For such an important piece of history, there should be nothing but praise for this groundbreaking text adventure, right?

No, I'm pretty sure it was frustrating then and is frustrating now. The game starts with you in front of a mysterious house, soon embarking on some kind of quest for the great Treasures of Zork to get inside a tomb. Finding out the controls takes a bit of practice but figuring out directional shortcuts and putting items into things should be a relatively straightforward task. Saving and restoring is also quite useful, as the player will most often die through some mistake or other.

Given the wide and expansive nature of the game, it's surprising (even by drawing out the map) how easy it is to get lost or do the wrong thing. While the beginning starts out easily enough (use sword on troll, woo), avoiding the darkness and the grue within and the random nature of a nasty Thief can become a chore. Things like forests and coal mines will render the player hopelessly lost, and may lose track of very important items in a very limited inventory space.

Some will find this adventure captivating for the first 30 minutes, but once they're looking for an exit, it's a bit disheartening how Zork can irritate, frustrate, and bore the player with so many keys to so many locks and punishing logic that doesn't quite encourage exploration without heavy saving/restoring.

Play: 7/10 Advanced parser, clear communication of when items are acquired. I love the labeling of rooms. And tho the RNG-based "enemies" of text adventures make me mad, this feels legitimate as the true successor to Colossal Cave. With all that positive stuff being said, tho, it's just too much a chore to get through. Like Colossal Cave, Stuga, and Acheton etc were, but those were innovative fresh and rightfully rudimentary.

Feel: 7/10 As popular as this was, and the very special feel it has, it still is just a rehash of Colossal Cave's frustrations. Scott Adams, Roberta Williams, heck even Lafore, invented their own flavor of the collect-treasure-in-a-room. Nevertheless, I kept wanting to push through, and kept retrying, so that says something...

Attachment: 8/10 Fact is, I had already tried this twice and now returned to it again. And that says something. Certainly a game I won't forget, and a game I have respect for, but even on a night I was super excited to play it, and ready to try Zork II since it's actually the next game in my chronology project, I couldn't push through some endgame frustrations, even with the Save function yes. Just eventually tire of it all, and for me, instead get ready to watch The Wire with my husband who just got home from work! Perfect timing. Moving on. Will try Zork II some time this week.