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Well, I dissent.

I am in the middle of playing So Far right now, and while I rather liked it for a while, I am now at the point of absolutely, utterly, completely detesting it. I loathe it. I have played many IF games my life, but I have never hated a game like I hate this one. It is my absolute least favorite one ever.

It is *grossly* unfair; several of the puzzles make *no sense*. I have had to rely on hints more than I have in any other game, and I have solved very little on my own. One of them was so bad that even the hints weren't good enough, and I had to find a walk-through. It is the absolute *nadir* of gaming when you have to consult hints and walk-throughs, and then even when you're gotten through it, you *still don't know what you were doing or why*.

And all of this against a backdrop of "What the *fuck* am I doing?" I was in a theater, longing for and looking for my beloved, and instead, I'm somehow stuck in these weird worlds, each getting weirder than the next, *for no discernable reason*. What the hell am I trying to accomplish? Why am I here? Why is *any* of this here? As far as I can see, the most winning move was to just go home from the theater and skip all this nonsense.

And by the way, the very occasional reference to almost maybe seeing Aessa just serves to irritate more; it is a needle in your side reminding you that you are not remotely actually *doing* what you *want* to be doing, which is looking for her!

I am starting to think I will never play an Andrew Plotkin game again.

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While your disclaimer is honorable, hopefully nobody vaguely familiar questions the choice to include Zarf!

This was one of the first games I played when I discovered the rgif/raif world as a teenager. I don't remember too much about the details (I suspect I leaned heavily on a walkthrough and the symbolism went over my head). On the other hand, Spider and Web (1998?) is deeply implanted in my mind until this day. I assume you're not going to review another Zarf game this month, so let me wholeheartedly recommend that (shorter, less cruel) game to anyone who hasn't discovered it yet.

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Two masters of IF, one reviewing the other.

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Interesting as always! One point of style: I'm reasonably well read, but I don't work in software, and so I had never come across the word "toolchain" before. Maybe a bit jargony.

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Good note-- thank you!

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