Once the game-play veers out of the realm of combat, things start to take a turn for the worse. The camera is not user-controlled and is often of great hindrance when trying to explore the areas or sense the position of enemies. It also sometimes becomes stuck on the scenery, most notably during the Elephant Demon boss battle, where it requires the player to drop down from their elevated position in order to un-stick the camera.

It becomes apparent early on that the reason for the lack of a user-controlled camera is because the game is full of unseen boundaries that the developers clearly wanted to avoid players discovering. Every game world has its limits, but it is disappointing to see it sectioned off so crudely. Conan is continually unable to jump over objects that are no more than a foot off the ground and leaps of faith are often met by an invisible mid-air wall, sending him crashing back down to earth.  Further to this, it is impossible to backtrack in almost all of the levels, as artificial barriers are created once Conan goes past a certain point.

The most annoying moments come when Conan is required to traverse the landscape around him. The platforming controls are incredibly sluggish and Conan himself seems loathe to grab hold of ledges on occasion, leading to an inevitable fall to a bloody death.  The game-over screen then decides to rub it in by somewhat ironically suggesting that “a barbarian blames no other for failure”.

Although the game-play fails to hit the epic heights that it seems to aim for, the soundtrack is truly spectacular and really adds greatly to the experience. Each mood and area is perfectly captured and it is a delight from start to finish. Most impressive is the merging of the soundtrack into the combat sections. When Conan is fighting sufficiently well, the music changes to the ‘Song of Death’, which then increases the power of his weapon, allowing for even more brutality than usual. Interestingly, Conan was scored by Mike Reagan, who also did some work on the soundtrack of – you guessed it – God of War.