So this is going to be more of a rant rather than a review, but, oh well.
Apparently this game is not too popular and is now about 10 years old, by developers which shut down quite a while ago. So I guess no one would ever care about it anyway, but I just had to put down my thoughts somewhere.
Prisoner of Ice is supposedly a sequel, or rather a spiritual successor to another game, The Shadow of the Comet. The two games deal with Lovecraftian settings and the famous Cthulhu and Co.
This game alone wouldn't anger me so much if it wasn't meant to be a continuation to Shadow..
But, while Shadow of the Comet is a masterpiece in my opinion, even up to this day, Prisoner of Ice has really nothing to do with it regarding almost every aspect.
While Shadow of the Comet has a superb atmosphere and would still make me feel nervous and creeped out, if played at night, and is a rather though nut to crack on your own, Prisoner had disappointed me deeply and really didn't make me feel anything special towards it, and didn't even manage to deliver an enjoyable experience.
First things first, Prisoner has very little connection to the previous game. There's a minor twist towards the end of the game which connects the two together but it's very minor and doesn't really worth it to be honest.
Besides that, Prisoner doesn't manage to impress too much on its own. It's extremely short, it's puzzles, which are the main and only gameplay elements, are either ridiculously easy or ridiculously vague. Story is short as well and rather banal, not interesting at all. Not much spoken text but whatever that's dubbed is done so with mediocre to really bad voice acting. Graphics are not that impressive, there was an attempt to integrate to the 2D backgrounds some 3D models. That's usually always ugly, but some games managed to make it look passable. Not this one. There are no interesting environments, there's no good atmosphere, just some very grayish graphics and a pretty annoying soundtrack.
And don't even make me start talking about the casual pixel hunting that would be required once in a while, or the timed puzzles.
The only point of relief I felt in this game was when the story connected to Shadow of the Comet.
There's some good in Prisoner of Ice, but really not much. Unfortunately I feel that its bad sides really overcome the entire experience. The fact that is some sort of a 'sequel' to a much, much better game doesn't make things any better.
In short, I guess no one would ever read this review anyway, but if anyone does - I strongly recommend you to just play Shadow of the Comet and leave this one alone.