Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

100 or More Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Immersive"

I have given this a lot of thought, read all of the current player and media reviews, including gamespots 6.0 review.

I have played the original, TUTU, and now the enhanced version. Also I will point out that I have not had a single bug or problem, and I am about 30 hours into the game, which is about half way or so.

The driving question, to me, is: is this game worth $20. I say yes, under the philosophy that supporting the game developers (re-developers or whatever) is a way to get more of what I want, which is more games like this. The new content and new characters do not add anything new, however the technical wrapping to have the game run on new desktops is very smooth and I like it a lot.

The big thing I have noticed is how good this game actually is, and it really puts modern "rpgs" to shame. It is unforgiving, fun, deep, and rich in story if you think about it as a journey including the relationships with your other npcs. The game is also so very flexible, you can go at it 50 different ways, you can be as evil as you want, as good as you want, go solo or embrace 5 of the npcs to go with you. Your actions have real meaning, and while I have played through the game 3 times over the past 14 years, I am STILL finding new content and noticing new things.

Taking my rose colored nostalgia glasses off, using modern standards, I give it the following ratings as if it was released todaay (IMO Gamespot rated it solely on graphics, which is bunk):

Graphics: 6
Gameplay: 10
Story: 9
RPG Elements: 10
Combat: 8
Fun: 10
Content: 8
Value: 7

Overall: 8.5