A frustrating, unrewarding game that punishes exploration at much as it requires it.

The puzzles themselves are fairly straightforward but they're locked behind an item that you haven't unlocked so you mentally solve the puzzles within seconds of encountering it (they often give so many clues there's no chance you could mess it up) but have to wait 15 hours until you unlock the item required to actually plug in the solution.

Sometimes a puzzle will make a change in a random area, so your progress will stall for an hour until you find a door that spawned from thin air in a random area after a boss fight.

Exploration requires more consumables than it rewards, so sometimes you'll be grinding low level enemies so you can buy a 400 gold item that is necessary to make progress.

A well designed hard puzzle is one where all the elements are available to you but it requires ingenuity to see how they fit together. This is more like a word search someone won't let you complete until you look under every object in the room to find a pen.

This is a game I've never beaten before, but it has a lot of nastolgia for me, so I will open this review with a bit of backstory on my history with this game. I will hide it here as well as the backstory to this version's release to save some space for those who don't care.
Wayyyyyy back in 2008 (so I would've been 12), I had just discovered DeceasedCrab's Youtube channel, and these magical things called Let's Plays. His playthrough of the original La-Mulana absolutely wowed me back then, with how clever this new video format was, combined with just what a crazy game this was. Now, almost 10 years later, I have FINALLY beaten La-Mulana myself. I played through on hard-mode (activated it as soon as I could, and beat all bosses with it), and finished in a little under 14 hours in game time, but more like 25 or 30 hours according to Steam time. I also used a wireless 360 controller to play it with, which I highly recommend over using the keyboard for simply ergonomic reasons (plus this version was designed explicitly to be played with a controller (It even has rumble support!)).

The original La-Mulana was made as a love letter to MSX-era action RPG's, especially Castlevania (where La-Mulana gets its whipping, sub weapons, and buying items) and Galius Maze (where it gets its idea for all of the puzzles, passive items, and sprawling overworld). There were also a TON of copyrighted references, as a big part of the collectibles in the game were collecting MSX cartriges, and one of the main character's main tools was his MSX which he used to interpret the runes in the ruins (as well as several other puzzle and secret-related things). As a result a LOT of the original game is making maps by hand, taking down notes on tons of NPC dialogue and tablets you find (physically, as at least a clue if not the outright answer to every puzzle is somewhere, just usually not close by), and solving mind-bending puzzles. It was a very old-school level of hard in the puzzle category, as well as having fairly difficult action segments. At its core, it accomplished exactly what it wanted to do, in my opinion.

Some time later, Nigoro (the guys who made it, who'd only made flash games until then) got a green light to do a remake for Wii Ware, which sat in a very sad development limbo for AGES while they got the game super optimized for the Wii. Changing all of the graphics, the graphical style (as the original game was 8-bit, and this was not), change several puzzles to have them make sense/be possible without a keyboard (which the original game used extensively, like Galius Maze did), as well as removing all copyrighted material and references were an undertaking that took much longer than originally planned, but it eventually happened, and everyone rejoiced! You can't buy points for the Wii shop anymore, but that version, with some minor improvements based on player feedback, was ported to PC soon after the Wii release.

NOW THAT THAT'S OUT OF THE WAY, to my experience with the game. It's a 2D platformer action adventure game. I hesitate to call it an Action RPG because there's no actual leveling up, but there's so much other shit that it's like the most RPG-ish action adventure game that isn't an RPG ever.

It really lived up to its name in terms of the puzzle department. I got about halfway through the game before I just totally ran out of ideas on what to do or where to go. I wasn't taking notes at all, and if you're just trying to remember everything, you're gonna be SOL eventually. Especially the Gate of Illusion and everything connected to it, I wouldn't hold it against anyone for using a guide for the rest of the game once you hit that point (as I did). Though the game is huge, there's really not that much that's optional, as you'll have to do just about everything eventually whether its to progress the story or to get an item to make life easier (like the one that makes you immune to bats(!!!)).

My favorite part of the game by far is the bosses though. They're all apparently designed to be beatable with JUST your normal weapons, but I wasn't nearly crazy enough to try to do that (especially on hard mode). The sub-weapons really make life a lot easier, especially the shurikens. You even have a kind of emergency item for super hard bosses in the form of the pistol, which is a very powerful instant-travel-time projectile weapon, however, ammo for it is VERY expensive (however farming money isn't that hard if you know what to do). The bosses are all fucking great, and are very reminiscent of old Castlevania (although more-so Galius Maze) bosses. They're a fantastic upgrade to the old version of La-Mulana's bosses to work in a 60 fps environment, and they look great.

Speaking of looking great, this is a damn pretty game. The graphics are colorful and lush, and each environment really looks different. The OST is fanTASTIC as well, and a very large chunk of it now rests on my mp3 player as a testament to that.

And in case the normal platforming isn't hard enough, there's always the Hell Temple as well if you just hate yourself that much. I miiight go through it, but I don't know. It's pretty freaking hard enough on normal mode XD

Verdict: Recommended. I hesitate to highly recommend a game like this, just because I didn't go into it blind, and pretty much everyone here would be (and the other game I recommend like that seems to get negative attention whenever I mention it on here XD). If you like old school action adventure games, I'd say it's worth a try, especially if you have it from a Humble Bundle (which I think is where my Steam version is from) or can get it cheap on a Steam sale or something. It's pretty damn hard though, so it's not for the feint of heart, or those who are either unwilling to ever use a walkthrough or spend ages taking notes or testing how to solve puzzles. I love this game though, and now I've finally beaten it :D

Note: If you want a game that is much more like a spiritual successor to Galius Maze without all of the fuck-crazy puzzles like La-Mulana, Hydra Castle Labyrinth is a fantastic freeware game you can get online. It didn't have an English translation when I played it years ago, but it's just an action adventure game, and the only text is just telling you what items do, so language skills are totally optional :)