Blue Prince

I have to give a bad review to maybe help others judge better whether to buy it. TL;DR: Late game is a chore with roguelite RNG getting in your way, don't attempt it to not sour the experience you have got with the early and mid game. I loved the early and the mid game. The mechanics, how RNG did and didn't work in your favor at times and finally getting the early puzzle pieces together gave us good chills and the payoff was very good, usually in some permanent upgrades, major lore reveal etc. However after getting into the late game with really cryptic clues and lots of noise and the RNG being as annoying as before, I just have to say it completely soured the experience in a way that I can't say that I even like the game anymore, even if I did have an amazing experience at first. We should've quit after solving the 8 major keys and puzzles related to them, but there was no payoff at all for that. At that point we were so invested in the story and lore (the lore is pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ great tbh) that we wanted to see it through. Not a good choice. Even with ~endless redraws (certain room combo) the end game puzzles are a pain to do and feel like a chore with red herrings everywhere. You draft a full house only to find that the thing you thought would work doesn't work at all and have to start all over. This game lacks a proper ending, a proper cutscene or something that ties all the knots together (even if you would've connected the dots yourself already), before the late late puzzles. All in all I would say we had 60 hours of fun with this game and then 60 hours of work, of which the latter we would like to have back. I hoped this game would give me a reason to like the roguelite genre, but again the late game grind just ruined a perfectly good game. It's addicting, yes (that's why I'm writing this at 124h), but addicting is not always a good game mechanic, sometimes it's just more akin to gambling. BTW the gallery puzzle was great after getting the clue for the first letters, one of the best moments in the game (though the payoff for that too was just meh).

I hope this isn't a political statement.

why did the bloop rinse inherit a house with 30 aquariums? is he stupid?

I think this game deserves all the negative reviews it gets. I do not have the patience for it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ anymore. At the same time this is one of the best written and designed games I've played and I can't not recommend it despite how frustrating I find it

one of the best puzzle games out there to date, get your pen & paper, this game will cure your tiktok brain

RNG in puzzle game, no thank you

Even if you know how to solve a puzzle you may spend multiple hourse just to get lucky and get the right combination of rooms and items to appear. I mean, I spent two hours just trying to get three rooms to appear among which should have been a shop that also had to have an item I needed to solve the puzzle. Very frustrating that with each reset you have to wait for slow loading screens hidden behind transitions.