Adventure / Point-n-Click / Narrative Games

I'm probably in the minority but I didn't like the game. I think mixing rogue like and puzzles is terrible and this game demonstrated why very well.

For context, I played it and basically 100% 'd the game (yeah I know it's almost impossible to 100% this game but I basically solved every single puzzle I could find). I actually did this out of spite because I wanted to hate the game but for the "right reasons" and so that I can be fair with my criticism.

Roguelikes can usually get away with resetting between "rounds" because each round is quick. It makes failure/death less punishing. The problem is that puzzles can take any amount of time. If you get a puzzle, it could take you 10 minutes. If you don't, it could take hours. As an example, I started a gaming session one night. I had 2 hours before I wanted to wind down for bed and previous rounds had been quick so I thought why not? Huge mistake. I ended up getting "lucky" and got a miracle run. Basically because the game is rng, I got a run where a lot of things went my way and I uncovered several puzzles, mysteries and solutions all in a single run. Just one single round of the game ended up taking over 4 hours and I didn't want to stop playing because you can't save in the middle of the round and I was worried I'd never get such a lucky round again. This sort of thing make it incredibly hard to plan time to play the game. Maybe this is only a me problem but I rarely get days where I can just devote an entire day to playing a game. Blue prince is deep too so if you want to "complete the game" it will likely take you over a week of playing every day.

Another issue I had with the game is the lack of a built in note taking system. After "finishing" blue prince, I checked the number of screenshots I had taken and I took 380 screenshots. That is insane. This is my opinion but if a game requires you to take that many screenshots it should have a note taking system. One of the big issues is that you have no idea what is and isn't a clue and since the game is a roguelike, you don't know if and when you will see a particular clue again. What this basically meant for me was that I had to screenshot anything I thought that might be useful because who knows if I need it later. The game also punishes you for moving so you can't just go back and check if you forget. Doing so can ruin your run. I was shocked that people were praising the game for not including a note taking system once I was done with the game. It was torture having an aha moment only to realize I had to go dig through my 380 screenshots to go puzzle out the solution. Yeah I also had a notebook but I used it sparingly especially after "early game".

The third issue I had was around how some of the puzzles are terribly designed. I will give you the most damning example. I had solved a pretty indepth puzzle in blue prince except instead of a solution it gave me a riddle. The riddle was cryptic but I thought I had a good idea of what the riddle meant. The problem was with how I would confirm the solution. Because the riddle basically said to stand in one spot for a really long time (in real life). I tried that and it didn't work. This was a puzzle that pissed me off enough I finally looked up a solution since I didnt want to waste my gaming session basically afking the entire time.

This was a huge waste of time. I absolutely hate puzzles like this. In my opinion if you have a puzzle that requires someone to literally wait for a long time, the solution better be obvious and not some cryptic riddle.

All of this was made worse by the next game I played at the time which was Chants of Sennaar. A game that was way more polished than blue prince. The contrast between the games made me sour on my experience further.