Although this is easily one of my favorite games of all time, I feel like it would be hard for me to recommend this game to any sane person, and I am just barely insane enough myself to enjoy this game. La-Mulana is a puzzle heavy metroidvania that quite frankly, does not want to be completed. As of right now, the achievement for beating the game sits at only 5.7% of players. This game is littered with brutal platforming and combat, and many of the most arcane puzzles that you will ever see. You should not be surprised by instant death traps. It took me just under 40 hours of this for my playthrough, which is extremely long for a metroidvania. If you are completely out of your mind, like me, and read this and think, "that sounds amazing," then this is the game for you.

Other than its abhorrent difficulty (mostly from puzzles) which would be the reason I would deter the normal person from touching this, the game actually has a lot going for it. The soundtrack is great. The story, which is told through the puzzles, is very interesting, even if you guess the twist pretty early on like I did. The bosses have a real gravitas to them, and I will always remember when I first fought Elmac, the boss of the Egyptian area, and how awed and intimidated I was by his whole sequence. I'd consider the combat to be like "old school Castlevania+." You move like a bag of thrown bricks and are only slightly more nimble than ye olde Simon Belmont.

This game feels like a ruin that does not want to be opened, does not want to be explored, and does not want to be solved, and I cannot express how it feels to, despite its best efforts, persist and complete it. Unfair is the name of the game, and either you like challenge for the sake of it, or you don't. I recommend this only to closeted masochists.