I've only played for a few hours at this point, but I'm officially having a love/hate relationship with this game. On the one hand it's a beautifully crafted game that aims to be more old-school difficult than most of today's brainless games - but on the other, it's VERY difficult, even in the early stages of the game. There's practically no time to get ahold of the control structure (which is quite unorthodox I might add...) before you're cast into a situation where you stand to lose everything you've worked for without notice; And without chance of reclamation I might add!

Now don't get me wrong... I love a good difficult game, and some of the oldies-but-goodies that stick out in my mind as being TRULY difficult are games like the original Bionic Commando, the NEW Bionic Commando, any of the early Castlevania games - including Symphony of the Night, the original Doom, Ninja Gaiden Black, etc. I'm all for a game being hard to the point of reason; I.e., the game is difficult within the realm of possibility of overcoming. When a game just gets stupid hard for the sake of being hard and aggravating, I start to waiver on interest. On the other hand, some of the newer generation games geared toward the kids out there with the attention span of a lethargic fruit fly tend to lose my interest even faster.

That being said, I'm certainly not at the point of no return with this game as it does have massive potential from what I've seen thus far. I did have to stop playing at one point though because after a horrendous battle and subsequent victory I attempted to pause the game - you'll notice the use of the quite literal term "attempted" here - only to find there is NO WAY to pause this freakin' game (yes, I googled it). So I sat still for a second, looked around, then leaned over to grab a sip of my wine. All of a sudden out of nowhere a flaming arrow impales my helpless and uncontrolled avatar, rips away 3/4 of my health in one shot, and drops me dead to the floor. Now I've lost everything I worked for, and will have to do it all again - all because I either A) couldn't pause the game or B) resist the urge to have another sip of wine.

You be the judge - more to follow. =D