4/5 ★ – likevin96's review of Blue Prince.

- The most I've been into a game for awhile - Getting to 46 was mostly fun, but it did feel like the longer this thing went on, the more frustrating it was going to get - I think I like it more than Animal Well, but not as much as Obra Dinn, and not nearly as much as Outer Wilds. I thought everyone was aligned that the fun part of puzzle games is the solving of the puzzle and everything getting in the way of you solving that puzzle is just frustrating. Blue Prince definitely relies too much on RNG to be 'pure' in that respect, so many runs die just due to bad luck, which is certainly fine in a roguelite game dependent on your mechanics, but is instead mildly annoying in a puzzle game like this. Despite that, it generally still kept my attention and had me having fun for the vast majority of the experience, but as with a lot of games like this, I'm very glad I stopped when I did and I imagine the post-game for this could be even more frustrating than a lot of its peers - Really needs some QoL help - the animations just take so long and I wish you could move a bit faster - I'm looking forward to watching a YouTube video about all the weird secrets in this game - I'm not sure if any of the secrets in this game really felt that satisfying? I liked the progression, but more in a roguelite way than in a solve-em-up kind of way. There were pretty few big 'aha!' moments - it felt like most revelations were on a much more micro-scale. Which is totally fine, but I didn't get quite the same feeling I get from the best of these, where you've learned some kind of trick or backdoor that allows you to get through things easier or that differently. It almost felt more like a RPG puzzler than a 'real' puzzle game. I'm sure a lot of this changes if I dump another 20 hours in, but from where I'm standing, that honestly doesn't look very fun - I've mostly talked about my complaints so far, but I did like this game. I was more addicted to this than anything since Balatro and had fun effectively every moment of the runtime (again minus some of the annoying QoL pieces). I didn't really dig the aesthetic of the whole thing though and could care less about the story, which is usually how I feel about games like this. I could tell on my final few runs though (after credits rolled to see what was actually in that room) that my enjoyment was rapidly dropping off. I'm glad I stopped where I stopped - great experience and incredibly innovative, but not quite feeling the 90+ ratings this thing is getting everywhere