Seth, a young man arrives at the ancient city of Atlantis, the center of all knowledge on Earth. He has been chosen to be a Companion, a member of the queen guardians, for Queen Rhea. Just as he gets to his new lodgings at the Companions building, news arrives of the kidnapping of the queen, supposedly by the barbarians who inhabit the rest of the world outside Atlantis.
Companions are forbidden to look into the matter, as the consort of the Queen, Creon wants to take care of the matter himself. Seth sets out to investigate the matter himself, as it soon becomes evident Creon has kidnapped Rhea himself, as he wants to annex full control over Atlantis as well as push out the worship of the Moon goddess Ammu for the Sun god Sa'at.
As Seth is now the only one, who knows the truth, Creon demands his capture. With the help of some friends, he manages to rescue the queen, but he insists that she has betrayed her people and is not fit to rule anymore. Seth claims otherwise and tells her, that she is the only one who can defeat Creon.
During his travels, Seth learns Creaon has created a new weapon he aims to use against the barbarian races. Seth manages to find a Light Crystal from Easter Island and returns to Atlantis, where he defeats Creaon. His weapons have caused the Atlantean volcano to erupt and in the end, Seth can do nothing else but watch how the great city sinks under the ocean.
Cryo Interactive became known as one of the 1990s developers, who were pushing the early 3D graphics as far as they could with the technology of the time. Atlantis is not an exception in their catalog and the game is presented in pre-rendered areas you can freely view in 360 degrees. Each scene change is accompanied by a transitional video, which is also skippable, which is nice.
The game also is fully voice-acted, even reasonably well, considering the era. Music is top-notch as well, so as far presentation of the game and its story goes, Cryo has done a good job. As such, Atlantis is quite a cinematic game, with most of the development cost having obviously gone to the audio and visuals of the game.
While there's nothing technically wrong with the game, it is, at times, frustrating to play thanks to various scenes where you need to quickly react to the events, like running away from the captors or finding a way to dispose of your enemies as fast as you can. On a couple of occasions, you need to trial and error yourself through areas filled with enemies, trying to avoid being captured.
Puzzles range from easy to hard, but at times the biggest obstacle is, that the game doesn't always telegraph clearly what it expects you to do. There's also a handful of puzzles that exist merely for filling rather than any other story-related reason, which does make these puzzles stand out quite a bit considering how story-heavy game Atlantis is.
Also, some puzzles you need to do several times, as the game doesn't have a concept for unlocked puzzles, that could be skipped once they are solved. If a closed door requires a puzzle to be solved for it to open, you can be sure you need to do that puzzle again if and when you go back the same way again.
I wouldn't call Atlantis: The Lost Tales a good game, but I can say it is an interesting game. Quite often I was more frustrated rather than entertained, but the story and the presentation were enough to pull me back until I finished the game. That said, there are some good full playthroughs of the game on YouTube, which might serve just as well if the puzzles or the gameplay are too much for you.
If you want to play Atlantis: The Lost Tales yourself, you can get it easily enough from GOG, often accompanied by a solid discount. At its cheapest, it's often less than a euro, so you can't really go wrong with that.
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