I've owned this since launch or close to and I'm just now beating it fifteen years later. When I originally started up this most recent attempt, I thought my memories of this game being brutal in terms of difficulty were just hyperbolic thoughts remaining from my teens but no it really is ruthless at times.

There's a lot of satisfaction to be found here in various gameplay elements (exploring the island, building furniture for your cave, fishing, improving your cooking, hunting, etc.) if you can get past what feels like the full time job of taking care of your two characters. Dealing with the energy, hunger, and thirst bars is hanging over your head at all times but it gets easier to deal with it all in time. Will most people stick with this long enough to get into the groove for it to make island exploration/progress easier? Probably not but that's okay, it's an acquired taste.

I will say that the whole bit where you have to travel across pretty much the whole island to do a series of ten or so pushing block puzzles is absolutely wack. I made one attempt to do this whole gauntlet of mess and got back to my cave with 1% health, an empty hunger bar, and a low energy and thirst one. If I died at that point I probs would've just dropped the game completely. Not sure what the idea for that whole thing was but it's Bad.

Looking forward to returning to 2 and 3 eventually. Maybe the Wii game as well.