Staying a little too faithful to its late ’90s inspiration, Oddworld Soulstorm is a punishingly unfair experience that may appeal to series diehards but will be hard to stomach for those more accustomed to modern games.

Oddworld was a hit in 1997 when it was introduced to gamers via Abe’s Oddysee, and deservedly so; the dark fantasy tale of slavery and brutal emancipation — set against a cutting edge refinement of cinematic platformers like Prince of Persia — was unlike anything else we’d seen at the time.

Soulstorm is a sequel to that original game, following 2014’s Oddysee remake and supplanting 1998’s Abe’s Exoddus. And while the presentation and narrative here are fresh and perfectly relevant to 2021 — Abe once again has to free his slave caste Mudokan people, this time not only from murder and meat farms but also from substance addiction machinated by the creepy corporate Glukkons — the gameplay is arduously familiar.

Each level is an hour-long series of puzzles and traps that for the most part need to be sorted out via trial and error, with long sections often repeated because Abe is so easily obliterated by the slightest opposition. It can be very rewarding to distract and sneak around trigger-happy Slig enemies, possess them to take each other out, or coat them in flammable brew just as they step in front of a bonfire, but less so when you have to do it all over again because you mistimed a bomb defusal or a jump through rotating blades seconds after.

Controls have been updated since Exoddus, and an entirely new crafting system has been implemented, but at times I found these innovations actively hampering me when applied to this old-fashioned design. For example actions like jumping or clambering down ledges are easy to get wrong without the stalwart grid-based architecture of the original PlayStation games, and the mix of unforgiving design with unpredictable and uneven controls makes for a frustrating experience.

At launch the game was also plagued with technical hitches that prevented progress or wasted consumables, inevitably breaking the game and forcing you to manually restart from the nearest (occasionally distant) checkpoint. I took a break from playing for a week and came back to find updates had placed the game in a much more stable place, but unfortunately a good deal of the frustration is down to design choices rather than glitches. It feels like a 1998 game haphazardly updated.

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Meanwhile a meta-challenge judges you on how much killing you allow in each level, gating you off from the final level and the good ending if there’s too much blood on your hands. It’s an interesting concept, and again those pining for a pure Oddworld experience may relish replaying each level as passively as possible. But being stealthy and keeping your incredibly stupid Mudokan comrades alive adds still more frustration to the mix, meaning I’m happy to leave Abe with his unfortunate and unsatisfying conclusion.

Oddworld remains a captivating place in a visual and thematic sense, and I enjoy everything about Soulstorm’s vibe; a naturalistic, spiritual culture struggling to avoid being snuffed out in a world dominated by industry, iron and greed. But unless you still enjoy playing the original games today, with their esoteric controls and remorselessly rigid design, it’s a difficult game to recommend.

Oddworld: Soulstorm is out now for PlayStation 5 (reviewed), PC and PlayStation 4.