And the combat was laughably terrible. Still my favorite entry as well. I just felt so unhindered after getting through the first bit.
The one thing that really made it stand out to me was the caves. Some were short, most had hidden places in them that would normally be a pain to get to, and the larger ones were works of art.
It was one I watched all the way through to see if they ever managed to even it out… They didn’t. The pacing was terrible, the plot was worse, and the animation was somehow even worse than that. I think most ps1 games had smoother animations for their 3d models.