There's some nice touches in this game but ultimately it's an exercise in frustration to play.

The most obvious issue is that the player's hitbox is absolutely ridiculously huge, meaning you'll get hit by stuff that appeared to miss you all the time.

The game's health and ammo mechanics are RNG, with a chance of an ammo drop or health drop when destroying containers or killing enemies. Ammo drops are shared across all weapons but use ammo at varying rates. The LMG is a staple because it's pretty ammo efficient compared to a lot of later weapons. But many levels later in the game become fustrating when you start running low on every ammo type there is.

Early on you can use your melee weapon to break pots open in order to avoid wasting ammo, and look for ammo drops. Since everything shares the same ammo pickup, you need to swap to the weapon you want refilling before picking it up. But after a few levels the game starts making some of these containers explosive with no clear marking on the ones that are - it's just RNG for if it blows up, has a pickup, or has an enemy in it. This means you can't use melee to break pots open any more, and have to shoot them. And when you're low on ammo and have to spend ammo to open pots so you can look for ammo, and it just spawns more enemies instead, that feels bad.

Most frustrating is the enemy lineup and the way it's utilised. The Mummy enemy type is the first annoying one with its homing projectiles and frequently being placed in large groups. The projectiles turn on a dime, though not as badly as Quake's Vore enemies, they're incredibly annoying with the huge player hitbox. Worse are the Bastets, who have tons of health and rush you down very quickly for melee attacks. Your weapons are woefully inadequate for dealing with them, because they either have splash damage or simply don't output anywhere near enough DPS. The few that do chew through ammo very quickly. Worse, these enemies are frequently positioned after jumps around blind corners or on the other side of a door that'll close behind you.

It reduces the game to a lot of opening doors, stepping into rooms then trying to blast stuff from a distance until the door closes, over and over.

It's a shame as there's some nice ideas with the level design and revisiting maps with new powers to reach new exits, but the actual experience of playing the game is just more annoying than fun.

So i cant really blame anyone but myself for this experience so far but I am too far into the game at this point to want to restart. Aesthetically its cool, always like an egyptian theme, guns can feel pretty good, has metroidvania like aspects. However the ammo and health system is dreadful, drops for health or ammo are really low so your struggling to feel powerful, enemies hit like a mac truck and can kill you in a second, the checkpoint system is not great and what i wouldnt give for a Quicksave option. I know this is a remake of the Sega Saturn version but it didnt come with the Build version the original release for PC. Would that make it better? possibly but this is defintely a game that had i not peaked my interest through some youtubers i would have been perfectly happy to not play it.

Edit: So i got to a point with the game, where i had been playing it on hard mode, which is how i Intially reviewed the game but got so fustrated at a point i used cheats to get through and area which disabled all achievements so i said stuff it and restarted on normal and the game feels much better one normal. Ammo doesnt feel as scarce, enemies die faster, with less incoming damage it allows me to move faster and enjoy the feel way more. I am certainly not an achievement hunter or a completionist and i think a single play through of this game is more than enough and if you do decide to play it, play it on normal and yo may have some proper fun with it.

Oh man, this is a tough one.
I wanted to give this a thumbs up so badly but I decided against it.
And here is why:
I will not Review Nightdive Studios here or the port they made, because the Port itself is excellent and I really do LOVE Nightdive for giving us back so many Gems from my childhood (even though I have to say that the price points for Games like Turok 3 and Dark Forces Remaster are way too high; I thought it was maybe because Atari acquired them, but I think those Games got published beforehand).

What I will do is write an honest review about the Game itself and why I ultimately didn't like it as much as I hoped.
I had Exhumed for my Playstation 1 (I think it was the Platinum Game Collection!?) but I never really got into it. I had so many PS1 Games that I just played it a little, lost interest and played something better instead.
So my experience with Exhumed - apart from a small memory from the first level - is basically zero.
But now I finally had the Chance to give this Game a fair try and play through it.

My first mistake: I played on Hard. IF you play this Game, just play on normal because hard was frustrating but for the wrong reasons. Yes, there are also a handful of people who played on Pharaoh, which is even harder, but apart from getting a rare Achievement, this is probably just pure pain.

So why didn't I like the Game? I mean, this is probably THE first Metroidvania and also an FPS (I only regurgitate Civvie11 here but it makes sense), so what can go wrong!?
Well, this Game has a Checkpoint System and it can be frustrating as hell (you will read that word a lot). This Game would've been better off (at least for the higher difficulties) with manual Save/Quicksave.
Yes, you get used to it, but also some checkpoints are right in front of enemies and sometimes when you die you will respawn a long time away and have to redo big and frustrating sections.
Also it doesn't save the progress when you touch a checkpoint and quit the Game, you have to finish the level that you are in for it to save.

The movement feels good, in air control also feels good but jumping off of some surfaces felt off and clunky and wouldn't always register, sometimes resulting in a quick instant death.
Weapon switching takes way too long. The Ammo System is also not great (you have a resource for all weapons, and if you need ammo for a specific weapon, you have to switch to it - which takes a while - and then pick up the resource).
So that means, in the later levels, you sometimes have some big ammo issues, even though when you know the Game better, you will know where Power Ups are that refill your health/ammo completely.

The weapon selection is okay, for most of the time you are using a 3-Burst LMG anyways, this is your workhorse. All the other weapons are kind of situational. But shooting doesn't feel bad, it's just okay.

So then let's talk about another issue here: The enemies.
Oh boy, there are not many enemies in this Game, it severely lacks variety. And almost every enemy is super annoying as well. Keep in mind that my experience is on hard, it is probably less painful on normal. (Btw., afaik Normal is the way to play anyways, since it was the original experience, the Game had no difficulty options before the remaster.)
So what enemies are there?
We have a bunch of small ones (Scorpions, Birds, Crabs? and Wasps) --> Annoying just because they are small and plentiful.
We have bipedal Anubis Monsters --> Annoying because most of the times you fight in small corridors and the hitbox of your character is bigger than the level itself, you are barely able to dodge.
We have Mummys --> Annoying because they shoot homing projectiles with crazy tracking and also most of the time fighting in cramped areas.
We have Cheetah Women --> Annoying, they are LIGHTNING FAST and melt your health down in an instant on hard.
We have Aliens --> Well ok, they were not too bad, just a little annoying maybe.

So yeah, not great.
Then there are the pots which you can destroy for ammo and health. There are many pots. But you know what? This is a BIG gamble if you shoot them. I advise against meeleing them. The pots can mess you up. Either you get a health orb (big or small), ammo orb (big or small), a scorpion/wasp or an explosion in your face that sometimes tracks through the whole room and takes a TON of health away or outright kills you.
Yeah, fun... Spin the wheel to see if you get messed up or if the Game has pity on you and gives you a little bit of health/ammo.

I just can't help but be a little disappointed, because somehow I expected more, especially after watching the Civvie Video.
The Game also has cool things that I liked. The progression was cool, the level design was cool, the unlocks were cool, the handful of secrets you could find were cool but it just all gets bogged down by a frustrating experience overall.
It is definitely not the worst Game ever, but it certainly is not one of the greats also.
I am still happy and thankful that I finally got to play the Game, finish it and then form my own judgement. Even though I won't recommend it.

P.S.: Took me around 8 hours to play through it blind and on hard just for a length reference.

Beyond the initial nostalgia of it being a PSX game and a few first decent levels, around Amun Mines level the game starts to drag on.

Some pros, some cons.

Pros:
- Egyptian atmoshpere, it's good
- music is decent
- first few hours can be charming
- level design is mostly good...

Cons:
- until it's not and some levels start to resemble convoluted labyrinths with way too many corridors and backtracking
- weapons - M60 becomes a staple weapon for most of the game, bombs are utility mostly, flame thrower/snake staff are situational, fireball ring is burning ammo fast, thunder bracelet is a let down for a final weapon. Machete and revolver are useless after getting M60.
- enemies - there is not much variety, you'll be battling Doom Imps aka Anubis zombies, super fast cheetach women that can drop your health to zero in a few seconds and homing missile mummies. Scorpions blue and red are mostly a nuisance, it's better to just avoid them if you're redoing a level which leads us to the next point
- Metroid-vania style of game design - it's ok if it's made well, in this case it's bad. When you re-enter a level it's just the same stuff with respawned enemies and pots and so on, it's tiring after first 2-3 returns to one map
- checkpoint system is just horrible - there is no save/load function, checkpoints are put there in bad places which ties to platforming aspect of the game
- platforming - there is nothing that special with decent platforming in old FPS games, yet in this case there are platforms between fields that instantly kill a character and one then needs to do the same stuff all over again from wherever that checkpoint was placed, eh

In conclusion, I've tried to like this game but the sheer tediousness of same enemies, same weapons on rotation (M60/bombs/situational ones) and stupidly implemented platforming made me realize it's not really worth my time, even for the nostalgia value.

There are some playthroughs on the Internet, it takes about 3-5h to finish the game if you know where to go and such, but for the first playthrough I'd say it would be lots of going back and forth withouth actually having a clue on what to do next.

So in conclusion, I'd say it's a decent game for fans of PSX/Saturn version or hardcore nostalgia FPS fans, who don't mind the usual jank, dubious mechanics, overly large hitboxes and fighting the same enemies over and over again.

I gave up somewhere around the lava monsters, and I stuck around till then mostly thanks to the sunk cost fallacy.

This game is interesting and unique in places, but it feels like they were trying to be as tedious and annoying as possible. The list of "why did they design it that way?" is quite long and ridiculous.

Why did I need to revisit the exact same levels multiple times?
Why is my hitbox this idiotically wide in a game where I'm expected to dodge projectiles in tight spaces?
What’s up with those stupid mines?
Why do half of the enemies have no chance in hеll of ever damaging me in any meaningful capacity, while the other half are the most annoying bastards ever? Where is the middle ground?
Why are there bombs in ammo crates at random, forcing me to waste ammo to get a chance at ammo?
Whose fever dream gave birth to that water temple?
Why does it feel like the grenade jump is the intended way to go?
Why are the annoying platforming challenges the most dangerous thing here?

And the list goes on.

I like Boomer Shooters
I like Metroidvanias

But I dont like having to return back to previous stages and recomplete them as if I never completed them, all over again to make a little progress because I have a new ability to move further in it. Imagine if in the original Doom, everytime you beat a couple maps, you'd have to go back to one of the previous 3 maps and start it all over again as if you never completed it, all enemies and items respawned and doors reclosed because you now have ability to jump or swim somewhere you couldn't before. I find it irritating to run through the same fights and redeplete your ammo again and again just to make a little bit of progress.

I'm sure the game is ok enough for some people, but once i noticed retreading gameplay loop, I lost interest very quickly.

Horribly aged game... The port/remaster itself is fine, nothing wrong by NightDive. But oh boy, the core design of this game is so damn a** backwards.

Where do I even begin?
The player hitbox is atrocious, way too big to be playable. 90% of damage you take will be you thinking you dodge an enemy's projectile, only to realize it still hit you, because you have a stupidly big hitbox. It's constant tedium to deal with, especially in the tighter corridor areas, making it almost impossible to dodge projectiles.

The ammo system is one of the dumbest things I have ever seen in a videogame:
Ammo pickups are tied to whatever weapon you are holding at the moment. So you see an ammo orb? Equip the flamethrower if you want ammo for that before grabbing it. Want machine gun ammo instead? Then equip that weapon when you pick up the orb. So far so good. Except when you're in the middle of combat, it gets annoying to have to swap to a weapon you need ammo for. So you will often accidentally pick up ammo while holding the wrong weapon, because you're in the middle of combat, wasting ammo for a weapon you maybe needed ammo for more.

On top of that, if you do swap to a weapon you need ammo for during combat, chances are that you're empty on that weapon and don't want to instantly use it, because you want to save up a large chunk of ammo. So in the middle of combat, or outside combat, you swap to an empty weapon, grab ammo, then swap back to the weapon that you have a lot of ammo for. Except the damn weapon swap animations take a long time to play, so you waste a lot of time waiting for the weapons to swap. Often in the middle of combat, because pickups will be all over the place, and could otherwise be reducing your movement space to dodge enemy attacks, because youknow, giant hitbox, so you need all the space you can get.

I haven't even mentioned how you get ammo: They drop RANDOMLY from enemies.
When you kill an enemy, they drop one of the following:
-Small HP orb
-Big HP orb
-Small ammo orb
-Big ammo orb
-Nothing

So you are entirely down to LUCK on what resources you get. Sometimes you are low on one thing, and you get the other and vice-versa. Not to mention some levels REQUIRE you to use a specific weapon to blow up walls. So if you're out, tough luck, enjoy being softlocked.

There's also destructible decorations that you can break for a drop like killing enemies. So naturally, when you are in need of ammo, you will use melee to break these for a chance of ammo drop. Because you don't want to be wasting ammo when you're low on ammo. Except after a few levels, ALL of these destructible decoration have a chance to be cursed, which causes an explosive projectile to come flying out if you break it, which deals a lot of damage, and is pretty much guaranted to hit you if you melee the object. Meaning that using melee is not worth it to break these objects for ammo anymore. So now you are forced to waste ammo to break these objects for ammo when you are low on ammo! What the actual f***! So it just entirely stops being worth breaking, because you will usually end up wasting more ammo than gaining from random chance drops from it.

The lack of ammo I had as a result almost made me rage quit very early on. Except I read of a little exploit you can use after beating the first boss. You see, this game has a map system and lets you re-visit a boss arena to re-fill your health. So before starting any level, I have to re-visit the old boss arena and pick up the health and ammo re-fills. A convenient thing to do to get around the bad ammo balancing.

Later levels get more frustrating and confusing, where the game fails to inform the player on where to go. So I had to look up a wallkthrough, and when I finally got to one of the last levels with confusing design of where to, and painstakingly progressing through the map on low HP, I got killed and lost my patience having to go all the way back to the last checkpoint, which you can only activate once or a second time after you've activated a whole different checkpoint. But because so far there was only 1 checkpoint in the level, it means that it only saved until my first passing of the checkpoint, not my second passing. I was not in the mood to re-do all that same stuff again on low HP and gave up on the game.

Soyeah, all in all, game with a lot of potential, but ruined by plenty of design flaws.
Could easily be made more playable by reducing the hitbox size and adding manual save options. Then again, the ammo issues are pretty bad too, but at least least you can get around by using the arena.

Unfortunately, I can't say I'd recommend this game. Despite liking the turok 1 and 2 ports, I'm finding this game just too dull. It's probably not all night dives fault, given they didn't make the originals. They variety of enemies just feels too low and fighting them feels like it's lacking too. Scorpions and scarabs are basically the same, the Horus guys just spam shots from the back, and with the confined nature of the levels you're effectively forced into just backing up to what ever corner you can find to fight them, as your hit box is so big you can't evade the shots due to the walls (especially in the numerous corridors).

The arenas need to be bigger to facilitate more active combat, and the number of enemies would also need to be increased. Also, shooting enemies is also a bit of a pain due to heavy auto aim (I couldn't see a way to disable it) which means if the enemies are grouped, you always hit the one in front regardless. Again, if the arenas were bigger, you could strafe to split them up, but the levels don't really let you do that. As a result, you're left with few actual options in a fight, which makes it dull and repetitive.

It may have got better after the 2 hour mark (I'd got to the mines by then), but I hadn't enjoyed it to that point so I've decided to return it. Bit of a shame really, oh well.

If you've ever heard about this game, you know it's praised for it's unusual, medroidvania-like style. And while that's pretty novel, especially for 96, you are still playing an old school FPS - so how is rest of the game?

Not very good, I'm afraid. I've been playing shooters since the late 90's. It's my favorite genre, and I've finished many, many games on the hardest difficulties - I've very much enjoyed the remasters of Quake 1 and 2 that recently came out, especially, because they received enough care and improved some of the shortcomings of the originals - Powerslave doesn't get that treatment. Imagine you're playing whatever classic FPS from the 90's you can think of. Now imagine having no manual saves and having to rely on checkpoint system. Imagine bunch of levels with homing projectiles that follow you behind corners. Imagine your typical clunky, floaty controls and imagine doing a lot of platforming that can lead to instant death with them. Are you having fun yet? Mind you, it's not bad - just because a game is challenging, doesn't mean it's anything wrong about it. But let's dissect this mummy properly.


The difficulty and the checkpoint system can be deeply infuriating. There are several really obnoxious and hard sections, which were either poorly balanced by inexperienced designers back in the day, or purpusefully made too difficult. It starts innocently enough, but you will encounter too many cheap deaths. Time will be wasted for sure, but hey, at least you will get your chance to "git gud".

The problem is that these days, Powerslave doesn't compete with games that were made at the time of it's release. Hell, Half-life makes this game look positively ancient, and that's a game that came two years later. Half-life... the original. The exploration system is novel, and I wish developers would explore it with new ideas and better gameplay, which represents the several decades of progress, but in Powerslave's format, it's just not that good - I remember the game not getting the most flowing ovations at the time of release. The core gameplay isn't that satisfying to justify the poor level design, unless you just haven't played any other good shooter in decades. On pure shooting aspect, this is just your average 90's shooter, with some frustrating and some rather dull enemies. Would you enjoy Doom more, if on top of floaty movement, you were forced to do a lot of platforming, said platforming could kill you at any moment, and you weren't allowed to save, instead of relying on stupidly placed checkpoints?


I didn't have a problem with player's hitbox, which many people have complained about, I had problems about how much damage some of the enemies do, and how unfair some of these segments (not a lot of them, but it will happen) are. You will go through obnoxious gauntlets of tiny rooms, enemies with exploding homing projectiles, and not a lot to counter that, other than patience and god-like reflexes. Because if you make enough mistakes, it's back to the checkpoint for you. Also, few levels in, the pots, which you always want to break to get the much needed ammo and health pickups, will eventually start spawning incredibly potent exploding snakes at random! Meaning that you can either get a powerup, or get something that will take an entire life away - say goodbye to using your knife to conserve ammo.

Enemies can be divided to two groups - one that will rarely pose any challenge and you want to deal with them the most efficient way possible, and those that are really deadly, like the homing mummies, or the rampaging catgirls (don't get excited, not those kind of catgirls). Both groups will eventually annoy you - one will bore you, the other will frustrate you.


I'll be honest, some of the difficult parts felt rewarding after finally dealing with them, and I've started appreciating some parts of the game, but I never got used to some of the overwhelming frustration of you just not knowing what will come next, and having to pay for it with replaying those parts again and again, just because it's cheap. It's not 'bad' per say, but I don' want to keep rationalizing something I just didn't like very much. I went through the game with stubborness, not because I was really looking forward to what comes next.

Later levels contain way too many random and bizarre secret sections, which often feel like they are necessary for you to not struggle through levels, and is seems like a sign that there just wasn't enough testing going on. The Kilmaat levels at the very end are just frustrating - let me give you just one example, the laser room. If you've played the game, you know. Nightdive seems to be getting lazier with their remasters, because this just shouldn't be in the game. You need to navigate yourself with very clunky controls through pixel perfect laser trap, where you don't exactly know how far across your screen you should be positioned, because again, your character's hitbox is really large, which is normally fine, but it screws you here. Again, seeing how Half-life did something very similar (the mined missile silo mission), except with good controls and good understanding where you can reach with your player model and where you can't.

I've also had some silly moments, where my fat, portly character with the biggest hitpoint of all time couldn't walk through a massive gap between a pillar and a wall, but the enemy could waltz right through it!

While the level design isn't some maze-like hellhole, you will have moments where you'll get stuck, and unfortunately, the metroidvania system isn't even that well utilized, there isn't an incentive to revisit any of the previous levels, unless you're looking for few collectibles (radio pieces), or when the game sends you there to continue. It's not bad, and it would be unfair to hold it against the developers at time.


The game has a novel egyptian theme, which is nice and all, some completely forgettable music, a ho-hum collection of weapons (crazily enough, the last weapon you get seems to be the weakest and most pointless of them all, I just didn't get it - I don't remember struggling how to use BFG in Quake 2) that aren't terrible, but also don't feel that great. The ammo scavenging aspect is fine, as the game forces you to use most of your weapons, but it can feel unfair, because the ammo drops are random! Yes, you've heard right, every enemy you kill has a chance of dropping something, but you just don't know what will drop. So you might be eventually getting either low on ammo, or health, or both, and then... well, you go back to some of the early levels to ressuply - arbitrary wasting of time, this game truly is ahead in more ways than one.

For it's time, the idea was grounbreaking, and the game itself was probably competently made, but it doesn't even hold a candle to the likes of Quake. If it was properly remade, removing some of the frustrating parts and questionable design decisions (random loot, exploding pots, checkpoints, better controls, more interesting and less frustrating enemies and the few last levels need a rework), it could be an absolute classic. But as it is, it's rightfully obscure.

Just because there is a dedicated fanbase around the game, doesn't make it better than it is, it just creates a bubble. Unless you've been hybernating in a cave for 25 years, or absolutely worship build engine-like games, be wary. Not a bad game, but also not a very good one. Only for the curious ones.

I love the setting, cutscenes, designs and presentation.

But it really isn't fun to revisit and recomplete the same levels over and over again just with 1 small change in order to progress such as a section being closed off since you need a longer air supply or a high jump so you need to complete different levels until you find that item, return to the level that needs you to use the item to pass it then eventually you'll hit another road block and need to repeat the same steps mentioned above for that section so with all enemies respawn and all keys need to be found again it makes it a really repetitive, tedious and annoying experience.

The hitboxes in this game are so weird mainly the players, it feels gigantic to the point it's near impossible to dodge enemy projectiles, not even jumping fixes this and it's a really weird design choice.

I went into it with a really positive mindset since i love Boomer Shooters and wanted to try out a Metroidvania mix to it. It sadly just didn't hit the mark for me, but i do understand why people love and appreciate this game.