Overall: Dark, Gothic, creepy--and absolutely hilarious! This is a game with a sense of humor. An adventure game with bite and wit, this pokes fun at itself while delivering a slew of some of the scariest adverseries to come down the pike. It's a laugh-and-chill a minute. Just fabulous gaming.
Graphics: A bit pointy, but fitting to the atmosphere; a storybook nightmare, complete with man-eating pumpkins and diabolical chess boards. Zombies, asylum inmates, and giant ants are only a few of the hostile opponents you'll encounter in this creep-fest. And the Enchanted Forest...kinda puts a new perspective on "Mr Toad's Wild Ride".
Sound System: A beautiful sound system with appropriate music for all situations, be it in the Hall of Heroes or Zarok's "Time in a Bottle"-style hidey hole. Cricket chirps and bird calls take on an eerie resonance, as the plot (I'm GETTING to it! Hold your horses!) enfolds deliciously.
Plot: Sir Daniel Fortesque died heroically in battle a hundred years ago, after defeating the evil sorceror Zarok in the land of Gallowmere. Well, not really. Fortesque fell at the first charge, and Zarok was never defeated. Years after the battle, he reappeared to turn the townspeople into murderous zombies, and the beautiful land into a dank haven of demons. Now Fortesque must rise from the dead to defeat Zarok and claim the righteous honor of a hero that was falsely given to him so long ago. Hey, I'm pretty good at this descriptive writing stuff! Along the way, Fortesque acquires weapons, skills, talks to allies--yadda yadda, usual adventure-game-type stuff.
Abilities: Lots of 'em--they sure don't skimp! In addition to the usual abilties--running, jumping, fighting--you get a plethora of weapons: three kinds of swords, hammer, axe, throwing knives, three kinds of shields, chicken bones (!), spears, and I don't know what else. There's also fancy jumping and running abilities you pick up on the way.
Difficulty: Fairly easy. There is one point on which you may be stuck. I finally had to look this up on the Internet. It's at psxspace.com. I have the official address somewhere; as soon as I find it, I'll give it to y'all. OK? The difficult part is in the Enchanted Forest, near the end of the game. You fall down a small hole, into a round room with colorful Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire symbols on the walls (No matter how you slice it, those elements crop up. I noted this in my Quest review). You have to press the buttons with symbols on them in this order: Fire, Earth, Water, Wind.
Final review: Buy this game. Or at the VERY least, rent it for long periods of time. You'll need to to defeat Zarok (which Sally STILL hasn't done, and we own it!)