excited to see a classic adventure game that I never played being remastered. I relish every opportunity to fill out the blanks in my knowledge of gaming history: sometimes you find true gems that have aged well this way. Unfortunately Shadowgate isn't one of them. I have a high tolerance for old games and old mechanics: for instance I loved playing the text-based original Zork, which features a somewhat similar setting of a huge abandoned place to explore. This game however didn't elicit the same feelings of wonder, discovery and mystery. Here's what I dislike: - The game is very, very linear. While it might offer the occasional alternate path to reach a location, after solving a puzzle and exploring a few rooms you very rapidly are confronted with only locked doors. Contrast that to Zork where you could explore a huge initial chunk of the world. - The puzzles are hard and not exactly obvious to solve. Combined with the aforementioned linearity, this means you'll often have a single puzzle you need to crack to get anywhere, without the alternative to tackle something else if stuck. - You'll backtrack a lot trying to find answers, and screen transitions are slow with (if my memory's good) no keyboard shortcuts. Clicking repeatedly gets old fast. - Despite the magical story the universe is kind of bland. Typical adventure games have interesting NPCs and a lot objects to look at that will elicit interesting or whimsical comments from the protagonist. Here there are no NPCs (so far) besides your mysterious guide, and the rooms and objects you see don't really open up questions in your mind about what this place might be or what mysteries it might contain. - Frequent cheap deaths with a slow die-retry cycle. You wanna kill the player often? You need fast respawns like Super Meat Boy. All in all the game is sadly an exercise in boredom, even with a walkthrough at hand to avoid getting stuck for too long.