User Score
8.8

Generally favorable reviews- based on 54 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 47 out of 54
  2. Negative: 4 out of 54

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  1. Oct 28, 2013
    6
    Don't buy into the hype. This is a very obscure and niche game. The graphics did not age well, the movement and gameplay is not fluid. The cutscenes look great for the time, but the story is a miserable trope-fest. Level design is poor; think of a free-roaming, instanced Dynasty Warriors map.

    The game forces a tutorial on you (shoot, swim, interact), but then dumps you into a
    Don't buy into the hype. This is a very obscure and niche game. The graphics did not age well, the movement and gameplay is not fluid. The cutscenes look great for the time, but the story is a miserable trope-fest. Level design is poor; think of a free-roaming, instanced Dynasty Warriors map.

    The game forces a tutorial on you (shoot, swim, interact), but then dumps you into a free-roaming environment with no direction.

    I was told I wouldn't be disappointed by this game, that it still plays well and uniquely, that its still beautiful. Not true at all. The game plays like a free-roaming Crash Bandicoot with guns, and the levels look bland with a low field of view.

    If you want a true space exploration and fantasy game from the 90's, try The Dig from Steven Spielberg. I can't get into this game at all.
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  2. Sep 11, 2020
    5
    This page is pretty silly. To give this game a 10 or a 9, you have to be COMPLETELY blinded by nostalgia.

    I got it on Steam for 3 bucks the other day, also due to nostalgia. I had the game on PC when I was 9 years old, but I was too young to figure anything out and was confused and intimated by the open-ended structure. The game was very ambitious for its time and unique in its usage
    This page is pretty silly. To give this game a 10 or a 9, you have to be COMPLETELY blinded by nostalgia.

    I got it on Steam for 3 bucks the other day, also due to nostalgia. I had the game on PC when I was 9 years old, but I was too young to figure anything out and was confused and intimated by the open-ended structure.

    The game was very ambitious for its time and unique in its usage of voxel graphics, voice-over work for every single character (though it's mostly terrible, e.g. there is no unified approach to the pronounciation of Talan words), and player freedom and choice. It was, however, already a total GLITCH FEST back in 99 and it has not aged well at all. The graphics are not pleasant to look at, the music is VERY repetitive and thus gets grating very fast and there is an INCREDIBLE amount of jank and bugginess to be experienced. I'm talking: The main character entering the swimming animation out of nowhere on solid ground, the game straight up crashing to desktop after a cut-scene, your Twon-Ha (basically alien horse) glitching out and not letting you ride it anymore, which means that you have to spend hours walking everywhere etc etc.

    I would really like to finish this game to tie up this loose knot in my gaming career, but it is reeeaaaally testing my patience with this BS. Also, it's a game that practically begs to be played with a guide if you want to complete the side-quests, because you can lock yourself out of doing some of them if you don't do things in the right order and also because remembering which Talan is who and wants what becomes almost impossible if you talk to too many, as they all pretty much look the same.

    in 1999, this would've probably gotten an 8 for its scope, dialogue, world design, and just straight-up uniqueness. Buuuuut it is 2020 and a 5/10 is really already pretty generous on my part. Sadly, the remake also doesn't seem to have handled things well, from what I've read. What a missed opportunity.
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