[Note: some comments got lost on the server switch, so here they are again -- Miffy's and then my response]

I'm kind of interested to know what platform you played it on. I can see it being very frustrating with a mouse and keyboard, but when I played it on Xbox I found the combat very smooth and the puzzles never gave me all that much trouble. Honestly, there were only a couple of occasions where I even needed to remember I had the dagger.

I was late to the party as well, playing SoT for the first time in late 2006, so I'm only about a year off your playthrough. Completely different opinion though. Actually just picked up Warrior Within and Two Thrones for a combined $20, so I'll be playing through those pretty soon as well. Hope you enjoy TT more than you did SoT.

I played it on the PS2, since I unfortunately bought it for it years ago (I much prefer the xbox). I don't know if it's somehow different on the xbox, but the camera was *constantly* getting stuck behind things or giving me a bad angle.

It only took me eight hours to beat, so it's not like I died a billion times or anything, but replaying the same (slow) puzzle parts a few times gets annoying. Example: towards the end when you don't have the dagger, there's a section where you have to climb up a pillar, jump over to something, shimmy across a ledge, and a bunch more jumps and things. Then you reach a hollow pillar that you need to wall-jump up the inside of.

Well, the wall-jumping timing was always a bit weird, so I died a couple times right there, especially since the camera can't even go up the inside of that pillar! Without the dagger, you have to do that whole section again until you make it, which is fun the first time, and SLOOOOW every time after that. It just feels like a waste of time. Maybe I've just gotten impatient over the years now that I have so many games to play.

I did like the game overall though. Honestly, if I didn't write this review, I would probably look back at this game very fondly a year from now. Even days later I felt like I was being too hard on the game — but I wrote this review *right* after finishing the game, and really was that pissed off at the game while playing it, which is what counts.