Saz,
One of the suggestions that is often made is to go into the game configuration option and set the brightness higher. Helped me quite a bit to see what was going on.
The first dungeon *does* have lots of annoying backtracking. Fortunately, I didn't find that to be the case again in the rest of the game. The game picks up substantially from where you are now. Becomes a lot more fun... Good luck!
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Now where did I leave that doughnut?!