Blue Prince

Has great potential, but as is I can't call it a good game

I absolutely love puzzle games like Portal, The Outer Wilds, The Witness, Return of the Obra Dinn, and The Talos Principal. Blue Prince is less of a puzzle game than it is a masochistic roguelite that requires a ton of luck and guesswork. I want puzzle games to test my knowledge and intelligence, not test my luck. I feel like I've LOST BRAIN CELLS playing Blue Prince. There is just so much frustrating randomness in the game, especially late game after getting past Room 46. While it is a good game, it is so deeply flawed that it does not deserve all the acclaim it has gotten from professional critics. I feel like I've been tricked. This game is SO DISRESPECTFUL to player's time. Late game, it takes hours to roll the right conditions just to solve a specific problem. And the puzzles themselves are often super vague word puzzles that require tons of guesswork. The logical answer is usually not the correct answer the devs are looking for. And the puzzles are so repetitive. I was so tired of solving the same puzzles over and over and over and over and over and over and OVER AGAIN because the game resets every day. The dartboard and lock puzzles nearly broke me. They take SO LONG to solve, and they're not fun after the 20th time, and especially not fun after the 100th time. They're a time-wasters. - It sucks because there are no mid-game saves when a single run can last 2 hours - It sucks because the late-game puzzles are vague and often just guesswork. The "A New Clue" puzzles are super vague. The Aries puzzles are super vague. At least one of the sigils requires guesswork. - It sucks because there are so many red herrings. The game will drop tons of clues that end up being completely misleading and inconsistent. I've spent hours trying to roll the specific conditions to solve a puzzle only to find out that I've been following a red herring left by careless devs. - It sucks because some of the puzzles can't be solved if you miss a single hard-to-find clue. - It sucks because 2 of the puzzles require waiting in the same spot for up to 90 minutes, which is a huge energy waste - It sucks because I have to replay the same puzzles over and over again. Doing the chess puzzle multiple times was so annoying. - It sucks because there is so much RNG involved in rolling the rooms. Late game puzzle requirements are far too rare, even with all the permanent upgrades. Blue Prince is just too frustrating of a game to be enjoyable.