La-Mulana does not give even the tiniest crap about you, and it's all the better for it. It wisely understands that playing as an action-archaeologist exploring mysterious ruins means hurtling into a confusing unknown, and everything about its play reinforces that. It's fantastically sprawling, fantastically confusing, and fantastically frustrating, but if you enjoy a taste of those elements, this could be the perfect game for you.

It's closest cousin is probably Super Metroid, but La-Mulana trades out the former's tight action gameplay for much, much, much more focus on puzzles and look-before-you-leap lethality. And not just block-pushing shenanigans. (Though there's no shortage of that, of course.) La-Mulana demands that you approach your adventure like an actual archaeologist. You'll need to pay attention to details, take diligent notes, understand the history of the ruins, and never, ever, stop looking for new nooks and crannies to explore. Metroidvania-style games often feature an element of sequence-breaking, allowing diligent/skilled players to tackle the game in unusual orders. La-Mulana stands alone in being so massive and so uninterested in shepherding you along a default path that it's hard to say if there's a "proper" sequence at all. Even killing major bosses might yield nothing more than a pat on the back. Rare is the game that puts you so thoroughly on your own.

That said, there are some big dings that make it more masochistic cult classic than masterpiece. For one, puzzles do branch into the realm of insane BS from time to time, and the game introduces (or rather, requires but does not introduce) a couple of unique environmental interactions along the way. Even if this kind of game is right in your sweet spot, keep the wiki bookmarked; you will need it at some point or another. Second, solving a puzzle triggers a confirmation sound effect, but the game doesn't show you what was unlocked or changed, which is a huge problem when the result is screens or entire zones away. And finally, things continue escalating in complexity all the way to the finale. While that would be fine in something like a platformer, here it means that you will absolutely be following a guide for the last big puzzle, and that it doesn't feel like you've come full-circle on the mysteries of La-Mulana so much as the it feels like the game just throwing more and more craziness at you.