While the aestehtics of the series are really nice, the gamedesign is just horrible. For 99% of the game, it relies mostly on trial & error bullshit. On every screen that is not just a transitional one, you WILL die. And not just once but several times. Much too often, you also have to perform tedious steps in preparation for some puzzles like repeating a melody for a Mudokon to call a lift for you or dumb stuff like guiding your mount to the right spot. This makes retries so much more annoying than they would already be in the first place. The delayed controls and the fact that you have to be super careful with every step don't help either. Get impatient and run a step too far? Too bad! You will probably slide of a cliff after one of those annoyingly slow screen transitions and fall to your death. Your supposed to take it slowly most of the time and climb down slopes carefully. On the other hand the game sometimes just kills you off without a warning. Sometimes after a screen transition where you had no chance of knowing what to expect there will be a enemy that immediately kills you. The game is full of this kind of nonsense and all sorts of trolly traps. If there's a hidden screen where for example you have to save three Mudokons (one at a time of course), the game will most likely let you repeat a tedious process three times in a row, which is identical every time, just to then kill you off on your way out with some random boulders falling from the ceiling. Congrationaltions, you just wasted antoher 10 minutes of your time on a shitty game apparently designed by total dickheads. I normally like hard games and even games like Flashback that are somewhat similar to this. In the case of Abe's Odyssey though I have absolutely no idea where the enjoyment lies in it and how it got its reputation. It's a badly designed trial & error hell with weak controls, a lousy checkpoint/save system and annoying puzzles at best.
