As dragoon lover there said, Ecco: Defender of the Future has some extremely obtuse puzzles. One very early almost completely stumped me, and what made it worse is that I’d tried the solution a couple times already, but it turned out I hadn’t done it just right…
So if you ever play it, be prepared to give in and check a walkthrough once or twice, just in case, because giving up on it before things get really trippy would be a tragedy.
I want to try to clarify my personal context here though, and this may relate to Gehn’s sensibilities as well, and then just possibly yours Snow Girl. Since you’re such a big fan of the LoK series and Razial in particular. 
Soul Reaver is absolutely building from Tomb Raider’s example. And while it’s a lot more refined in many respects, and the change to free movement as opposed to TR’s “tank” controls turns it into a different beast altogether… you might be surprised at just how much of what you love from that game has it’s precedent in the original Tomb Raider. So I will also second that recommendation, though honestly, it could be almost impossible to go back to because of said controls. And don’t expect to be wow’d by the storytelling as such, but the progression of the story itself is really special. You might just want to get Tomb Raider Anniversary, as a very close second to the original, but if you actually feel like trying the old-school tank girl try to get hold of the Saturn version. While it looks bland and low-res in some ways compared to the PS, it’s got an absolute atmosphere that no other version achieves, and it also doesn’t have the constant texture glitches and polygon seams which partially destroy the mechanical immersion when playing on Playstation.
Now, for me there’s a whole historical drama entangling both of those games as well. Tomb Raider was originated as a Saturn project, and the Saturn version of the second game was virtually done when Sony tied up the franchise. I was so looking forward to playing it and seeing it because they supposedly fixed the discrepancies in the versions and even implemented some true transparency effects on Saturn. In retrospect it’s not such a big deal cause TR2 wasn’t half the game the original was anyway… but hmm, now that’s another prototype I’d pay to see released. (maybe it has? reminder to self… ) There’s an odd little irony there few people would have ever been aware of, in Tomb Raider becoming such a signature Sony asset: TR’s kind of ‘Lego Block’ level engine is actually rather inefficient for the PS hardware, because it has to use triangle primitives, so each and every surface in the environments is two polygons. The game was built for the Saturn, which is also confined to one kind of primitive… squares.
My first, and at this point still only exposure to LoK was Soul Reaver on the Dreamcast. And damn, it’s got some of the most brilliant gameplay setups I’ve ever seen. I think I still only got to it around spring 2001, so as I finished it the follow up was only months from release, I was SO primed to continue the adventure as you may imagine. But then it was only weeks later that the death of the Dreamcast was made official, and shortly after that the DC version of SR2 also canceled… again despite being virtually done. It’s hard for me to even gage how much my purely emotional reaction may have affected my overall mindset, this was still very much in the midst of the period when awareness of the inflated, fanatical, cult-like expectations for PS2 was a relentless assault on any gamer’s reason. I’d seen and played games on a friend’s self-imported PS2 since a couple days after the JP launch, but it was literally impossible to get anyone to believe that it wasn’t particularly impressive.
OK, long story sorry, basically after playing a demo of SR2 from I think an OPN mag or something, I kind of hated the color quality of the PS2 version, and even the kinetics seemed off from the DC game that I already loved. It was such a deja vu of the Tomb Raider circumstance, and it was such a generally depressing time period. At that point I’d still never owned any DOS/Windows computer, so PC gaming wasn’t even part of my worldview. I very painfully severed any connection or concern for the Soul Reaver series, as part of what became a personal protest of sorts, in my determination to not ‘need’ a PS2. Indeed I’ve never owned one since, and being roommates with said same friend for a few years around that time, I got to play some of the great games without having to. And since I’ve committed to an MGS4 PS3 pack which I’ll hopefully be getting in a couple weeks here, I will be able to die without ever having ‘owned’ a PS2. lol
But reading this thread and remembering these things, I will definitely play Soul Reaver again, then track down SR2 and Defiance, possibly even the original game but… might be hard to stay with, especially given I basically know the end.
Alright, this is all very tangential and oblique I know… but there are three games that I seem to be able to group together as very equivalent exploration/adventure focused 3D action games, that transcend others in achieving the same kind of obsessive immersion and sense of “I’ve never played anything like this before”.
Tomb Raider, only the original!
LoZ: Ocarina of Time.
Ecco: Defender of the Future.
Soul Reaver is also very close, but it’s also so close to Tomb Raider in so many little details that it couldn’t quite achieve the freshness factor. And somewhat the same for ICO, while it’s totally unique taken as a whole, it wasn’t possible for me to escape comparisons to TR on the mechanical level, and the puzzle aspect doesn’t have quite the same tangible quality… whereas the atmosphere and silent movie quality of storytelling didn’t reach the same impact of Another World, the other game it was most reminiscent of for myself. Still those two are right up there as well.
I almost want to include JSRF, but it’s more of a pure action affair. Still, I’ve always felt like it’s nearly equal parts Mario 64, Tomb Raider and Tony Hawk’s… as well as a greater portion of something all it’s own.
So… I’m writing this to ‘hear’ myself as much as anything, obviously. :anjou_embarassed:
But having been inspired to further define my tastes, in reading these other examples, I also wanted to impress on you the potential importance of some of these games Snow Girl. Please don’t let the commodity that Laura Croft became put you off, there’s reasons beyond her iconic T&A that the series became such a sleeper hit, trust us. Again, only concern yourself with the original. And I will say the same about Halo, this is from a person who got an XBOX almost by accident, or as a lark really. I had very low expectation for the system in general, but that game was such a perfect fit for everything about it, and such an amazing ride on it’s own, that it almost immediately became my sentimental ‘replacement’ for the DC. Of course that doesn’t mean you will love it, it’s still an FPS, yet again, just don’t let the hype and the fact it’s popular and all the other bullshit get in the way, judged simply as a game it’s as good as it gets, the first one I mean.
It’s because I’ve noted an acute similarity of taste between myself and Gehn, and that you seem to be somewhat in line with those same tastes - although from much less in the way of example - as I said I just felt like trying to impress the possible importance of these games you have missed. 
Oh, also Ninja Gaiden then, Gehn and me seem to agree on that one as well. Not much of an adventure exactly, but for a pure action rush there’s nothing that can even compare so far. There’s been as much talk of how hard it is as anything else, but it’s all about empowerment. You put the investment into getting good at the game, and you get rewarded for it in equal measure. It’s the only action game that actually approaches the quality of a great vs fighter in that respect, and when you start to ‘master’ it you understand that in reality you have far more genuine control over your fate than in most games in the general mold.
