I think that right there is what’s keeping it off a lot of people’s lists–I started playing and kept getting bounced out of the prologue by the time limit until I had to consult a walkthrough. And when I did consult the walkthrough, I did not say “Gosh, I should’ve seen that.”
[spoiler]The undescribed exit was a real killer–in more modern IF I usually expect to have a room description tell me where I can go, whereas in this one if you don’t use a hint in one room to deduce that going a certain direction in an adjacent room will be productive, you can’t progress at all. To some extent this is a question of expectations–I-0 had something similar (which I think was more of a pure try-every-direction-everywhere puzzle) though that only locked you out of one branch, not of the whole game.
I’m not sure if I found all of the hidden items on my own–I thought opening the piano bench was reasonably well clued, or maybe it’s that I’ve known enough piano benches to know that they open, but I can’t remember if I looked under it; it doesn’t seem like the sort of thing I’d do. And sketching the bird… I can only assume that eventually you get to a point where it becomes clear that you should’ve been sketching birds from the beginning, and you have to restart? That seems very old-school.[/spoiler]
From what I’ve played since then it seems as though subsequent scenes might be a lot more accessible to the modern player. But the prologue is a high bar to clear. (I wonder if that’s common in games of that period–I had a similar experience with Christminster.