Where are you going?

Earlier this week, I posted some musings about a vague game called Sorcery. This in turn triggered memories of another vague game I played during the C64 era.
Behold: Quo Vadis!

Original video located here. Accessed 24th August 2016

This game is interesting on a technical stand point. As is my understanding, it was the first game in history to boast over 1000 screens! It was so enormous it took some sizable effort to squeeze it into the C64's memory! And it even was doing the Metroid shtick before Metroid was a thing!
And I will admit, from someone with an interest in traditional dark fantasy, there's something appealing in seeing a Crusader knight (as evidenced by the Christian cross on his shield) descending into an underground cavern to fight a horde of monsters.

But I didn't make much progress in the game itself - mostly because I had no idea what i was supposed to do. This may have been my first exposure to free-roaming gameplay but my young mind didn't realize it at the time. As such I was baffled as to where I supposed to be going and what I was supposed to be doing. And even now I admit this game was vague: Why, that ending message that appeared at the end of the game is indeed unclear whether the player had successfully completed the game or not.

But what was particularly frustrating with this game was the stiff controls: If the PC slipped and fell, he would plunge straight down with the player being unable to do a thing about it. The worst part of it was when the player slipped up on the rope and fell a long way down to the lava pit below. It was a long fall and the player was helpless to prevent seeing the PC plummeting to his doom. It was agonizing to watch and very punishing to the player's mindset (like the computer was saying: "Look what you've done you jackass!")/ Needless to say, I eventually gave up on this game and never looked back - until now of course.

Some good ideas but in the end, vague and frustrating.