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Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece

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Re: Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece

#41

Post by eieio »

noqc wrote: post #36
CyberDildonics wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is 'article' is just an advertisement

I haven't seen a single good review from anyone I trust, most people are saying it's not good.

FWIW Adrian Hon (the writer) is easily the game reviewer that I trust the most! I am quite sensitive to false positives with games - it really sucks to spend a few hours on a game that you drop - and my false positive rate with his reviews is very low.

(I have no affiliation with this post beyond being a fan of Adrian's writing and work + haven't played Blue Prince yet, although I'm very likely to play it because of this review)

Re: Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece

#42

Post by chongli »

taejo wrote: post #28
riffraff wrote: post #7

> As with other roguelikes, you can unlock persistent upgrades that smooth over repetitive parts of the game. I think those are called rogue-lites, for the reason that real rogue-likes (e.g. nethack, DCSS) actually wipe out all your progress on each attempt.

NetHack does have ghost files (where you find the levels previous characters died on, including their ghost and their possibly-cursed loot). It's definitely not the same kind of progression as in modern rogue-lites, but it can be a boost to pick up the equipment you found on a previous run.

Do note that enemies can also pick up that old equipment and use it against you. I lost a promising character during the last November NetHack Tournament [1] because a gnome picked up a wand of fire from someone’s grave and blasted me with it.

Yeah that’s another difference. When you play NetHack online [2] [3] you run into the ghosts and graves of other players, not just your own previous characters. I have run into levels online with the ghosts of 3 different people who were all killed by various dangerous monsters that kept accumulating more powerful equipment from each victim. It can be quite ridiculous!

[1] https://tnnt.org/

[2] https://alt.org/nethack/

[3] https://www.hardfought.org/

Re: Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece

#43

Post by DanielVZ »

square_usual wrote: post #13
throwerofstone wrote: post #5

After playing the game for 10+ hours and dropping it out of sheer frustration, I came to the conclusion that I must have been playing a vastly different game than the people praising it. The first hour was great. I was constantly encountering new rooms and solving puzzles. The many times where the game decided to give me nothing but rooms leading to dead ends was annoying, but I still had things to explore in the nex…

I generally have the same frustration with roguelites as you seem to: every time I start a run, it feels like I'm gambling whether I'll have any fun at all. A bad seed or start can mean losing in ways that feel unfair or boring, like in balatro if you get a bunch of bad hands and bad jokers, you struggle through rounds and hands until you either lose or get an interesting combination. I don't need that kind of gambli…

One common mantra about most roguelites is that every run can be a successful run if you play your cards right. Some will be harder, in others you’ll become unstoppable, but the general idea is that once you get good enough you should be able to win runs. I’m not sure if this holds and is extremely dependent on how balanced the game is, but I think it’s a sane way to approach the genre since it pushes you to improve and generally becomes a rule once you become good enough at some of the games.

Re: Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece

#44

Post by chongli »

skyyler wrote: post #12
riffraff wrote: post #7

> As with other roguelikes, you can unlock persistent upgrades that smooth over repetitive parts of the game. I think those are called rogue-lites, for the reason that real rogue-likes (e.g. nethack, DCSS) actually wipe out all your progress on each attempt.

At this point, times have shifted, and meta-progression is usually considered an aspect of modern roguelikes. There was a trend of calling them "rogue-lites" but that's faded and now games like ADOM and DCSS are "Classic roguelikes" It's not a hard and fast rule or anything, just what I've observed in gaming discussions.

That’s a shame, because meta-progression ultimately undermines the spirit of these classic games.

Roguelikes were designed to play like arcade games in that you’d always start over from scratch and try to get a high score. Most attempts ended in failure but as you got better at the game it was reflected in your score. Even after players achieve a high degree of expertise they still find the games challenging to win and so they keep playing and enjoying them for years to come.

Meta-progression takes away the from-scratch element and just allows you to win through sheer persistence, chipping away at the problem until it’s easy enough for you to finish it in one final run. But then what? The game is no longer the same challenge it was when you first started. It’s like a mountain that keeps getting smaller every time you attempt to climb it, until it’s finally shrunk to the size of an anthill. This is not a recipe for a game you can play for many years.

Ultimately, what meta-progression does is turn a roguelike into a standard narrative RPG just like any other. This is one where the player’s goal is to reach the end of the game and that’s it, not to learn the game’s systems and reach a high level of mastery.

Re: Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece

#47

Post by rjh29 »

throwerofstone wrote: post #5

After playing the game for 10+ hours and dropping it out of sheer frustration, I came to the conclusion that I must have been playing a vastly different game than the people praising it. The first hour was great. I was constantly encountering new rooms and solving puzzles. The many times where the game decided to give me nothing but rooms leading to dead ends was annoying, but I still had things to explore in the nex…

Same experience after 8 hours. I can see how roguelite fans would enjoy the dopamine hits of new information / upgrades / solving tiny bits of puzzles. As a pure puzzle fan I found the roguelite stuff repetitive and boring, and the puzzle stuff itself is good but not mindblowingly good. (Yes - even the less obvious puzzles)

I had my doubts when people were playing 100+ hours of it. That gave me the idea it would be a skinner box type game that is addictive but empty. So far nothing has changed my opinion on that.

Re: Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece

#49

Post by rjh29 »

383toast wrote: post #8
throwerofstone wrote: post #5

After playing the game for 10+ hours and dropping it out of sheer frustration, I came to the conclusion that I must have been playing a vastly different game than the people praising it. The first hour was great. I was constantly encountering new rooms and solving puzzles. The many times where the game decided to give me nothing but rooms leading to dead ends was annoying, but I still had things to explore in the nex…

> many times where the game decided to give me nothing but rooms leading to dead ends Since each room can only appear once, you can minimize this by strategically choosing to place dead end rooms early on in the lower southeast/southwest, and edges generally. Then always make sure you have gems as you move north, so you can usually pick good rooms.

Also, there's a great book on drafting that you can find at the Library (of course you need to draw the Library twice, one to request the book and one more to get it - another issue with the RNG)

Re: Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece

#50

Post by rjh29 »

gs17 wrote: post #15
galleywest200 wrote: post #2

I have been playing this game and it is really a blast. The tutorial note cards strongly recommend using a pen+paper while playing and I can second that as pretty much required for some of the more "meta" puzzles. Worth noting that I believe it is also on Gamepass and whatever Sony's version of Gamepass is called if you already had those services and wished to save a few bucks.

> The tutorial note cards strongly recommend using a pen+paper while playing This is my largest complaint. The game should really have a notepad built in. It doesn't need to write down clues for me, but it would be nice to not have to find where my notes were if I put the game down for a long time. Is it that it's a console release?

I've played 10 hours ish and it needs pen and paper notes. A text notepad probably won't work
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