Well, it is.
Simon the Sorcerer 3D became, unfortunately, one of these games which tries to make a premiere at the 3D world and painfully failed. So, yes, by many aspects this game is a disaster. The 3D models look terrible, the graphics look way too "cubic", add some massive graphical bugs and glitches and you can easily get your eyes sore.
The gameplay itself is unfortunately not too good either, especially when the game is a third in a series of CLASSIC adventure games, meaning its predecessors used the good n' old point-and-click interface, and now, in this game, you suddenly control your character with the keyboard, moving it around with your arrows in a horrifying 3D environment. Of course, you could get used to it, if only it wasn't done so badly - the controlling never gets comfortable, and the whole interface and the way you use objects still confuse me even after playing and finishing this game twice.
"Twice?" I hear you ask, "If this game is so terrible, how come you've finished it twice?"
So, what really made me play this game, TWICE? And even more bizarrely, what makes me go and play again such a game which was released back at 2002, and even go on and review it, 13 (!) years after? (Yeah, it's 2015 already folks!)
Well guys, as much as this game is a headache (to put it lightly), and it would accompany you with way too much bugs, glitches, sudden crashes, and worst of all - backtracking (!) - I honestly believe that this game was heavily wronged.
For those who claim that Simon the Sorcerer 3D ruined a great series of games, I'd say that they are completely wrong. Simon the Sorcerer 4 & 5 are those who ruined the series. While they far outweigh Simon 3D TECHNICALLY, by almost all means and aspects, they left behind most if not all of the original Simon the Sorcerer spirit. And this is where Simon the Sorcerer 3D shines, and if you try hard to look beyond those horrible-looking 3D polygons, you might be able to see its spark.
The voice acting, the characters, the writing, the humor - are all as good as in the first two installments, and all deserve much more attention and praise than those they received (if at all). Puzzles are sometimes too hard to figure, even more than in the first games (because of the new interface), but are clever and challenging, and I enjoyed solving them even when it was with the help of a walkthrough. (PLUS the final puzzle gets an A+++ from me, this puzzle alone made me give the game 6\10 instead of 5, along with a few other brilliant puzzles I truly enjoyed).
In conclusion. as badly done as this game is, it is still the last installment in the series done by the original developers, and is therefore loyal to the glorious Simon the Sorcerer environment and universe. The first two games gave this series so much reputation that even after many years of silence it got a third, forth and fifth installment, and nowadays there's even a sixth one in development! (Each part was done by a different -and probably now a defunct - company).
Hopefully a sixth installment would be released successfully by StoryBeasts and would have the old Simon spirit which only the first 3 parts of the series managed to handle so well!