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Before I made this post, I checked the store page to see how it describes the game.
And that made me realize that they should indeed be way more up front about the fact that puzzle-solving is a core part of the gameplay.
I tend to agree that puzzles in games are not a good thing.
I usually hate puzzles in games too, because they are almost never implemented in a way that makes them fun, like they should be, rather than aggravating, like they actually are.
If RPG games have puzzles, I think they should be in a riddle form, like for example, the ancient game Betrayal at Krondor, where the puzzles are riddles written in the form of a poem, and you have to solve the riddle by rotating tumblers of letters on a lock in order to form the word that comprises the answer to the riddle.
That type of puzzle is fun and non-aggravating.
In contrast, trying to navigate a boulder along timed trap doors, like this "Shadows" game frequently forces the player to do...that's just the antithesis of fun.
This is a very great game though, aside from the horrible puzzles.
It's a real shame that the puzzles alienate so many players from the game.
I've seen lots of different people complain about the puzzles in this game over the years.
Some have ragequit out of the game because of them, and others like yourself simply won't buy the game due to the puzzles.
I think the devs should implement a new patch to add a "skip puzzle" option for every puzzle in this game, most especially the boulder ones. Doing that would probably make this game be a lot more accessible and popular.
Personally, I love the puzzles- some of them are really well thought out, and require actual thinking to solve. Some of them are ruined by clunky controls (tile puzzles and boulder puzzles), though. Perhaps the puzzles don't throw me off as much, because I also play many casual games like HOG/HOPA games and P&C puzzle games, that have many similar puzzles in them (without the combat elements).
When I originally purchased (and posted) this, neither the description nor any tags mentioned that there were any puzzles. Since they have since changed that, it proves such tags/descriptions should have been there all along.
I do believe it also had listed ARPG or something similar. Though not sure anyone expected a "Diablo clone."
The store page dev-listed genres are Action and RPG- so I can see why people looking only at that would think "aRPG like Grim Dawn!". The user-defined tags are all over the place- never trust user-defined tags either. I have no idea hat the store description was back when the game first came out, so it certainly could have changed a good bit over the years.
But the reviews are filled with people that call it a Diablo-like (Diablo clone) or aRPG, like this one: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197974881664/recommended/585450/
I rarely bother with Steam reviews when I am researching a game. I look for gameplay videos on YT or Twitch, to see what I would be buying and what the gameplay is like. I found a lot of videos from right after the game released on Steam in 2018, many with "Puzzle solution" in the title or as the main content focus. So it was clear that puzzles were going to be a thing, and they would be somewhat complex puzzles. Game magazine write-ups also said the same- party-based RPG with lots of complex puzzles.
And just to clarify- I quoted another commenter because I was responding directly to their post, not to the original thread topic you posted in 2020.
I recently started playing this game and I actually love puzzles in games in general, but I agree with your distinction about fun and non-fun puzzles.
IMO the hard part of a puzzle should be determining the solution, not in implementing that solution, like with the riddle you mentioned. (This also allows puzzle haters to look up the solution and easily implement it to skip if they want to.)
To me, when I know the solution but have tried and failed numerous times to implement it, whether because of BS game mechanics or anything else, the game stops being fun and I get really frustrated. I don't want to Get Gud. I want to have fun!
This game has had some moderately enjoyable puzzles, but the ones with the boulder and the levers that control the stupid platforms fall so firmly into the easy solution, hard implementation category that I quit the game after discovering the third one and am not sure I will go back to it.
If they are going to make "puzzles" where implementing the solution is the challenging part, there should absolutely be an option to skip them for players who can't/don't want to complete them.