Undeniably fun "zelda-vainia" that's very much worth playing, but not without it's flaws. Other than at the beginning combat is more nuisance than anything else. I suppose that's better than punishingly hard, but it would have helped keep the puzzle parts of the game fresh if the combat had been better balanced. The puzzles are better, with a steady but increasing difficulty level. That said, the design is a bit scattershot, rather than having a few puzzle mechanics and slowly ratcheting up the complexity on those, the game just kept on introducing completely new mechanics. I suppose some people might like the huge variety, and none of the puzzle elements were boring, but it would have been more fun to me to see how far each could have been pushed instead. Finally, the jump physics are crap in this game, jumping is much closer to prolonged floating than actual parabolic movement. If the game had been more focused on platforming this would have been a serious problem, but as is it barely effected any of the actual puzzle-based game play.

With all those criticisms you might wonder why I recommend it. But in fact it's a really fun package, and while I was often annoyed by the above issues, they merely reduced the game from "game of the year" to "pretty fun". I'm in no hurry to play the sequel though.