Is this what I can expect through the whole game?

[Dr. Cecil Corndog]

The floor gives way, without warning, and drops me onto spikes, and I die. A giant statue kneels down as I'm walking past, and I die. I step into a room and, as soon as I do, another giant statue crumbles on top of me, and even though I have full health, I die.

I enjoy hard games, but La Mulana is more cheap than hard. And the relatively small number of save points means there's a lot of backtracking. I want to like this game, but if the whole thing is full of death traps that give me no chance to react and obtuse puzzles, then I'd rather spend my time on something else.

[Dentorhedge]

The beginning/middle of the game has more instant death than the end, but it is relatively costant. The puzzles will grow "more obtuse" and require you to piece together multiple clues from different areas. Oh, well.

Just wondering- what were you expecting from an archaeological ruins exploration game besides death traps that one has to think ahead to prevent and puzzles one would have to spend a few hours musing over?

[Sicris]

The number of death traps is not that large like you're making it sound (in the beginning of the game sure it looks like that but you can say the same thing about dark souls technically). And 90% of the time there is a trap there is usually an indication for it (except hell temple but that's a special case). Also you do have the ability to warp to any save location in the game at any time so that's not a real issue either.

[Dr. Cecil Corndog]

The thinking ahead isn't the issue; it's that I'm frequently given no time to react. And I enjoy spending time thinking about a good puzzle, but the puzzles so far in this game have often been annoying.

[Traysandor]

La-Mulana doesn't mess around with its traps, yeah.The game expects you to learn from those deaths though, so that you don't suffer the same cruel fate twice. You will probably still die fairly often as you go about the game (Spikes, crusher traps, lava, bosses, getting struck by lightning,and more!). Fortunately, an item that you obtain very early onnot only makes navigating between the game's main areas much easier, it also makes dying more of an annoyance than an actual gameplay hinderer - most of the time anyways. Just be sure you save manually before you quit the game (The autosave slot is deleted when you exit the game)

On a final note, in almost any circumstance, once you obtain this certain item, you are free to warp back to the Surface, there is a Hot Spring on the edge of the village that will recover your HP. (You won't be able to warp during any of the Guardian fights, nor out of a specific late-game locatoin, but other than that feel free to use it as much as you need to.

It won't save you from crusher traps (Instant kill) and may not save you from fixed damage events (Spikes always do 15% of your max HP and grtting struck by lightning does 30% of your max HP)

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Yeah, there's an early-game item that basically lets you teleport out of danger and save and heal up practically anytime, anywhere. Also, you can get an item that speeds up movement pretty early in the game too. You get the double-jump roughly at the middle of the game.

And you will want to exercise some degree of common sense -- such as breaking an object above you may cause it to fall on you. (Though you may want to disobey common sense to get some achievements.)

[River's]

If you are afraid of the insta-deaths, you can buy this game with no fear because their number reduces exponentially after the first hour of play. IMO you should be more concerned about the obtuse puzzles. If you already think they are "obtuse" then forget La-Mulana. The puzzles grow harder and harder as you progress, and to tell the truth the first puzzles are so delightful since they are challenging for a platform game (which La-Mulana is not, but may look like at first) so you quickly learn to change your way of thinking according to the puzzles.

La-Mulana is my favourite game on Steam, even though I had to use a walkthrough maybe five times in the second half of the game because of some deliberately misleading or extremely obscure clues and other few untold things. The best is having a friend who can tell you when you are stuck in some of these impossible puzzles.

[xen_tech]

I think one of its major fault are the puzzles some make sense others have clues that even when put together if you canf figure out said clues it still doesn't make much sense hopefully the sequel has better clues that instead of beating your head against a wall you can actually decihper a meaning

[Vil]

Well, it stands to reason that if you can't figure out the clues, it still won't make sense. Or did you mean that if you *can* figure out the clues, it's still pretty confusing? I'll grant that one, but then again those were some of my favorite puzzles.

Although I really, really liked the "a-ha" feeling of finally figuring out some particularly obnoxious puzzle. I'd prefer that they erred on the side of "too difficult" so long as they do put a hint about everything, *somewhere*. After all, you can always put heads together online to figure out something tough, but if something's disappointingly easy/obvious there's no real way to make it more difficult.

[BananaJane]

You need to write down every single clue on a notepad and figure out which ones go together once you learn the context

[uuuhdavid]

This game truly is amazing, it makes you think for once besides a puzzle game... and actual difficult puzzles too!

[Batabii • Suikoden I&II HD]

Originally posted by High Altitude Scrub:

This game truly is amazing, it makes you think for once besides a puzzle game... and actual difficult puzzles too!

if by "difficult" you mean "insane" and "unintuitive", then yes.

The deaths were FAR less aggrivating then trying to solve the puzzles without cheating.