Ratings by thinker

These are the important aspects about the game:
1) The difficulty of the puzzles is from moderate to hard so unless you have an IQ of 150+ you will not find it a walk in the park.
2) Gameplay has its faults because in several cases you may be close to the solution but it will need an awkward execution.
3) The story is lovely and also very simple so you will not find complex development of characters here.

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Time Played: 10-20 hours
Difficulty: Hard

I now finished the game and I have a more in depth view of the game even though I would still rate it a 7/10 when talking generally about it in public because I still think it’s definitely not for everyone since it can be a 9/10 if you completely and totally love the style but a 5/10 if you are not that much into it.

The amount of text is obscene but the story great however it is also written by a non-native english speaker and at many occasions it feels like he explicitly tried to replace words with the rarest word possible and joined with the fact every single cultural name is fictional it can become tiresome.

All in all the game is fine since the story and character development are great and the gameplay dynamic enough (it has an indirect linearity but nothing too bad) but it’s definitely one of those games that has many lovers and haters and very few that see it in-between.

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Time Played: Over 20 hours
Difficulty: Easy

It deserves an 8/10 for its time, and a 7/10 if released today.

The good: INCREDIBLE variety, if not THE most variable game in the history of the gender, captivating story (even if it’s not too complex).

The bad: HORRIBLE movement (though it loses more points today than at the point of release), it can’t even run, etc., the story is cryptic at time without being necessary since it’s in the end too simplistic, captivating yes, but it have been more intelligent. Plus some badly designed routes, e.g. it was very easy to not even notice a small corner of the ‘Egyptian’ village existed. There were some minor puzzle errors (e.g. being offered to solve them in a hard way without knowing a character may help you) but they are too few to give it a worse rating just for that.

In overall, the game is way better than more other games, especially of its age, though not the best, and certainly it would lose a point if released today since the graphics are horrifically low resolution and the interface just cumbersome.

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Time Played: 5-10 hours
Difficulty: Just Right

Don’t get me wrong, the game starts nicely and it has this beautiful Vangelis music but then it goes on filling up your journal with tons of information and the map with dozens over dozens of locations. You stop for a day or two to do something else and if you return you have to read again most of it to get back on track in a proper way. Don’t get me wrong, it might be easier if you do it non-stop, but if you do it in portions it’s full of disconnects to the flow. It should be an 101 no-no for future and modern games.
Not only that, but it’s also filled with plenty of problematic puzzles that are neither bugged or theoretically difficult, but they become difficult because the map is huge and one may not know what the writers thought it would happen later.
But apart from that it was an enjoyable game and the dynamic nature of its script was admirably complex (that wasn’t tedious).
Ah, it also went too abruptly to some new characters in the end. Here you are, going very slowly and methodically investigating 2 or 3 characters and bang here are some new guys in your life that just throw everything directly at you, the end.
i.e. The movie was nice also because it had a nice soothing flow, being all Detective Supercomplexity in the end wasn’t “impossible” but it wasn’t enjoyable. (And don’t put stupid killer rats in a game like this again.)

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Time Played: 10-20 hours