I'd wanted to play this since I saw screenshots in Amiga mags back in the day, but this was my first actual experience and... I was massively disappointed. Lucasarts set the bar high for point-and-click adventures. Storylines that made sense, an interface that didn't fight the player and puzzles that were tough but fair and made logical sense. The Broken Sword games and Telltale's output kept this up but a lot of titles just didn't learn these lessons; Kyrandia is one. It looks gorgeous and I like the voice acting but the puzzles just make no sense. The game gives you no clue at all where to go or what to do, you just have to experiment. But the game punishes experimentation harshly - take a wrong step and die. Use an item in a place you aren't supposed to and the game gets stuck in an unwinnable state. The latter makes the game a nightmare; it's absurdly easy to destroy items by mistake; if you're lucky, you can find a replacement by backtracking though it might take you hours. If you're unlucky, the item is irreplacable and you've had it. Saving before doing ANYTHING is the safest way. Also, the game goes out of its way to confuse the player; there are dozens of useless red-herring items that have no use, and the lack of inventory slots makes trying to work out which items you do and don't need at any one time a nightmare unless you've got some latent psychic ability. It's also quite a lonely game. With a five-ish hour playtime you'll meet maybe six or seven other characters; most of the time you're wandering around woods or caves with nobody to talk to but yourself. This leaves the game feeling a bit stark and characterless compared to something like Monkey Island. The plot is pretty slender, too. I toyed with giving it one star, but it does look lovely in places and the character of Malcolm has potential even if he's underused. So it scrapes a second one, but I wouldn't in any way recommend it over the Lucasarts/Revolution games available on GOG.
