I've got caught at home and sent back to the asylum. The entrance to my home is closed now. The neighbour mentions a chimney, which I suppose is the way in. There are 2 issues however

1) I can't kill the soldier. He hits me with his rifle and I have no time to recover. By the time I can move again the next bullet hits me. Even at the rare occasions I get hand to hand I have no idea how to hit him. I press space like mad but nothing works.

2) Even when by a miracle I managed to get past him, I can't seem to jump high enough. How exactly do you get to the chimney.

I must have covered the asylum-home path like 10 times now. Really frustrating. The controls are awful.

The whole first game is awful. :( It's starts off WAY too difficult. One wrong move and Surgeon Grobo tranq's your ass and sends you back to your cell. And if you run into a wall or something you'll take damage. I've ragequitted out of this game for the last time now. I'm so glad they fixed all this in LBA 2. Love that game.

Thanks Ghostbreed.

Finally figured it out.
First of all get used to the weird save system and create multisaves always keeping in mind to play the correct one.

To kill the soldiers more easily change fight mode to Manual, and then attack using kicks.
But you don't have to kill him to get into the house. The place where you have to jump is not to the north side, but you have to go all the way round to the south side, just north of the pier and south of the elephant outside the door are some rocks on which you can jump, and then keep jumping on higher ledges to get to the chimney.

The controls can get really awkward in the beginning, but you'll get used to it. I disagree that the first game is awful, it starts off pretty hard yes, but it gets very intriguing, cool and easier once you get past the first 1-2 hours!

Did you know that you don't HAVE to get caught when you visit your home the first time around? When Zoë tells you to hide, you have a bit of time to run deeper into your house, then stand in a corner in discreet mode and press the spacebar to duck, this way the Super Grobo won't find you :)

I love LBA2 as well, but the plot of that game is way more generic, LBA1 holds a special place in my heart and I urge you to stick with it and experience it all the way through :)

Also; there should be a small fix floating around the internet that will remove taking damage from running into walls, making your life a lot easier ;D

Are you kidding me? That's way too long for me to wait until the game gets any better. Sorry.

Fair enough, but I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who's never played a game like this before and has to get a grip on the controls, save system and combat.

Slight spoilers:

Basically once you get off Citadel Island and speak with the Principal Island astronomer, the game gets a lot easier. For a new player, they'll get there between 1-2 hours, an experienced LBA player or genre-enthusiast could do this in half an hour give or take.

Yes, the start is hard. But keep in mind that this can be a 15-20 hour game when you're playing it for the first time, so when it gets a lot more playable after the first hour, that's a good freakin' deal.

Yes, I knew that. I was just too slow.

This is actually a nice thing about the game: you don't get yourself into a no-win situation. You get caught at the house? There is a way to enter it agin. You can try doing crazy things without worrying about having to save first.

I'm at the water tower now. And finding it pretty enjoyable. The controls are tedious, but just a matter of getting used to. What is very annoying though, is not so much the damage you take hitting walls when running, but the fact that it takes you some time to recover when you're being attacked and take damage. Essentially it means that a stupid fight can cause you do drop from full health to zero, because the distance between you and the enemy is such that as soon as you recover from one bullet, the next bullet hits you. You cant move, just press the F2 quickly key hoping you time it right and change to athletic mode so you can run away.

Nice to see you're making progress :)
The first part of the game is actually pretty much designed to make you avoid combat. The terrain is created in such a way that there's always room to run past or avoid soldiers and clones alltogether :)

A good way to die less is to study the enemies' patterns. A lot of them usually do a little thing before they actually start shooting (for example soldiers pick up their rifle from the ground or their backs) and it's a good little timeframe to haul your butt away from them hehe.

If you're still getting shot at and hit, remember that when you get hit you're knocked BACK. So turning your back on an enemy in athletics/sporty mode is useless and most of the time a death sentence. What you'll want to do is actually walk/run backwards while still facing the enemy, that way you'll get out of their firing range the fastest.

I know it sucks that enemies can combo-strike you to death, but the good thing is that once you land a good angle magic ball in, you can pretty much do the same :D

Just finished the game.

*Very* nice. As you said once you get to Principal Island it all gets much better. I was slightly annoyed at the jumping in White Leaf Desert when you land (and you can't skip the boat sequence, so you have to watch 10-15 seconds; maybe not much but it getss annoying), then jumping again in beginning of Temple of Bu.

But once you get past that, it's a great game. I'm really happy I decided not to quit.
(Maybe they should have added a character at the beginning who'd tell you to run/sneak instead of trying to fight the soldiers till you get to your house. That would save a new player some frustration).

Some opinions. I'll start with the cons: The controls are a bit awkward, but you can get used to them pretty fast; even running becomes easy without hitting objects once you get the hang of it. The combat might have been improved (as I mentioned getting combo hit can get frustrating). I'd have liked a bit less of jumping puzzles or action puzzles in general and a little bit more of thinking/calculation puzzles, like the moving boxes in Citadel Island docks. But in general the puzzles are really nice (I have consulted a walktrhough only one or two times, but only because I got impatient).
Pros: The humour is really great. I really loved the overall story and atmosphere. Cool characters. I liked the Starwars Grobo in the library. The soldier next to the astronomer door entrance was pretty funny. Also the "Mister! Mister! There is a loose stone in my cell" moment. Just a few examples off the top of my head.
You can't get into a no-win situation (thought I believe that's now a standard in adventure games).

That's very nice to hear and I agree on a lot of your con-points, are you going to play the second game as well? :) Good job!

Yes, I'll try part 2 too, but only in April. I'll be gone for 3 weeks in March. Heard lots of good stuff about the sequel.

Cool! Yes, like I said I prefer the original to the sequel, but that's not saying that LBA2 isn't an excellent game as well. Be sure to let us know what you're thoughts are on it :)

Just finished 2. Almost a year later. I started LBA2 sometime last summer but had to take some breaks while playing it.

My thoughts seem to be same as yours. I preferred the original but LBA2 is an excellent game too. Loved the story and setting. Nice art. Funny.
The fact that you don't lose health when hitting walls while running, and save anytime are 2 best improvements. I liked the extra different weapons and abilities (shiled, lightning), but sadly it meant you stop using the ball (or rarely use it) after a certain point in the game. To my surprise the sword, although mellee, was amazing.
Still it suffers from the same 2 problems: if you want it an action game (and I do love jumping puzzles if done well), then give it proper movement. It has to be easy and fluid. The jumping over lava puzzles can be frustrating because you have to get them just right (thank God for the save anytime). The second one is: if you want to rely on combat (this game is not pure combat, but it does rely on it to some extent) then make the combat proper. Again combo-hits were frustrating as were having to get the aim exactly right. Good thing there was the shield which was a way to escape being combo hit. Or sometimes it was just good to put it on and run through enemies. Also I think Stealth was underused in this game (and LBA1). Very few places required Stealth mode, and fewer still the "keep still" (press Action while in Stealth). It certainly wasn't a valid method to get past enemies as far as I could see. Maybe more puzzles should have required it. With Agressive not needed too (I only used it on dogs I think) and Walk unnecessary since you could do anything in Run mode (pressing Z), except to fight with Sword, it meant that you spent 95% of your time in Run. The whole mode changing thing became superfluous.

Overall though, I did enjoy the series. Thanks to GOG and the publishers for releasing it for free, since I don't think I'd have heard of it, let alone played it, otherwise. It was fun.