The puzzles are terrible -.-

[Carynara]

Seriously, almost all of the puzzles in this game are truly awful. I don't mean the actual challenge itself, but the implementation.

E.g.
- Oskar's quest, you read all the books or notes or whatever and follow the quest to every last word etc. you still have no clue how to interact with the picture.
- Ansur's Justice room, you know you have to pick one of the judgement scenarios, but you can't interact with the paintings. Daylight doesn't dispel darkness, bc LOL when was the last time you alt-tabbed to google something? Time to do it again.
- Flying books, you know you have to slow them somehow but noooo, Ice, Sleet, Slow, those are not the answer, you need to enter environmental TBM because what's the one thing you never use? Time to use it after 100h of gameplay without it, lol how come you didn't think about it?
- Shar's Faith Leap trial, you read all the bs about navigating the darkness and how much SHADOWheart loves shadow, she won't shut up about it since we dropped off the nautilus, so you send her in and lo and behold the tiles disappear. Cheese your way through with Misty Step/Flying, that works! Bc it's her ♥♥♥♥♥♥ trial so it makes sense she's not the one who's set up for success in it. Alternatively, you can get lucky and the whole place bugs out so you can walk through it normally.
- Chess (lanceboard), you do know how to get the king in 2 steps but nope, that's not the exact solution the devs had in mind you have to guess their solution or just brute force the whole thing if Gale isn't there to tell you what's what.

I mean... if it was just one I wouldn't take time to write such a long rant but at this point I feel this takes quite a bit out of the game. I love puzzles and I'm happy to spend some time trying to figure them out but all of these are so counterintuitive with normal (i.e. known) behaviour deliberately blocked, and/or glitched, it's no fun.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

The puzzles, like combat, are "gotcha's!".

[ShadowDark3]

I didn't do the picture quest so can't comment on it, but I didn't have any trouble with the rest of these. In the justice room you can see the judge is cursed, the game pretty regularly puts you into TBM when bad stuff starts happening so that wasn't a surprise, leap of faith trial has the path on the floor, and the chess is, well, chess. I played around with it awhile and only found one way that worked to mate in two.

[Carynara]

In the justice room you can see the judge is cursed - I'm talking about things that are supposed to work not working. Like, why does Daylight not dispel darkness all of a sudden.

Leap of faith trial has the path on the floor - If you're lucky enough to catch the bug. It happened to me 1x out of 3 runs so far.

And the chess is, well, chess - Yet a perfectly valid chess move is not accepted.

[Lady_Regret]

The Shar trials I think are meant to reflect the fact Shadowheart was never meant to follow Shar, nothing about her is made to be able to complete those trials...but damn if Astarion wanted to he could have been a Dark Justiciar in a heartbeat the way he just flies right through it all without breaking a sweat lol but I feel like that whole thing is on purpose and meant to be narrative.

I agree with the other puzzles though...some of them really just expect you to know something without any kind of hint ever being provided.

[♠.brT]

I don't get your comment about the chess puzzle. There is no other solution for "check mate in two" in that chess position. Of all the puzzles in that area, the chess puzzle was the easiest, you do not need Gale in your party to find the solution, all you need is to have played Chess at some point in your life - and of course still remember the basics of it -

oh wait... Apparently there are different variations for the chess puzzle? I didn't know that. need to see what the other variations look like.

[pyrrho]

1) Not sure.

2) The path is literally on the floor in front of the blood altar, also you can usually just click the destination at the end and put your faith in Shar.

3) It's possible you might have been playing as the wrong color. As the previous poster said, there is a valid mate in 2 solution that works.

[Humpenstilzchen]

Some bosses also require knowledge that you can´t have like the tollcollector with the flying skulls.

In theory not hard, you just need to kill the skulls to remove the armor of the tollcollector that is if you even get a chance to because my whole team got oneshottet in the first turn and there was literally no counterplay since here attacks were so op.

Had to check online. Turns out the damage she does is based on how much gold you carry.
So I sent my money back to camp and suddenly it was really easy but the fun was still gone because it felt so unfair before.

Who would think that she can use your gold to attack you and that the amount of gold determines how much damage she does so if you have lots of gold you won´t even survive the first turn lol. What a bs.

[Orion Invictus]

Originally posted by Humpenstilzchen:

Some bosses also require knowledge that you can´t have like the tollcollector with the flying skulls.

In theory not hard, you just need to kill the skulls to remove the armor of the tollcollector that is if you even get a chance to because my whole team got oneshottet in the first turn and there was literally no counterplay since here attacks were so op.

Had to check online. Turns out the damage she does is based on how much gold you carry.
So I sent my money back to camp and suddenly it was really easy but the fun was still gone because it felt so unfair before.

Who would think that she can use your gold to attack you and that the amount of gold determines how much damage she does so if you have lots of gold you won´t even survive the first turn lol. What a bs.

Combat log?

[Humpenstilzchen]

Originally posted by Orion Invictus:

Originally posted by Humpenstilzchen:

snip.

Combat log?

idk maybe i should really look more often into the combat log yea. You are probably right. I didn´t even think about that tbh.

[Orion Invictus]

Originally posted by Humpenstilzchen:

Originally posted by Orion Invictus:

Combat log?

idk maybe i should really look more often into the combat log yea. You are probably right. I didn´t even think about that tbh.

It's what I did when I saw my avatar get destroyed in one hit by a ridiculous amount of damage the first time I faced her.

[Humpenstilzchen]

Originally posted by Orion Invictus:

Originally posted by Humpenstilzchen:

idk maybe i should really look more often into the combat log yea. You are probably right. I didn´t even think about that tbh.

It's what I did when I saw my avatar get destroyed in one hit by a ridiculous amount of damage the first time I faced her.

Yes you are right. I need to get used to this. I tend to completely ignore this combat log button even though showing the log could be so useful.

[Orion Invictus]

Originally posted by Carynara:

Seriously, almost all of the puzzles in this game are truly awful. I don't mean the actual challenge itself, but the implementation.

E.g.
- Oskar's quest, you read all the books or notes or whatever and follow the quest to every last word etc. you still have no clue how to interact with the picture.
- Ansur's Justice room, you know you have to pick one of the judgement scenarios, but you can't interact with the paintings. Daylight doesn't dispel darkness, bc LOL when was the last time you alt-tabbed to google something? Time to do it again.
- Flying books, you know you have to slow them somehow but noooo, Ice, Sleet, Slow, those are not the answer, you need to enter environmental TBM because what's the one thing you never use? Time to use it after 100h of gameplay without it, lol how come you didn't think about it?
- Shar's Faith Leap trial, you read all the bs about navigating the darkness and how much SHADOWheart loves shadow, she won't shut up about it since we dropped off the nautilus, so you send her in and lo and behold the tiles disappear. Cheese your way through with Misty Step/Flying, that works! Bc it's her ♥♥♥♥♥♥ trial so it makes sense she's not the one who's set up for success in it. Alternatively, you can get lucky and the whole place bugs out so you can walk through it normally.
- Chess (lanceboard), you do know how to get the king in 2 steps but nope, that's not the exact solution the devs had in mind you have to guess their solution or just brute force the whole thing if Gale isn't there to tell you what's what.

I mean... if it was just one I wouldn't take time to write such a long rant but at this point I feel this takes quite a bit out of the game. I love puzzles and I'm happy to spend some time trying to figure them out but all of these are so counterintuitive with normal (i.e. known) behaviour deliberately blocked, and/or glitched, it's no fun.

1 - If you pay attention to what Mystic Carrion tells you about the torch, you'll know exactly what to do.
2 - The judge is cursed, as are all the paintings. Casting "Remove Curse" is the logical step to fixing the problem.
3 - Agreed, I just started offing them and hoped I got the right one. Which I did, since I went from (my) left to right.
4 - The layout is in gold on the floor in front of the sacrificial "plate". It's boring to have to go back and forth, but the solution is right there.
5 - When I thought I had a solution, I later realized it wouldn't work because of a piece I hadn't taken into account. But maybe this isn't the case with you, I dunno. The layouts change every time.

[Enigma]

Originally posted by Carynara:

- Chess (lanceboard), you do know how to get the king in 2 steps but nope, that's not the exact solution the devs had in mind you have to guess their solution or just brute force the whole thing if Gale isn't there to tell you what's what.

What would be the other move that doesn't work?

[Maj. Grumpy]

I avoid all puzzles. Except the ones I HAD to do, otherwise puzzles in a rpg game breaks the immersion and stops all the fun.

I'd rather have a rating for games that require you to stop having fun in order to do a damn puzzle.

[Xanikk]

That's why you look up the solutions. I don't enjoy puzzles. So that's what I do in most games.