YMMV / Zork Nemesis

• Early Game Hell: The game gets off to a pretty overwhelming start; after you solve the first puzzle in the game and enter the temple, you are greeted to a massive, sprawling hub area filled to the brim with journals and books full of walls of text subtly revealing the backstory information to you, which will especially come off as confusing if you didn't read the included journal with the game before booting it up. There is nothing done to help ease the player into this exposition dump, and furthermore, you have to solve four sets of puzzles related to the natural elements before the actual plot begins to kick in. Once that is done, the game mercifully becomes much more contained and streamlined.
• Narm: Thanks to a whole lot of So Bad, It's Good acting on the part of the alchemists.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Remember the grues? Those monsters that only dwell in pitch black? Now you can hear them.
  • The torture chamber in the basement of Irondune. Whenever you operate the machines, you hear flashbacks of people being subjected to them, and the screams of pain and agony that you hear are not cases of Narm. The fact the devices look well-worn just makes it even worse.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: Even with the aforementioned Early Game Hell, this game significantly dials back the difficulty curve from the previous game. While dying is retained, Unwinnable by Design moments have finally been done away with for good in this installment and the game takes a largely inventory free approach to puzzle design (similarly to Myst). In addition, since much of the game takes place in four smaller, self contained areas with no puzzle overlap, there are generally fewer possible solutions to puzzles at any one given time, and even the main hub area has an optional hint system if you really get overwhelmed.

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